What’s that got to do with the price of petrol?

Andrew W asked me the other day about what it is like to live in Dubai as a futurist.  I’ll answer that question in another post but it’s interesting to see the local petrol prices.  In Australia, they are nearing AUD 1.50 per litre in comparison to the equivalent prices internationally of around AUD1.85 in France, AUD 1.95 in the UK and a measly 95 cents / litre in the US (I spent some time researching and doing currency conversions!).  This is about on par with a few years back when we took a round the world trip and noticed that petrol prices in the states were about 2/3 of those in Australia and in Europe it was about a third more or twice that of the Yankees.

But all of this pales in comparison to the UAE.  Over here, petrol prices are about 45 cents a litre.  When I first started driving in 1981, petrol was 34 cents a litre!  Last weekend, it cost me about $17 (51 dirhams) to fill up the Yaris with 8 gallons or about 36 litres of fuel. 

Now this means that there is no real desire for people to think sustainably when they purchase a vehicle over here.  I have not seen one Prius although I have seen lots of Hummers, SUVs and 4WDs.  There is no local tax on fuel and very few shipping costs.  For the locals, they could say that it is their resource and they want to maximise the economic benefits from their use of it.  But given the relative wealth of the locals, it does breed a culture of not caring about the sustainability issues associated with personal resource use.  And there is hardly any public transport here – a few buses and the commissioning of a new rail line tracking the main road.

Over-consumption in Western Society - About Stuff

Saw a great video recently featuring Annie Leonard on “The Story of Stuff“.  It illustrates in just 20 short minutes the problems associated with the linear economic process we have in place in today’s society that is resulting in environmental degradation, a spiritual vacuum, and the treadmill of overconsumption.  It’s like reading Clime Hamilton’s Affluenza but viewing it instead as a simple story featuring systems thinking that is great for kids and adults alike.

Wonderful how these new Internet tools are so easily available and how simple stories can be constructed that are highly motivating.  A must for anyone with children - switch off the TV and spend half an hour around the computer screen watching this as a family and then discussing what you could do to make a little bit of difference.

5 Pathways to Organisational Renewal

Just doing some packing up of various papers on my desk (not quite like a bomb has hit it but fairly close) and came across a little schematic that I did while at the AusForesight conference this year. So here are my 5 pathways to organisational renewal. 

An organisations can adopt one of many of these pathways (preferably multiple) to achieve positive change.  For those who are regular readers of this blog, you will not be surprised that two of the 5 points of the star are foresight and knowledge management.  Also listed are innovation (buzzword of the decade), leadership (buzzword of the past 30 years) and systems thinking (buzzword of the next decade!).  Taking any of these pathways in a whole-hearted and meaningful manner will take an organisation down the path of organisational renewal.  Adopting more than one of these at a time will enable a greater potential for success.  I’ve taken the number 5 from a book that I have been reading for the past couple of months called “The 5 Literacies of Global Leadership” by Richard Hames (more on this excellent book later).  That my 5 are in a star shaped pattern and some are more closely linked to others is just a coincidence - there is no grand plan with where they are located on the star - it’s just how they happened to be situated in a moment of inspiration during the conference.

Rudd’s future focus the key

The above headline is taken from the Fin Review today on page 8 with an article by David Crowe.  He quotes the ALP national secretary and campaign manager, Tim Gartrell, as nominating Kevin Rudd’s positive message about the future as the single biggest factor that secured the change in federal government.  In comparison, the Howard government was trapped going over the past and lost touch with people in key electorates. 

Perhaps someone read my last post on our “future” Prime Minister. 

The Condom as a Metaphor for Foresight

Last week, I attended the Ausforesight 2007 conference for practitioners up in Sydney.  Great to see a lot of the old and new hands intermixing.  Some wonderful messages and learnings came out which I plan to post about later.

But one interesting snippet came from Marcus Barber (renowned for coming up with some wacky and brilliant ideas).  Who else would title their presentation “From Foresight Foreplay to Corporate Consummation“?  I would!! 

But before their presentation in the workshop prior to theirs that I was co-facilitating, we were wondering what would make a good metaphor for foresight.  Pens, watches, diaries all came to mind initially until the humble condom came into the picture.  What a great metaphor for foresight!!!  Be prepared - as you never know if you might get lucky.  I got excited by that and thought that I would expand on that a bit more (excuse the pun).

