Sanders’ Impact on the Dow Jones a Reminder to “Think Conditions”
When Bernie Sanders dropped out of the American Presidential race, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 3.44%. It’s a good reminder to “think conditions”: create teams of watchers and listeners who can monitor the immediate and emergent factors that impact us. Because, friends, these conditions impact us whether we realize it or not.
Why would Sanders’ exit impact the stock market in this way? Maybe it’s obvious; maybe it’s not. Al-Jahzeera’s assessment is probably spot on: it’s “because many investors worried taxes would rise in a Sanders administration. Wall Street considers Joe Biden to be a more market-friendly candidate.”
Makes sense, yes? Joe Biden’s new status as the Democratic Party’s only hope is having a fairly predictable impact on the global markets. As part of an organization that is dedicated to “thinking conditions”, we note this development. It gets logged into a map of interrelated immediate and emergent conditions that paint an evolving picture of the future.
The thing about monitoring conditions is that anybody can do it, really. It’s mostly not rocket science. But the question is: does your organization do it? Do you have a specific system or dedicated personnel for “thinking conditions”?
Today, we’re sharing another short passage from Disrupted: Strategy for Exponential Change, a book we wrote back in 2015. This one focuses on what cultivating a culture of thinking conditions did for an organization we once worked with.
Like many organizations (the majority?), their thinking was fairly focused on what was most immediate. They dealt with day-in-day-out business to the best of their ability. And when it came time to determining their strategic direction, they had a hard time getting on the same page.
After all, we all tend to be attuned to different things, aren’t we? One team member might be a political junkie. Another might be learning about technology. Another gathering new insights about culture, society, demography.
Will those team members agree on what’s important, on what will have a direct impact on the fortunes of their organization? Potentially not.
But if they become co-creators of a culture of thinking conditions, they will all have access to the same rich, multi-layered context for making decisions. In this mode, their differences will be their strengths.
Right now, Resilient Futures is working on creating an even more robust and systemized team of conditions watchers than we usually work with. We’re calling this project Conditions Watch: CVD19 Horizons. It’s a work in progress. But we know it will be a team of individuals each doing their part to collect information about the conditions defining this historical moment.
If you want to be on a team that collectively sees further and understands more, reach out. We’d love to hear from you.
Larry and David
Creating a Culture of Thinking Conditions
When Abby Harris first started as the CEO of an alternative fuel industry association, she gave them six months. If they couldn’t create a reasonable strategic plan together in that timeframe, she’d be on her way. The association had not had a CEO in place for half a year. Their board and leadership were at frequent odds over strategic direction. They didn’t seem to have a relevant or clear value proposition. As Harris puts it, “They just weren’t having a sophisticated conversation about strategy.”
Harris was introduced to Resilient Futures some years earlier, and what she’d learned about SiA stuck with her. So when she began the tough work of pushing her association out of its malaise, she called. Five months of stakeholder interviews and information-gathering later, we sat down with the Board. Based on the rich overview the conditions analysis provided, the true value proposition of the association suddenly seemed starkly self-evident—and it was very different from the one everyone had been talking about.
What this team realized was that they had been neglecting to take the pulse of macro conditions, which happened to be exerting a considerable influence on their state of affairs. Political shifts and policy developments on the horizon were crying out for their attention. They had been arguing about their association when they needed to have a conversation about their industry. As a result of their newfound clarity, they swiftly identified key projects for the coming year. Even though these projects required additional funding, they easily secured the money from their funders because they were able to demonstrate credible evidence supporting the value they realized they could generate for stakeholders.
“Thinking Conditions” gave the association new momentum and allowed them to create a new culture. When policy changes came down the pipeline they met them with a purposeful and prepared attitude. As Harris puts it, “Suddenly, they had a reason why.”
If there is much that you don’t know, don’t see, and don’t understand, you run a high risk of running off-course and inflicting grievous discontinuity on yourself. What are you supposed to do about that exposure? How can you safeguard yourself against self-imposed ignorance and shortsightedness? Even if you learn to pay better attention to immediate and emergent conditions, how can you possibly stay on top of all there is to know in this disruptive age of complex and exponentially accelerating changes?
The first thing you need to know is that you can’t go it alone. A conventional environmental scan relegated to the executive office won’t cut muster. You need a team—as big and diverse a team as you can harness, both within and extending outside of your organization. A team of listeners, watchers, and thinkers. Many minds make light work. In organizations that practice SiA, there is a culture of “thinking conditions.” These teams are accustomed to monitoring immediate and emergent conditions at scale and sharing what they know so that they can collectively reduce their “unknown unknowns”.
Pause and Consider: How many people from diverse backgrounds are involved with discussions about conditions or strategy in your organization?
In Resilient Futures we have a saying that reinforces the power of an array of listening posts feeding back information: “The network always knows, and if it doesn’t, there’s something wrong with your network.” In today’s informed and connected world, there is someone, somewhere, who knows what you need to know. And given our reality of “three degrees of separation”, they aren’t hard to find.
Beyond seeing further and learning more, teams who map conditions together also develop a shared context for decision-making. A group of people who have “seen the light” together are much more likely to achieve consensus, design strategies, and execute initiatives that inspire all team members equally. This team argues less but communicates more. Groupthink gives way to dialogue.
We see evidence that an organization has developed a culture of conditions and a shared context for decision-making when we start to observe team members asking each other questions like: “Do we have anybody in our network who could help us to make a better decision?” Or: “Are there any emergent conditions that could impact the action we’re thinking about taking?”
It is a powerful thing to behold.
A Series of Insights from Disrupted, the Book
Written in 2015, Disrupted was, and still is, both a book ahead of its time, and a timely guide for those committed to understanding and addressing the complexity of disruptive change, preparing for disruption, and critically, leveraging disruption to generate sustainable value.
This series of articles are extracts — some with comment from the authors — from the book and are intended to highlight some of the key concepts captured in Disrupted.
A must read (if) you want to understand the world of today and tomorrow, and look forward to the future rather than fearing it.
- Phil Ruthven, Founder, IBISWorld
To find out more visit: www.resilientfutures.com/disrupted
