Future of Strategy, Planning and Management

THREE FUTURE TRENDS

Three key trends in the perception of information today likely will shape strategy, planning and management in the future. The trends are complexity, chaos theory, and information overload. These concepts provide key insights into how to survive and win in our ever-more turbulent environments.

Information, Misinformation, and Disinformation
The good news is because of the computer and the Internet we can capture, analyze, and share information at speeds and in quantities unknown before in history. The bad news is the mounting glut (“info-glut”) of misinformation (incomplete) and disinformation (propaganda), as well as information (reliable).

Political strategist Dick Morris (eVote.com, 1999) argues the most important survival skill today is recognizing information, misinformation, and disinformation. We make decisions based on what we know, or think we know.

Complexity
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who earned a Ph.D. in statistics from Princeton University, published a bestseller, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, in 2007 that is changing how we perceive information.

Here is why: Taleb argues the new global economy is complex literally beyond understanding. In effect, we really do not know how it works. We are like the proverbial blind men who encountered an elephant and sought to describe it. One man had the trunk. One man had the tail. One had a tusk. Each had part of the elephant, but they could not picture the whole elephant.

In effect, Taleb argues we are like these blind men when we seek to describe, understand, or measure the global economy, our “elephant.” Each one of us has a piece of the puzzle, but we have no idea of how the puzzle comes together. As a result, Taleb maintains, we are busy measuring a “tail” or “tusk” – variables – and confusing it with what the “elephant” actually is. As a result, we must be wary about information.

In turn, this means we need to be prudent about strategy, planning, and management and remain alert to new information that provides another piece of the puzzle. In short,strategy, planning, and management must be “tentative” and revised constantly as new information becomes available. They are an ongoing process.

Chaos Theory
Closely related to the concept of “complexity”, is “chaos theory.” Based on the insights of quantum physics, chaos theory argues the universe and everything in it is “self-organizing.”

In the end, events and persons sort themselves out, or as the Chinese Taoists teach, “water finds its own level.” We are, in short, too quick to intervene in human affairs instead of letting events reach their logical, natural conclusions on their own. Otherwise, we create artificial conditions that sooner or later must collapse, since they are artificial in the first place.

Strategy, planning, and management need to factor in “chaos theory” to avoid investing in “artificial” situations at home or in other countries. Let problems fix themselves. Then decide.


Information Overload, Complexity, and Chaos
Complexity, chaos theory, and information overload are concept trends that have a high probability of continuing to shape strategy, planning, and management now and in the immediate future.

The concepts of information overload, complexity, and chaos theory ought not to paralyze us. However, they ought to make us careful about what information we can trust, and how much we can impose our logic and wishful thinking on the world.

Strategy, planning,and management today must remain tentative.

We must systematically update them periodically (e.g., every six months).

We must remain alert for and open to new feedback to sharpen them.