Managing Leadership^®

Peter Drucker used to say that the thing to look out for isn’t the trend, but a change in the trend. He also emphasized that true innovation doesn’t aim to change the future, but to better address the present. Of course, he further argued that as soon as a product or service became profitable, it was time to develop a new one to keep the company viable in the future.

Modern-day observers, on the other hand, often seem to insist that executives must strive to forecast the world of the next decade, to be able to peer around the numerous oddly-angled corners of randomly wandering events and predict what’s coming the other way. They depict innovation as world-changing creativity that alters paradigms and transforms business landscapes. Many of them also encourage companies to put their best people on their best, most profitable, projects. That latter surely makes sense, doesn’t it – reinforcing success?

Drucker would have suggested that in the first two matters these advisors go too far, and in the third not far enough. We generally are unable to predict the future – but we can make it, one step at a time, building or recognizing new markets, developing salable solutions for them – left, right, left, into the future. We don’t try to position our entire companies for markets that we firmly believe will, but don’t yet, exist – this briefs grandly, but begs the question of how to survive from here to there, not to mention the problem of betting the farm on whether you actually turn out to be right.

Identify needs poorly met, unmet, or unrecognized. Determine how these present problems to people today. If you can find a way to step forward to solve them, you are offering an innovation that moves everyone forward. It might be incremental, it might be more fundamental. But it converts present day needs and opportunities into newly existing markets that can be served with newly existing solutions. One step – a meaningful step – at a time. Everyone moving toward new horizons while maintaining intimate contact with the ground.

So, actually, you don’t always need to create the future – just try to pick out the shadow it casts back into the present, and figure out if you can throw some light on it.

You will still become its pioneer. But once you’ve done that, don’t focus your sharpest eyes on the terrain currently occupied; set them to scanning the immediate surroundings for new intimations of problems no one knew were there. If you’re lucky, you’ll bump in to something that foreshadows an opportunity – and be alert enough to recognize it for what it is.

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Today’s tip: Speaking of  how to create change, please see this BNET column by Steve Tobak about sometimes conflicting advice by advisors – you will be interested to see his own advice on what to do about it.

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