Francis Wade | Three horizons for strategic thinking

You are a proponent of long-term thinking in your company. However, recently you’ve grown cautious since you’re the only one consistently bringing up this viewpoint. What approaches can be taken to convince others to think more strategically?

To start with, you know you need to do something to escape some awkward but visionary moments. For example, you are in a meeting, and highlight a future your colleagues can’t see. The delayed consequences are obvious.

Unfortunately, they don’t know what you are talking about. Focused on solving urgent problems, they lack any extra energy to consider a long-term, strategic point of view. Instead, they go for the quick dopamine hit of immediate resolution.

However, afterwards, deep down, you realise that nothing fundamental was discussed. It was all just icing on a cake whose recipe remains unchanged and unquestioned.

Is there a fresh perspective that could engage your team? In this column, I recommend you use the Three Horizons Framework by Curry, Hodgson and Sharpe.

How Immediate Offers Decay – Horizon 1: Whether your organisation is a for-profit, non-profit, NGO, government agency, church or an informal club, it exists to provide value. In other words, there are customers or beneficiaries who have unmet needs which the organisation is trying its best to meet. To this end, it has crafted audience-specific offers – products and services – which meet its unique mission.

Consider the idea that every day brings you closer to a time when your offers become obsolete. Past this moment, they’ll simply no longer be needed.

Take the example of photography. Up until the 2000s, Kodak and Fuji sold billions of dollars of film in stores worldwide. But today, the average consumer has no interest.

Hopefully, you don’t believe your offers are immortal. Instead, they follow a demand curve which decays.

Behind this chart, there lurks a hard nugget of truth. The only question is, how much longer will your strategic fit endure?

As a proponent of long-term thinking, this probably isn’t a new idea. It could be part of the message you have already been sharing.

But what should companies do about this fact of business life?

Faint Signals – Horizon 3: A possible strategy is to be mindful of faint signals in today’s experiences that may foreshadow the future. They are present in emerging technology, evolving customer requirements, expanding government regulations, environmental shifts, and various other sectors.

As such, they don’t become visible without an effort. But when they are seen together, they can offer a narrative about the future. In other words, your company’s leaders can use them to describe scenarios around a chosen year. When combined, they define a third horizon as shown below.

Once again, it’s possible to turn a blind eye to these disruptors. The sad fact is, most companies do so by failing to plan far enough into the future to take them into account.

It’s a bit like a company founder who, at an elderly age, refuses to craft a succession plan or a will. It’s just plain reckless. And selfish.

To avoid this trap, encourage your team to do more than act like spectators at a sporting event. Instead, consider the outcomes of Horizon 3 to be within your organisation’s realm of influence.

For example, your leaders could be the creators of a new category which accelerates the advent of new Horizon 3 offers. To do so effectively, you will need to add another perspective.

Transitioning to the Future – Horizon 2: In order to make the jump from old to new offers over the long-term, there must be a zone of transition.

These are offers which may not embody the ultimate outcome you envision, but are intended to act as a bridge.

But how are they crafted? The best place to do so is in your strategic planning retreat, when all functions are represented and engaged. This occasion is ideal for the kind of hard thinking required.

As I have mentioned in prior columns, these questions are difficult to answer. Unfortunately, most C-suiters are not equipped to tackle them. Instead, they need help to use future-based language to connect present realities with future plans.

When they do this job well, the result is a plan which implements long-term imperatives immediately, as shown in the combined diagram on this page.

As such, a company which fails to confront futures beyond the next three to five years is leaving itself open to destruction.

Use the Three Horizons Framework to help convince your colleagues that long-term thinking is an essential job for leaders who care.

Francis Wade is a management consultant and author of Perfect Time-Based Productivity. To search past columns on productivity, strategy and business processes, or give feedback, email: columns@fwconsulting.com