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Thinking across different time horizons is a crucial skill for driving impact and sustainable value creation. We can choose our own perception of time to exercise our long-term thinking muscles, to bring our future vision into focus, and to spot opportunities.
Our expanding liminal present
Today, few can focus beyond the next news cycle. But looking farther into the future is necessary for survival. As the world will be radically transformed over the coming years, there is no alternative but to understand what key features to look out for, what fragments of the future are emerging today – sometimes prematurely and unannounced. Thinking across different time horizons provides an opportunity to explore these possibilities.
According to Zen Buddhism, neither the past nor the future exist – there is only nowness. But even so, truly experiencing the present is compatible with the future. Embracing nowness allows one to emerge with more clarity for the futures.
However, technology today is blurring the lines of the past, present, and future. With AI-negotiated legal contracts, bioprinted organs, and flying cars, is the present spilling prematurely into the future? Or is the future encroaching on the present with dystopian pandemics, climate-driven wildfires, and bad actors hacking military infrastructure?
In our UNknown, Volatile, Intersecting, Complex, and Exponential (UN-VICE) world, the lines between the present and future are becoming blurred. The liminal states between time periods are themselves growing, as present and future realities intersect. The choices we make today about how we will engage with the future intimately affect the present.
Why we miss inflection points
The future does not exist today, so we have the opportunity to imagine it, shape it, and navigate towards it. However, our current maps of the future are limited, so we need to develop early warning systems to identify inflection points before they arrive.
We miss inflection points for two contradictory reasons. We call this the “Inflection Paradox”:
- Amara’s Law: In the early stages, one may be tempted to dismiss overhyped emerging technology. Then, after the prolonged wait, we underestimate its long-term impacts.
- The shape of exponential change: Despite the noise, early developments are barely perceptible. Even explosive growth only becomes apparent after some time. Longer-term, we completely underestimate the dramatic effects of exponential change.
An Inflection Paradox describes these conflicting drivers and cognitive biases that contribute to missing inflection points.
Pace layers: The interplay of timescales
To gain strength from disruption is to have a system that can operate at different rates of change. Thinking in different timeframes allows an interplay between change and constant, stable and unstable, while sustaining through shocks.
Stewart Brand, founder of The Long Now Foundation and Global Business Network, developed the Pace Layer model to provide different levels of corrective feedback.
Brand proposes six layers, from slowest to fastest: Nature (planet), Culture (social, religion), Governance (rule of law, government), Infrastructure (transportation, communication systems, education, science), Commerce (business, industry), Fashion (art, creative, experimental).
In a healthy society, each layer operates at its own pace while respecting the others:
- Fast layers learn; slow layers remember.
- Fast layers propose; slow layers dispose.
- Fast layers absorb shocks; slow layers integrate shocks and ensure they don’t reoccur.
- Fast layers are discontinuous; slow layers are continuous.
- Fast layers innovate; slow layers constrain.
Innovation is a dialog between layers. The first moon landing in 1969 coincided with the first generation of microprocessors that enabled the use of computers in space – an example of the intersection between infrastructure and governance.
However, today’s innovations often create tomorrow’s challenges. Thomas Midgley Jr., one of the most respected engineers of his time, solved the problem of premature combustion in engines by adding lead to gasoline. He was also the father of modern refrigeration, inventing the freon gas used in fluorocarbon refrigerants. Both inventions were harmful to humans and the environment, and were later banned.
Fast-moving projects that solve immediate problems are exciting, but we need to think about the consequences.
Chronos and Kairos: Time concepts as a superpower
Thinking of time in decades instead of years allows you to zoom out to a long-term view, then zoom in to the present, to see how it fits into a broader, transformational longer-term vision. You can thus focus on two time horizons in parallel.
The agility to zoom in and the foresight to zoom out is a rare capability in our short-termist world. Here, you can benefit from both Chronos and Kairos, which are different concepts of time in ancient Greece. Chronos is the objective understanding of time passing; the chronological idea of time. Kairos is a nonlinear, dynamic, and subjective orientation of time; this represents a specific opportunity.
We must develop the agility to use both Chronos and Kairos to reconcile longer term visions with windows of opportunity. Imagining these futures with curiosity will help you see windows as they emerge. These windows may not last long, but Kairos offers the opportunity to anticipate the future at any time.
Agility to reconcile the long-term vision with the present
Figure 1: Both Short-Term & Long-Term Decision-Making Needed Simultaneously Today
Leadership roles must evolve as we reconcile different time horizons with decisions today. We imagine a role called Chief Bridging Officer (CBO) – defined by the agility to bridge the organization’s vision within constantly updating environments.
The CBO’s role is a journey of discovery, with the agility to constantly respond to changes in the external environment. They initiate needed changes with anticipatory vision, consistent with long-term aspirations. The agility of a CBO drives our preparations, mitigations, and our responses to the many possible emergencies that might arise.
The CBO builds and crosses bridges, including connecting present strategic imperatives and bets with long-term futures. We can thus proactively imagine possible futures and inform decision-making today.
Figure 2: In Comes the Chief Bridging Officer (CBO)
Long-term thinking for short-term opportunities
There are many benefits to living and breathing with longer time horizons in our UN-VICE world:
- Less competition: Most of the world tends to focus on the short term. Longer-term horizons allow a multiplier effect of small initial initiatives that grow over time.
- Easier to prioritize: Focus on relevant innovation and initiatives needed for the real transformations ahead, not short-term hype.
- Visioning: Imagine impossible futures with the audacity to make them possible.
As we bridge the present to the futures, leadership and governance roles must evolve. We need to enhance mental agility for extreme (but plausible) changes, while rewiring how our systems are programmed.
Reconciling short-term priorities with longer-term aspirations can be tricky where change is the norm. This requires us to build agile muscles for changing environments, which can represent major departures from the world we know. The purpose lies in preparation, not prediction.
About the author:
Roger Spitz is President of Techistential (Climate & Strategic Foresight), Chair of Disruptive Futures Institute in San Francisco, and expert adviser to the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network. His latest book is “Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World”.