Prospective Planning

Strategic and forward planning are concepts that are closely linked, to the point which is often confused. The cause of the latter is that one loses the sense if there is no other.

Speaking of prospective analysis, we refer, in short, to advance. Involves analyzing the different paths they can take the future. This analysis has no reason to be, if they never planned. Why try to understand the future scenarios, if we do not do anything about it?. If we limit ourselves to analyze and consider the future and our situation in it, are predetermined, what plan?.

The leading experts in strategy, Hamel and Prahalad, in his book, "Competing for the Future" (1994), referring to differences between companies that succeed and those that do not mention that "The conclusion was imposed: Some teams direction showed a higher level of insight than others. Some even imagine products, services, and entire sectors of activity not previously existed and were determined to accelerate its birth. In a way states could say they lost little time worrying on positioning your company with respect to the existing competitive environment since their task was precisely to create a new one. Other companies, laggards-were more concerned with preserving the past that the Conquest of the future "
Herein lies the importance it gives to a combination of strategy with foresight. Envision the future and innovate, whether in product, services, processes or forms of business.

Forward planning: a "discipline" intellectual

Reading a text by Michel Godet, bestselling author of "Forward Planning", rescued this interesting segment. Certainly in later grades, I will add other readings.

Anticipation not make much sense if it is not which serves to clarify the action. That is why foresight and strategy are usually inseparable. Hence the expression of strategic foresight. However, the complexity of the problems and the need to collectively raise impose the use of methods that are as rigorous and participatory as possible, in order that solutions are recognized and accepted by all. Nor should we forget the limitations imposed by the formalization of the problems, since men are also guided by intuition and passion. The models are inventions of the mind to represent a world that does not leave locked in the cage of the equations. This is beautiful because without this freedom, motivated by the desire will be without hope!. Such is the conviction that motivates us, use all the possibilities of reason, knowing all its limitations, as well as their virtues. Between intuition and reason there should be no opposition but on the contrary, complementarity. To be a "discipline" intellectually fruitful and credible, foresight needed rigor.


The debate of ideas on change, the role of men and organizations, the usefulness of the methods, it is blocked by a significant number of recurring issues reemerge to the surface whatever the arguments put forward. This occurs, for example, when we talk about the differences and relations between the concepts of foresight, planning and strategy, the interest of the probabilización of scenarios, by involvement of the complexity and specificity of studies territorial prospective. On all these matters, experience accumulated for over 30 years and captured several hundred statements, we can provide clear answers, at least from our spirit.

The wishes of the prospective reality of the strategy

Following Godet's reflections about the prospective planning, I suggest reading the following text.

The wishes of the prospective reality of the strategy.

It is always tempting to take the desires and realities. Anyway, because there are a few visions or scenarios that you should not look desirable, and we need to be convenient, stop, or the strategic option of the company, according to this unique proactive vision. It is also necessary to show proactive and know how to prepare for the changes expected to occur in the future environment of the company.

All possible scenarios are not equally likely or desirable and is therefore necessary to distinguish the general environment settings of the strategies of the actors. Thus, the success of the word scenario has led to some abuse and confusion with the strategy that should be clarified.



It would be wise to distinguish between an exploratory phase that seeks to identify future challenges and a phase law that seeks to define strategic options possible and desirable for the company, against these odds, it can maintain the course of his ship.

The distinction between these two phases is more than justified if we understand that the choice of strategies is influenced by uncertainty, rather large, weighing on the stage and nature, more or less proven, of which, between them scenarios are the most likely.

Confusing foresight scenarios the choice of strategic options that would not be the same internal actors who would be on the front line. The phase advance of the mutations must be collective and should cover as many people. The tools used in foresight to organize and structure in a transparent and effective collective thinking about the stakes and challenges of the future and, if necessary, also the evaluation of strategic options.

On the contrary, due to reasons of confidentiality and liability, the phase involving the choice of strategic options recognize that it is itself a matter for a limited number of people, in general, members of the Steering Committee of the company. Note that this last stage does not need a specific method. Decisions have to be taken after consultation and consensus reached between the leaders, taking into account the modes of regulation specific to each company's culture and temperament and personality of their leaders. The tools are useful for preparing the options and not a substitute for freedom of choice.

The future of HR: Key Challenges for 2015

According to a study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group in conjunction with the European Association for Personnel Management under the name "The Future of HR: Key Challenges for 2015," Talent management is the great challenge of European firms for the year 2015. Obviously not the only challenge.

Among the 17 items considered, five emerged as more important in coming years. According to officials of this study, these five themes also represent gaps that human resource departments of European companies have today.



