Ask Sanyin: How Do You Build for an Unpredictable Future?

While the pandemic was a wild ride of uncertainty for me and many of my peers in leadership, it feels like we never regained our footing. Now, we are being hit with events in our industry that we never anticipated, plus a huge wave of hype around new technologies. How can I ground my thinking as we go into another strategic planning cycle with so many unknowns?

So many of us were blindsided five years ago by the global pandemic, which brought home the fact that you can’t predict the future. It’s not only uncertainty that has increased, but also the pace of change sure has — and that makes it hard to get your bearings while also adding more variables to consider. So first, acknowledge that as a leader, you get to live in uncomfortable places that are never going to get comfortable. Uncertainty about the future is one of those places, and you will be a better leader for admitting the limits of your knowledge — and the limits of risk management and probabilistic thinking.

Lean into horizon-scanning and sensemaking practices and consider how to prepare for events and opportunities that may arise. Double down on the people in your organization and empower them to share their perspectives.

The higher up you are in an organization, the more filtered the information that reaches you. You must create ways to hear from employees.

Several of the CEOs I’ve worked with send out a regular email across the organization, and they include a well-framed prompt to invite employees to share their thoughts. Here’s where you can explicitly ask people to tell you something you don’t know but they think you should. Expressing humility and giving people permission to tell you something creates a safe environment for employees to respond with their perspectives, while reinforcing shared ownership in the company’s success.

Other leaders have also incorporated a regular meal meetup with new employees and those from different levels and areas of the organizations. These rituals of breaking bread together break down walls and allow participants to spend time getting to know each other as human beings. Leaders should use such events as an opportunity to probe for employees’ feedback on strategic direction, customer segments that may be underserved, or opportunities that could be pursued.

Another practice that can help shake up thinking and stimulate people’s imaginations about possible futures is a red-teaming exercise. One company I’ve worked with did this when it was at the top of its industry, understanding that to build for the unpredictable future, it had to imagine how it might be disrupted. It created a team of 12 executives of different ranks and tenures, drawn from strategy, marketing, tech, and finance areas, and gave them two months to imagine a company that could beat them in the market in 10 years. Unencumbered by their company’s assumptions, legacies, and ways of working, the team had the freedom to think creatively. The work yielded insight into possible future risks and opportunities — and after five years, most of those had materialized.

Finally, remember that your goal here is not to get comfortable with uncertainty, nor are you trying to turn the unknown into the known. Your aim is to imagine the possible — and then go create it with your team.

In this short follow-up video, MIT SMR columnist Sanyin Siang shares her insights and advice on how to coach your team through uncertain times.