unimagined futures

Developing a work approach that is adequate to the challenges ahead
a world moving toward new and different futureS

Foundations for future directed decisions

FoundationS for future directed decisions are part of a life-management or life-navigation system. These foundations set our outer limits.

Future directed decisions: For decisions to be effective, they need to be effective in the time yet to unfold—in other words decisions need to work in the future rather than the past—the time spans with which we are most familiar. This is not about future decisions (decisions we plan to make in the future), but about the futurity of present decisions.

Also see time spans.

A link to an exploration of the futurity of present decisions would be appropriate here (Google: drucker futurity decisions).

Foundations are the information bases and social terrain awareness upon which future directed decisions rest. Different decisions areas require different familiarities. Our foundations create or shape our expectations for the future. These foundations come from time investments. The adequacy of an attempt to do one's "homework" on a topic depends on the adequacy of the foundation.

Together the ideas above form a Future Directed Decision Foundation (FDDF) or a Foundation for Future Directed Decisions (FFDD).

Our foundation is part of our mental terrain and it develops along our life lines . Our foundations are the totality of our active mental radars. Things that have slipped off our radar are not part of our functioning foundation—a structured note-taking system may be helpful. Creating foundations requires time investments.

About the future: Peter Drucker wrote (in different places):

The future is unknown and unknowable. Also it will be different from what we now expect.

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

The future that has already happened

Management guru was always a step ahead (a book review of The Definitive Drucker that appeared in the Boston Globe) contained the following:

"Management in the 21st century faces fundamental changes in the size and scope of opportunities," he said …

The result is a book that lays out paths for managers to navigate the silent revolution that took place on five fronts—greater velocity of information, exploding geographic reach, changing demographics, increased customer control, and fluid definition of a company. To succeed today, Drucker and Edersheim note the critical importance of looking at tomorrow while focusing on customers, innovating, building collaboration, investing in workers, and setting disciplines for decision-making …

Writing in the Harvard Business Review in 1988, he said management "has created a global economy and set new rules for countries that would participate in that economy as equal. And it has itself been transformed."

Today's major economic problem is overcapacity in most of the world's industries. Customers are scarce, not products. Demand, not supply, is the problem. Overcapacity leads to hyper competition, with too many goods chasing too few customers. And most goods and services lack differentiation—read more—Philip Kotler.

What follows are some examples of topics that may be relevant to an individual—they are certainly relevant to organizations. Geographic location and "life style" ambition may be the major influencing factors in determining the degree of relevance. Ambition is surely influenced by the "roads" our brains have explored and the sequence of that exploration. Possibly the ultimate expression of this ambition lies in what we want to be remembered for—see Josh Abram and self-development summary.

What's on my radar? (an information system)

An interview with Peter Drucker: Reviving the Moral Sciences
My Life as a Knowledge Worker
Peter's Principles
Managing Oneself

Toward unimagined futures

About change

A world moving in time

The Management Revolution

A work approach that is adequate to the challenges ahead

Information Challenges (an organizing principle for work)

In the news: Selected titles and notes; News stories (older); my TLN blog; and today's NYT technology headlines (views of changes in the strategic landscape—many are examples of unimagined futures)

The Effective Executive

Conceptual resources or HTML book list

Thinking :: Edward de Bono: I am Right, You are Wrong; Water Logic; mental patterns; life lines

Happiness purpose

A Century of Social Transformation

Economic environment

The X-economy—Peter Drucker on The X-Economy

Toward tomorrows

Managing in the Next Society (2002); Last section published earlier in The Economist

Management Challenges for the 21st Century (1999)

Post-capitalist Society (1993)

The New Realities (1988)

The Age of Discontinuity (1968)

Population changes

Global and national priorities

Major areas of future growth (Education and health care)

Free tools: Career evolution; organization evolution; life design navigation system (LNS); financial investing

Time-life Navigation © (TLN) key ideas

Exploration system blueprint

Selected TLN Article Titles, Clippings, Notes and Outlines

Change examples in the news

Intel map

Thinking canvases

More …?

The entire contents of this TLN site can be viewed as a foundation for future directed decisions

Keywords: bekwfffdd bekwfoundations

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See conceptual resource book list for a categoried list of book outlines and conceptual resources for a usage methodology.

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