Steve's HR Technology

We are always planning - people, teams, organizations all spending lots of time looking ahead, trying to figure out what the future holds for themselves, their projects, and their enterprises.

I recently read an excellent list of the four different approaches that people and organizations take when it comes to assessing what the future may hold, the abridged version is something like this:

The future is pretty mysterious and kind of scary. Let's just see what happens and hope things turn out all right. Besides, we have been pretty successful for a long time doing things the way we do them. We can react if things do really change.
We think about the future, sit down and to make some plans about what the future may hold, but conclude that the future (at least for us) looks mostly like the present, and our current strategies, plans, and processes should be just fine. We really don't seriously consider any alternatives to our 'tomorrow looks like today' conclusion.
We realize that the future will look quite a bit unlike the present, but what that actually means for us we are not sure. So we create numerous different scenarios, and develop some strategies for managing for each scenario. It would be great if we could know more precisely which scenarios are most likely to occur, but we really don't know.
We don't want to wait for the future to happen to us, we will design strategies and take actions to actively shape our future. We will proactively create the environment that will give us the best chance for success.

The original list was written in the context of organizational innovation centered around actual product and service offerings, and how firms' approach to planning for the future affects their ability to innovate.

But I think these same 'future views' are also found in organizations approach to developing their workforce strategies as well. Think about how these play out in a workforce or talent management context:

1. Future is scary, no real plan to change strategy

This will only work provided all of the following scenarios pan out:

There will be no material change in the competitive environment for the organization's talent. The demand for and the supply of talent will be more or less constant. No external factors (demographics, regulatory, new entrants to the market) will significantly alter the current state. People will continue to be happy in their roles in the organization.

2. We are pretty sure the future looks like the present

This is mostly similar to option 1, but at least we have given some thought to the (unlikely) possibility that the environment will change in ways that will impact our workforce and our business. So if for example, all of a sudden consumers tastes do change, or the passage of Universal Health Care frees up 25% of our high performers to seek new opportunities, we might, maybe, kind of have some idea of what to do.

3. We know we need to plan for variability in the future, so we develop multiple scenarios

Not a bad approach really, the organization can develop workforce contingency plans to account to rising demand, falling demand, increases in qualified candidates, or decreases in qualified candidates. But there is also the effects of the economy, national and local legislative changes, potential mergers and acquisitions, increases in external competition, etc. Man, that is a lot of variables to plan for. Hopefully these scenario and contingency plans can cover all the possible 'futures'.

4. The heck with it, we will make our own future

This approach is probably the hardest to pull off, but when you think about it the only one that makes sense. There is no way that you can react fast enough for the inevitable changes without having some pre-planning done (Toyota), the future will almost certainly not look like the present (right MySpace?), and no matter how much scenario planning you do, you can never account for all the possibilities that will affect your workforce and your talent strategies.

Building a strategy and developing plans to proactively shape the future may seem risky, but in some ways it is the least variable approach. If things do go not according to plan, (and they probably won't), the organization would have at least developed some contingencies and will have at least the chance to adapt quickly enough.

Simply waiting, hoping, or reacting to what the future holds will only work for so long, and if you are going to flame out, better to do that on your own terms.