The phrase “Lead From The Future” has appeared in my social feeds recently partly due to the 2020 publication “Lead From The Future: How To Turn Visionary Thinking Into Breakthrough Growth” by Mark Johnson and Josh Suskewicz, which is getting some air play.

I find it interesting because I explored re-envisioning and the practice of back-casting initially in my 2010 publication “Balanced Diversity: A Portfolio Approach to Organisational Change” which I revised in 2020.

Therefore, I thought I would do so again in this newsletter.

Present forward

In an interview with Kevin Kruse, Mark Johnson describes the difference between present-forward thinking and future-back.

“Present-forward leaders build their organizations in increments, following the rules and procedures that work today. Future-back leaders, in contrast, visualize what their organizations could be, starting from a clean sheet, and then mobilize whatever they need in order to bring it into being. Future-back thinking doesn’t replace present-forward thinking—it complements and completes it.”

With the pace of change today, many leaders are stuck in the here and now just trying to keep the lights on. They are reacting to change rather than anticipating it.

They must envision the future and look out five to ten years or more. This means looking beyond the present and is summed up by the phrase “What got you here won’t get you there.”

Present-forward thinking is driven by what we know, facts and figures. Future-back gets rid of these constraints to our thinking makes assumptions to discover what could be.

The greatest example of future-back thinking must be Steve Jobs and Apple. What is now folklore serves to illustrate how Jobs using future-back thinking to transform Apple. It is best described by Johnson and Suskewicz in their future back approach article.

“The classic example of this process is the transformation that Apple undertook in the early 2000s. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the home computer was becoming commoditized. Looking out to 2010, he imagined the role that the microprocessor and Apple could play in that different environment. Instead of commodity tools, Apple computers could become the enabling hubs of the whole array of digital devices that were just coming onto the market—still and movie cameras, music players, and more. In rapid succession, Apple released iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iTunes and more. Then they went a step further and developed and introduced a suite of devices of their own: the iPod and then the iPhone and the iPad, transforming Apple into a music company, a camera company, a phone company, a lifestyle company, and even a bricks-and-mortar retailer along the way—and the most valuable company of any kind in the world.”

Inflection points

The concept of a strategic inflection point was introduced by Andy Grove in the early 1990s when he was CEO of Intel. At that time the Intel business was failing in the computer memory chip business. After years of success in an industry that it had virtually created, Intel was losing ground to low-cost Japanese manufacturers, market share had fallen from 60% to 35%. Andy used a strategic inflection point to inform his future-back vision and strategy.

Intel’s inflection point was the realisation that they needed to get out of the computer memory chip business and into the micro-processor business.

An inflection point is a point in the life of the business when its fundamentals are changing. A point at which it can no longer continue doing what it’s doing and expect to survive.

It is a change in the business landscape that throws previously taken-for-granted assumptions into question. Someone in your organisation sees the implications of what could happen and hopefully they are heard. Not seeing the potential inflection points could be the death of the organisation. Think Kodak, Blockbuster, Nokia, and Blackberry

Another example of an inflection point was the decline of the American railroad industry as it failed to respond to the growing competition of air travel, automobiles, and other forms of transport.

Shell is a great example of a company responding to inflection points. Shell went from a London antique shop to one of the largest and innovative energy companies in the world.

Culture

Future-back thinking is not reserved for the C-suite. Future-back thinking should be core to the culture of the organisation.

This is about developing a learning culture and one in which everyone in the organisation asks probing questions and challenges the status quo. One in which anyone can predict an inflection point and call out the implications to the organisation.

A great example of this shift comes from Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO who drove the large-scale culture transformation at the company from one of “know-it-alls” to one of “learn-it-alls.” He instilled the concept of having a growth mindset into every part of the organisation.

Recognise employees who demonstrate an aptitude for future-back thinking. Use positive-reinforce to encourage behaviours you want to see more of such as innovation, creativity, critical thinking, and challenging the status quo.

Encourage everyone, by modelling behaviours, to see beyond the immediate problem in front of them to seek solutions, opportunities, and undiscovered possibilities that have never been considered.

Back-casting

As mentioned earlier, I explored the concept of back-casting in my first publication. Back-casting is to forecasting what future-back is to present-forward.

The process of back-casting envisions a different future and then identifies the actions or milestones to get there.

It is a reverse engineering approach. Backcasting starts with the end in mind.

The broad steps are:

• Determine how far into the future you are looking e.g., 5,10 or 15 years etc.

• Imagine one or more ideal future states or different possibilities

• For each ideal future state work backwards to figure out what is needed to get to the ideal state from the current state

• For each ideal future state repeatedly ask the question “What assumptions and actions must we take to get to the ideal state?”

• Capture the results using charts, maps, action lists or photographs

• Use the results in strategic planning sessions

A more detailed process is described in this article.

Vision to strategy

A vision of future state(s) is all well and good, but it is just a vision if not converted into strategy. There must be a tangible, actionable, and concrete plan in place to achieve the desired future state.

Mark Johnson and Josh Suskewicz suggest filling and balancing three linked and interdependent portfolios.

Future state portfolio: a financial projection of the enterprise at the target end date, in which the high-level assertions about the future business are translated into dollars.

Innovation portfolio: a set of planned projects or initiatives, prioritised for the next one to three years that reflect the future state portfolio.

Investment portfolio: specifies the resources (in both dollars and people) that will be needed to fund the innovation portfolio.

Armed with these three portfolios, there is now a strategy that connects the vision of the future to a concrete plan to thrive in it.

Summary

When change is happening at the pace it is, organisations cannot rely on present-forward thinking alone. They need to utilise future-back thinking and not rely on the way in which they have always done things. They must think about the strategic inflections and disrupt rather than be disrupted.

Present Forward or Future Back?