Futurists often talk about different types of futures, to which the condom fits like a glove - or well, like a condom.  Possible futures embrace the most alternatives and you certainly might want a condom in a possible future.  One would hope that it is also a plausible future.  The narrow scope of the probable future depends somewhat on one’s sexual pulling power but it is most powerfully in one’s own preferred future that the metaphor of the condom as a symbol of foresight is strongest.

The other aspect of the symbology of the condom is in relation to why people should consider foresight. There are ultimately three levels here to which the condom fits most exquisitely.  Most people initially think about the future where something needs to be prevented or where risks need to be managed carefully.  The condom is a great metaphor here to overcome the fear/risk of STDs or unwanted pregnancy.  The second meta-level is more anticipatory, where the future is more open, challenging and full of opportunity.  Once again, condoms fit here perfectly as they are the symbol of possible opportunities for lustful satisfaction (or not as the case may be).  And finally, the third meta-meta-level is one based on hope and dreams, of imagining a future with deep emotional engagement.  And here as well, the condom comes fully into play as the symbol of love, romance and of course, unparalleled foresight  (thanks Peter Hayward for that contribution of the three levels).

Perhaps then, an  association of futurists (such as the APF) should have a condom as their symbol rather than a compass (direction setting, where are we going).  While the Friends of the Earth have used condoms in some of their campaigns to highlight the need to protect the world from carbon emissions, I think that futurists using condoms (metaphorically of course) as symbols and branding would help highlight the preventative, opportunistic and hopeful nature of our preferred, probable and possible futures. 

Economics = Uncertainty

Interesting blog post over at Henry Thornton referencing a visiting US guru economist.  Now I don’t tend to reference too many economics articles here but having worked with a number of economists in the past (and I must stress that I am not an economist), I find their forecasts often fascinating, often unreliable but always interesting to talk with and debate.  It’s quite an inexact science - and of course there is the old joke about a US president wanting an economist with only one hand as they always say “On the one hand, this bit on the other hand …”  Economics is also a fascinating topic with the current federal election - it’s the economy stupid, interest rates (we’ll hear more about them), etc.

Now this unnamed visiting guru stated that the US is heading for a recession and their housing bubble will deflate slowly.  He then moved on to trade flows and how China is propping up the US dollar, selling the US cheap goods (I heard a stat a while ago saying that 10% of China’s exports to the US go to Walmart and this makes up 1% of China’s GDP), and China then uses these US dollars to buy assets.  The problem is that the undervalued currency produces asset bubbles leading to inflation.  A particular quote got me interested  - “We must cross our fingers and pray that the US dollar does not plunge and that China’s inflation does not take off.” 

The trade imbalances can make things pretty rocky over time.  What happens if the USD spirals down further, particularly if world oil markets starts to use Euro as the currency rather than the USD?  What happens to China if its currency appreciates faster and how will that affect its manufacturing base?  And Australia caught in the middle - how will we fare even though we might not have as much debt as in the US? 

The record high stockmarket cannot keep increasing forever.  I’d like to be more optimistic but I smell that there could be a fair bit of a shake-out over the next year or two which could have drastic consequences for a Howard/Costello or Rudd incoming government.   Mind you, if my forecasts were accurate, I would quit my day job and take up something that could cash in on all this !!

Australia’s Future Innovation Policies

A really interesting article in the Fin Review of 29 October by Roy Green, Dean of the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, of a subject dear to my heart:  innovation policy.  He notes that “it would have required an unusual degree of incompetence for a resource-rich economy such as Australia not to benefit from favourable world conditions, especially China’s industrialisation” and that it really doesn’t matter who wins the debate on taking credit for our current prosperity.  For more importantly, has this windfall gain been squandered like the UK did with its North Sea oil and gas resources, or has it been invested wisely like Norway in a “future fund” to create the “research and innovation infrastructure recognised as essential to build a knowledge-based economy.”

He notes OECD data that shows Australia lags in “investment in knowledge” in comparison with our international competitors.  It reminds me of the days prior to the 2001 election with the whole concept of the knowledge nation (yes, and that lampooned noodle diagram) which provided some form of vision of Australia as more than a quarry and foodbowl. 

