Enno Däneke
Aligning future assessments together
Future assessments are always linked to uncertainty. Ultimately, you can only find out in hindsight whether your assessments of the future were correct. However, you can and should already have a clear picture today of your own assumptions about the future.
For you and your leadership team, a first step towards greater clarity looks like this. Take five minutes to write down the things that, in your view, are most important and will change in the market over the next five or ten years. Then note what, by contrast, will not change and will remain the same. Your team should follow the same steps.
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When you compare the results, you will usually find complete chaos. In most cases, entirely different assessments of the future emerge. And that is the rule, not the exception. Even leadership teams in successful and seemingly well-managed companies have this problem.
This raises the question of how you are supposed to lead your company into the future together in this way.
Figuratively speaking, how can you steer a ship if the entire officer crew has different assessments of where the wind is coming from? Under these conditions, it is almost impossible to set the sails correctly.
Therefore: you must systematically question your own assumptions, as I did a few years ago here using the example of electric mobility .
What happens next?
Once the results have been established, the real work begins. You need to question which topics are actually relevant and what your company’s business depends on.
Often, these are not very many topics. As a rule, there are only five to ten key questions on which your future existence and success depend. You and your company must address these systematically:
- What must stay the same for your business to be successful?
- Which changes threaten your business and could destroy it?
- Which technologies must prevail so that your past investments pay off?
If you face these questions, you will see where you are on the right track and where action is still needed. These questions will also help you avoid missing concrete opportunities.
Only if you face these key questions and engage with your own future assessments can you be sure of recognising both the dangers and the potential for your company’s future.
I wish you a bright future!
Have a bright future!