Here’s a question I like to ask my consulting clients. When you make business changes, are they coming at you from the outside in or inside out? At first, it seems like a trick question, but there is some good logic behind it. Your answer can reveal a lot about your preparedness for the future. In other words, whether you’re anticipatory or reactionary.
In my experience working with top leaders from business, healthcare, government and education on five continents over the past 30 years, I have found that the majority of change comes from the outside in. The list of examples is long:
- When a new law is passed, you have to make changes in order to comply with it.
- When a new competitor comes into town offering lower prices, you probably have to change some aspect of how you do business to compete.
- If you’re in charge and you change the corporate strategy, you may notice your employees scramble to react.
- When a new technology comes out that changes customer behavior, you’ll most likely request that your IT department get the new products in order to keep up with the accelerating changes.
Change from the outside in can affect our personal lives as well. For example, when gas prices go up, you may be inclined to change your spending and/or driving habits in order to even things out. If you or your spouse are laid off, your daily focus shifts to finding work.
The truth is, most of us are being conditioned to make changes based on outside factors. For example, when the stock market goes down, people often sell, and when it goes up, they buy.
That’s what concerns me about outside-in changes. Whenever change comes from the outside, we are forced to react to it. Rather than being proactive, we find ourselves constantly putting out fires and managing the latest crisis.
Crises Come from the Outside In
This is such a common problem that probably a hundred business books have been written about it – and that’s a modest estimate. Most of those books will tell you that the key to a successful future is the ability to be agile. In other words, they say, you need to react fast!
Reacting fast to external change is good, but using agility as your main strategy tends to keep you locked in a crisis management mode. When you spend most of your time putting out fires, day after day, month after month, year after year, the future tends to unfold in an uncontrollable and often less desirable way.
n other articles, I have sometimes referred to agility as a pivot. Using my examples at the top of this article:
- When the competition launches a new product, you react quickly and decisively to combat it;
- When a new IT technology becomes available, you buy it in order to change business conditions; and
- When a law takes effect, you factor it into your day to day – but it’s almost always after the fact.
Think of it this way: In basketball, a pivot requires you to keep one foot planted and is a maneuver that stops forward motion.
Opportunity Comes from the Inside Out
Instead, let’s look at some of the most powerful new products. Did the crowdsourcing disruptor Kickstarter become a dominant force because it was agile? Was agility the driving force in Facebook’s dominance in social media? Of course not.
One reason for Facebook’s unprecedented success is that it picked up where the limitations of other platforms like MySpace left off. In the case of Kickstarter, the developers took a popular altruistic concept – used by Caring Bridge and others – and applied it to entrepreneurship. I sometimes call this approach to innovating a new business going in the opposite direction.
Gaining Control of Your Future
Inside-out thinking is part of what it means to be anticipatory, which is a mindset I describe in my latest book, the Anticipatory Organization now available on Amazon.com. One of the salient principles of the Anticipatory Organization system is the Hard Trend Methodology.
Think about the Hard Trends that are important to you and your organization. Think about the problems and opportunities that derive from those Hard Trends. What can you do now to not only presolve those problems before they become genuinely disruptive but also leverage those Hard Trends into game-changing opportunities that you can identify and manage?
For instance, one clearly defined Hard Trend is that there will be greater government regulation in the future, not less. For many, that’s merely a headache that has to be endured. By contrast, given that greater regulation is a certainty, what opportunities derive from that? They’re certainly going to be there, whether you like it or not.
By using strategies such as Hard Trends (those things we know for certain are going to occur) and Soft Trends (those that may occur but are open to influence), you can anticipate the future. And from there, you can plan accordingly. That’s a dynamic force that moves from the inside out, rather than just outside in.
I would argue that the only way to positively influence your future is to drive some of the change from the inside out. This is true for both organizations and individuals.
5 Tips for Thinking Inside Out
It is essential to spend at least a small portion of time thinking about your future in an opportunity mode. To do this, you have to realize that there will always be fires to put out, but putting out fires will not move you forward in a well thought out way.
- Build thinking time into your schedule. Try spending a minimum of one hour a week unplugging from the present crisis and plugging into future opportunity.
- Find certainty in chaos. Instead of feeling blocked by all the things you are uncertain about in your work and life, ask yourself: What am I certain about? Those are the Hard Trends.
- Be anticipatory. Based on Hard Trends, think through these key questions: What is sure to happen in the next two to three years? What problems will your company be facing? What problems will your customers be facing (and how can you address those pain points)?
- Dream a little. Another good question to ask is: What is my ideal future? What are the steps to get there – whether it’s a business goal or a retirement dream? Or it could be a bit of both.
- Put ideas into motion. Once you are clear on your vision and have identified the Hard Trends that will impact you, spend some of your opportunity time solving problems before they happen.
That’s the crux of inside-out thinking; you get to ask yourself what steps you can take to shape the future now – not later.
The reality is, there will still be more fires to put out tomorrow and the day after. Build the opportunity hour into your calendar now. If you don’t, the future you end up with might not be the one you would have wanted.
An Example of Inside-Out Anticipation
Let’s say your organization is highly regulated by the government. When you’re anticipatory, you’re constantly on the lookout for new laws that will impact your business. You routinely monitor new legislation and learn about a bill that will affect your company’s tax structure. It seems likely to pass, so you get to work with your attorneys to restructure your employee benefits plan accordingly.
The bill becomes law and your organization is already set to leverage the new rules. Because you are ahead of the game, you find ways to not just adhere to the new guidelines but turn them into an opportunity. By contrast, other organizations also affected by the legislation are forced to scramble after the fact.
This example illustrates how being anticipatory can presolve a problem before it really becomes a major headache.
The level of pervasive disruption that you need comes from the inside out (making the first move) rather than the outside in (moving in response to something). What events and developments can you anticipate by using your inside-out thinking?
If you need help getting started, try my Hard Trend Methodology, which is the mindset I describe in my latest book, The Anticipatory Organization: Turn Disruption and Change into Opportunity and Advantage.
Byline: Daniel Burrus is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and innovation experts. He is the CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advances in technology driven trends to help clients profit from technological, social and business forces that are converging to create enormous, untapped opportunities.
He is a strategic advisor to executives helping them to develop game-changing strategies based on his proven methodologies for capitalizing on technology innovations. He is the author of seven books, including The New York Times bestseller Flash Foresight, and his latest book The Anticipatory Organization.
To Order FREE book: Visit https://www.anticipatoryorganization.com/get-the-book
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