Many areas of the services portion of our economy (finance, games, some areas of new media) are leading the world.  Yet others are relatively slow to progress and we run the risk of being overtaken by more competitive countries who are advancing their own economies.  There was much talk in 2000/2001 with the Innovation Summit and the Chief Scientist’s Chance to Change report, but what’s actually happened on the ground. 

I’d like to hear more about this future vision of Australia, of innovation beyond products and R&D and really coming to grips with the knowledge aspects of innovation in companies, industry sectors, government and the community.

Australian American Leadership Dialogue Gala Dinner

In mid-August, I attended the Gala Dinner of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue. This is a two day annual dialogue of eminent people between the two countries.  I was very fortunate to be invited to the dinner (thanks Peter).  I heard from dialogue participants that the second day of the talks focused on energy and climate change which would have been very different from a similar discussion just two short years ago.   

The main keynote was Larry Smarr and he spoke of the need to maintain our standard of living in the face of growing competition from developing countries.  He stated that Australia’s main problem was our lack of telecommunications infrastructure and that we need 1GB/sec per person - that’s symmetric bandwidth!  I find that fascinating seeing as I had just been speed limited until the end of the month so I was on dial-up speeds at home.  This debate is crucial and of critical importance to Australia.  It seems to have gone off the radar in the Federal non-election campaign at the moment but will re-emerge once the leaders start to focus on the future again.

Smarr’s view reminded me of the article penned by Samuel Palmisano,  CEO of IBM, in the Financial Review of 18 Sept who wrote that globalisation and innovation are two sides of the same coin.  Globalisation is the new playing field whether the game is economics, technology, politics or culture and innovation is how you win in that arena.  You can’t afford to deprioritise innovation – you need fast speed internet access with a robust and sustainable ICT infrastructure.  By combining technology and expertise, invention and insight, small companies can be global and established corporations can be more agile. My take from these two sources is that expanded Internet infrastructure is crucial to future growth and productivity in Australia and that we will be ouptaced by others if we delay its implementation. 

Speaking after Smarr was Kevin Rudd.  It’s the first time I have seen him speak in person and I found him remarkably eloquent and pleasant to hear.  He spoke of the four main challenges facing Australia into the 21st Century.  These were integrating China into the global rules-based order, the rise of militant Islamism, the future of trade liberalisation with the link to the Millenium Development goals and finally, global climate change. 

Last was Paul Wolfowitz who spoke of the common values between Australia and the US of individualism, free institutions, welcoming of immigrants and free and open debate.  I found his presentation less than insightful on the whole compared with the two previous speakers. 

What I found particularly interesting were comments from others on the two-day event of its bipartisan nature, the high level of people involved and the trust that had built up between memebrs of the two countries to actually have these discussions without fear that they would be quoted externally.  Such closed-conference meetings are essential to engage in rigourous debate about policy positions so long as they are combined with other forums that permit some openness in discussion of the various views, rather than simply a parading of established positions in the media. And if an invite is going for next year’s dialogue, I’m very interested in attending!

Revisiting “The Dot” with Foresight students

Earlier this week, I presented to the Strategic Foresight class of Masters students at Swinburne University.  As with many workshops that I conduct, I started with “The Dot” exercise.  I was particularly interested to see if foresight students gave a different interpretation to that of others - and they did!

A couple of people had the circle around the dot which is unusual but not too much so.  There was a couple of spirals emanating from the dot, wings and infinity signs (8 on its side) with the dot in the centre which is the first time that these had arisen.

What I found most insightful was that none of the students had an arrow or arrows of any description which had never happened before in any other group.  I take this that the group of students did not think of the future in a direct linear manner (as compared with many other people) but as something that emerges from the current position in a curved way that could spiral back or move in a different direction from the start.  This could be viewed as a more sophisticated and nuanced view - from students who have read more widely about changes in the future rather than a general audience who look at it more singularly. 

Seeing the Bigger Picture

I’m putting together a conference for some people and want to demonstrate them the importance of seeing the bigger picture and how we often miss signals that are quite obvious.  Some classic examples include the video of people playing basketball missing the gorilla in their midst and another is that of the wonderful videos at quirkology by Richard Wiseman, especially the colour changing card trick, my favourite.

Now to all those (yes both of you) out there in blogosphere land, are there other cool examples that I could use to demonstrate to these senior people that their own cognitive biases can limit them seeing the bigger picture that prevents them from identifying weak signals of emerging change?