1. Talent management

It is about a shortage of talent, and companies will have to take some steps to address that shortage. To exploit all sources of highly qualified professionals, HR departments should be used to find new talent anywhere in the world. Also be obliged to ensure that their offerings meet the needs and aspirations of different ethnic groups and nationalities, women and older workers.

2. Population management

With the aging workforce in Western Europe, European companies must mitigate two risks: the loss of capacity and knowledge as workers retire and lost productivity as the workforce ages.

To solve these problems, the report recommends that companies introduce a family working structure to lower the average risk population and to identify specific initiatives to recruit new employees.

3. A learning organization

Another of the challenges that will face companies 2015 is the training of their employees. Specifically, human resources departments will have to train their workers to enable them to cope with the speed and complexity of the global economy.

However, spending on training programs will not result in an automatic increase in productivity. HR executives will have to assess very well the ROI they expect to achieve with the training programs to achieve tangible results.

4. Management of work-life balance

While the boundaries between public life and private life are blurred, workers tend to choose their new jobs on the basis that the balance between their professional and private lives is the most appropriate. To "catch" and retain highly qualified talent, companies have no choice but to relax the conditions of employment of its workers.

5. Change Management

Predictably, the companies will be recruiting more workers from different countries and cultures or new markets quickly. Change management becomes an essential capability of enterprises. The survey shows that executives expect their companies to be able to develop tools and methodologies to help them communicate to employees the need to address this new multicultural horizon.

Virtual Business

virtual worlds like Second Life are a new medium with many opportunities to do business and make contact with customers, yet many companies still give back. The next five years virtual worlds will be essential to brand building of large companies. Classic business models do not work in this context, companies that want to position themselves must have a long-term strategy.


An article carried out by the consultancy Deloitte has concluded that virtual worlds like Second Life, normally associated with teenagers or Internet fans are growing in popularity very quickly and that their full potential has not yet been taken into account by most companies

These virtual worlds have created a new way for people to socialize, entertain and, of course, makes economic transactions. It is estimated that some 50 virtual worlds that have already signed up 178 million people. Second Life has been that has set in among the users. And despite that is still seen by many as merely a sophisticated way to play, the truth is that business is already being done and working in Second Life.



Companies such as Coca-Cola and Sears, have created virtual shops to test there products. The prestigious INSEAD business school has developed a virtual campus to replace classroom training. In short, more and more companies use these "parallel worlds" to enter in touch with your customers or to improve their internal operations.

However, the study warns that many companies exploring these new media can be quite daunting as its traditional approach is not sustainable in the long term. Because, although such self-organized communities can be potentially a very lucrative business, the classical models can not, under any circumstances, get all your party.

Innovate

We can say that there throw imagination and innovation.

"Virtual worlds present opportunities that businesses should know sooner or later," says Kamale Lardo, the report's author, said in a statement. "The inevitable changes that will bring virtual worlds will redefine the way companies interact with their customers and facilitate more sophisticated modes of interaction between organizations," he adds.

In the past year, many executives have had to make the decision to start your business career in places like Second Life, either for business, pure and simple, either to accompany a marketing strategy. It is not easy making this decision, says Deloitte, or measure their true potential. Perhaps this is why many of them were established with great media noise, have left too quickly, even seeing their number of subscribers increased steadily.

The study predicts, in any event, within five years, these worlds will begin to dominate and lead the brand building larger companies. This means that they are already positioned there will have some competitive advantage over those who take the decision to gamble in this way in the coming years.

Having a strategy

Expand the business into a virtual world is not without risks (many of them similar to what we find in the real world), especially with regard to brand and reputation.

The dramatic fall of the dot-com "in 90 should serve as example to know what to do and what not to explore this new medium. Virtual worlds have been created, also great excitement, a lot of hype and disappointments. Deloitte is time to enter a stage of maturity and productivity.

"Although the number of active visitors of virtual worlds has yet to reach critical mass, who explore and understand this context today will win the loyalty of its customers tomorrow," says Lardo. "To develop a strategy targeted at customers in this new environment, companies must first understand the marketplace and its users," he concludes.

Deloitte recommends that companies adopt a long-term strategy based on three phases. The first step would be to decide what is the reason to bet on this medium. At this point, the company has come to know well its technology foundation to keep abreast of new trends. It is also necessary that the strategic objectives of its implementation are based on measurable outcomes, such as the number of visits or appearances in the media.

The second phase, the report says, should be conducting a pilot project selected as the best option. In this case, the technological cost and risks are lower than those supporting a pilot project in the "real world."

Finally, after six months testing the operation of the pilot project, the company should make the decision whether to fully implement and continue operations, or not.

Online businesses also require a long-term

Perhaps the best way to approach the subject of the Supernova conference taking place in San Francisco on an annual basis, whether to consider the type of audience that, according to organizers, are addressed: technology executives, business strategists, entrepreneurs, investors daring, political, service providers and analysts, among others.

