Assuming that Tomorrow is like Today is Probably Wrong

Whether you are a Quality Professional, an auditor, part of top management or a business owner, then this topic will certainly interest you.

To ensure that the Quality Profession is properly represented across the world, The Chartered Quality Institute (CQI) encourages branches to operate everywhere in the world. Those branches are run by group of volunteers under a policy set by the CQI. And I am a proud volunteer of the London Branch working alongside 8 other passionate quality professionals in different industries such as construction, travel, software development, healthcare and railway.

Thursday, October 12th was the very first event the branch puts together. The topic was “Scenario Planning – Future Thinking” presented by Huw Williams from Sami Consulting.

The topic was very thought provoking and certainly left us all thinking. Here are some questions, mega trends, and tools you can take back to your business to consider while setting your strategy.

As presented by Sami Consulting there are 6 mega trends to consider:

• Demographics
• Inequality
• Climate change
• 4th Industrial Revolution
• Generational Differences
• Health & Technology 

Each one of them plays an important role in how the world is changing. You can decide that one is more impactful than the other, you can also say that one is totally not true or irrelevant to your day to day job. I will leave that decision to you, but I want to get you thinking of those mega trends.

In a world where political changes are impacting our daily life: Trump’s presidency, Brexit, Catalon’s independence can you really plan for the future basing everything in the given of today?

In a world where Gen Z has a completely different approach to life where a job for life is no more, how will you utilise their engagement?

When artificial intelligence is taking over, will Quality Professionals still have a job? Will ethics get overlooked at some point?

When you get old, would you rather get cleaned by a robot or by another human?

All of these are questions that were asked and discussed in a very interesting approach that got all attendees to think. Huw continued to explain how having a policy for future thinking is very important. Organisations must consider 3 horizons while doing so. The path to forecasting is based on the approach that tomorrow will remain the same. In the speed of changes in our world, there are multiple paths to forecasting, and they are all based on scenarios.

All of these questions rang so true with me. I work for a global company that delivers employee support services. Offerings include counseling, child care, elder care, and wellbeing services. We hold annual conferences in our head offices in the US. Planning one year in advance and getting all logistics sorted would have been a problem when the travel ban took place after Trump got elected. Another example is the way we deliver counselling support. Telephonic support remains the highest channel, but the trend of people trying to access the service is increasingly take place via instant messaging. If we also consider the generational differences, nowadays very few people speak on the phone. Almost everyone is more comfortable just texting. This makes the young generation more comfortable accessing the service via a messaging service rather than picking up the phone and speaking to someone. All of these are direct examples of the mega trends that Huw was talking about that I was able to relate to my work. The question is: how will the top management consider all of these elements in the strategic planning? They will no doubt impact objectives, budgets, and any new products and services the company will look into exploring.

If you want to keep up to date with events held in London, follow The CQI on twitter @QualityWorld or search #CQILondon.

You will find the link to the slide share provided by Sami Consulting below.