Think like a futurist for more responsible business

Richard Hardyment explains why planning for the future is the best strategy for the present.

Resource shortages. Declining trust in business. Climate change. Many issues on the corporate responsibility agenda are fundamentally long-term in nature. Yet time and time again, businesses plan on a quarterly or annual cycle and forget the future.

Thinking like a futurist can help businesses to become more commercially successful and responsible at the same time. But it’s not about reading the tea leaves and crystal ball gazing. Instead, there are a set of tools and techniques to help organisations manage uncertainty and prepare for change.

Futures techniques are particularly suited to corporate responsibility and sustainability for three reasons.

Firstly, businesses often find themselves tackling issues that are best understood over years and decades, not financial quarters. Most obviously, environmental issues such as water shortages, biodiversity loss and energy management require a long-term perspective. Reframing the question from “is this important today?” to “how might this affect us over the next decade?” can transform perceptions about the opportunities and risks facing an organisation.

The same could be said of regulatory issues (such as carbon pricing), new technologies (such as digital media enabling increased scrutiny) and changing societal expectations. Trust in business can crumble rapidly, but it takes years to build effectively.

Secondly, the future is not linear. We need to plan for the future precisely because it’s impossible to predict. A one in a thousand year earthquake and tsunami flooded a nuclear power station in Japan. That caused knock-on impacts and global soul searching over the safety of nuclear energy.

Such extreme events are called wildcards. They are impossible to predict, but not impossible to consider. Unexpected trends should be part of smart business planning. Shell has known this for decades. In the 1970s, their scenario planning considered what would happen if oil prices rocketed. When an oil embargo followed, they were able to react faster than their competitors.

The third area where futurists can help is innovation.  Consumer needs are not static but evolve over time. Imagining future possibilities is essential for effective R&D.

The growing popularity of ‘new business models’ in sustainability is about re-orienting the very functioning of the business. Imagining the future through visioning can help identify the winning combination of how to create value for both shareholders and stakeholders in the years ahead.

Stretching the timeframe can open up new opportunities. Techniques such as horizon scanning, scenario planning and visioning can help to manage uncertainty. In order for businesses to thrive in the twenty-first century, we may require more people to think like a futurist.

Richard Hardyment is an Associate Director at Corporate Citizenship and leads work on research and futures.