How can professionals today anticipate the future, even when it is uncertain?

Bill Sheridan, the host of the Business Learning Institute Future-Proof podcast interviews Amy about the advantages of learning the mindsets and skill of anticipation.

Discussion topics included: what is anticipation; dealing with the current rate of change in the business environment, and future issues for risk and accounting professionals.

 

What is anticipation?

Anticipation has two parts, one of which is often blocked off. One [part] has to do with knowing in advance, thinking in advance about what might happen, and the second … is preparing for change.

We—collectively—the managerial elite are really good at the first part. We’re good at looking at trends. We enjoy that. It’s exciting. It’s frightening. It’s, you know, it gives us a bit of a rush.

Preparing is harder. It’s dull, it’s unsexy. It may require meetings.  It makes people do things differently.

So, anticipation has two parts … it is a mindset and it is a skill. It begins with an understanding, a grasp of change. [Change in systems]  doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from different developments intersecting. So once somebody grasps …  the idea that change comes from different factors, colliding and meeting in different ways, then we start to have the seeds of the mindset ….

 

 

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Read more about what leaders should know when they anticipate the future: Anticipation and Leadership in the Black Swan Age