The main concept intended to discuss and explain, and around which try to integrate into the world of business, government institutions and technology leaders, is the decentralization caused by connectivity every day more and more global, pervasive and ubiquitous, that takes place through computers and other communication devices interconnected throughout the world.




Such phenomena are by collapsing the old industrial model and changing the world as we knew it, because businesses are distributed and shared more and the users acquire a major in the same never experienced before, using tools like blogs, recommendation services web page and cyber-connected networks.

Big numbers

In 2007, Americans bought over the network products and services worth U.S. $ 127,000 million, representing a 25% increase over the previous year, according to a recent article in Managing Technology accounts for some of the topics discussed at the last Supernova conference, held during days 16 to 18 June.

To be important, however, represents less than 4% of total retail sales in the U.S., although it should also have other online services: for example, Google admitted that last year more than 16,000 million dollars and most of them came from its advertising services.

What we have been discussing in the Supernova is that, despite the great potential of the Internet market, these figures reflect, very few companies have actually had success in developing new effective ways to make profits online. Most companies have seen on the net, at best, simply another means to insert in her traditional advertising models.

Explorers

Eric Clemons, professor of Wharton SchoolSaid that there are many sources of value and untapped business niches on the Internet, particularly in the area of online services. As a business model actually developed and operated online, as opposed to using the network as a means to implement the old models, described, among others, two examples: Gaia Online and Photoshop Express.

The first, Gaia Online is a virtual world created several years ago by a Japanese comic book artists. More than 300,000 daily users enter the same by participating in role-play multi-player, create their own avatars and interacting with each other through forums. About five million users, most of them teenagers and young adults, come every month to this page, which gives an idea of its success.

The developers began seeking small donations from users to keep the site active, and the answer was that they were three times more than they had anticipated. Then they came up with the idea of giving users the ability to buy (and sell) virtual products. Where does Gaia real incomes? To sell, the price is nothing virtual $ 2.5 each, limited editions of virtual goods have value for users to become old and start to dwindle. To this we must add also the sale of real and hats and shirts based on some of the most popular virtual items.

Then there is advertising, which has begun to experience Gaia for about year and a half, by original actions such as his association with New Line Cinema. Users of the virtual world of Gaia have to perform some activity of the same to get a trailer to a film promoted by this company. And this is, in the words of Executive Craig Sherman of Gaia Online, "to create experiences that are fun and meaningful to the Gaia community as well as beneficial to sponsors."

For its part, Adobe has long put up a different action by no less successful, made available to the public, and amateur photographer in particular, completely free of charge, a simplified, yet effective, its flagship product: the tool Professional Photoshop image processing. The popular version is called Photoshop Express offers users the ability to upload, edit, store and share their photos, as well as integrate with other services like Facebook, Photobucket or Picasa.

Do the benefits of all this to Adobe? Sales of premium and professional services in addition to potential customers from the mass public to its free services, advertising, and agreements whereby computer manufacturers buy licenses for the software components pre-installed Photoshop Express.

In line with these initiatives and this new vision of business online, include the intention of the company Sun Microsystems to continue releasing products (as they have been doing with Java or Solaris). During the Supernova conference, the company president, Jonathan Schwartz, was to present a world map showing which dots (increasing by 100,000 per day) the density of downloads ZFS, a file system released. Schwartz concluded: "Each of these points is a potential customer."

Prospectively. The next 20 years: how to evolve the attitudes of customers and the workforce

Business projects with long horizons of time, such as R & D of products, design of the workplace, and compensation planning, must deal with a key question: What are the needs, demands and desires of consumers and employees in decades more? If you think the answer is "more of the same", is wrong.

Howe and Strauss, authors of Generations, The Fourth Turning and Millennials Rising, among other books, studied the differences between generations over 30 years. His extensive research has revealed a fascinating pattern, a pattern so strong that lends credibility to their ability to predict. They point out that based on historical precedent we can predict how today's generations will think and act in the coming decades.



Three of those generations will still be vital forces in American society in 20 years: the Boomers, Generation X and Millennium. Their attitudes and behaviors influence a lot in the economy, the workplace and social institutions in general. For example, as older Boomers reject high-tech medicine in favor of a holistic self-care, natural foods and healing techniques for body and mind, some hospitals offer alternative medicine and spiritual counseling.

Gen Xers, who grew up in an era of poor schools and marriages, will remain alienated, disaffected, and pragmatic in its maturity. And are the most entrepreneurial generation in U.S. history and it will be able to drive innovation, efficiency and mass customization. In contrast, young adults prefer Millennium teamwork, close family relationships, job security and a popular culture without depth. Their unprecedented digital empowerment and organizational skills will create a major political force and may even revive the labor movement.