Have you ever heard the phrase, heads down, as in, "I'm heads down because of an important deadline"? Busy professionals are often heads down. This can make it hard for individuals and for organizations to keep sight of the horizon. But seeing what is coming is essential, both to avoid unpleasant surprises and to take advantage of emerging opportunities. To balance the tendency to be heads down under the day-to-day pressures, organizations need to work at being heads up.
This book looks at how organizations can cultivate the capability and the habit of scanning the horizon for signs of emerging trends, a practice we call sensing. Sensing is deliberately looking for signs of emerging trends-known as "signals"-and monitoring those that may be relevant to your organization. Economic indicators such as interest rates and commodities prices are a classic type of signal. Other signals that may be meaningful, depending on the type of organization, include:
Political events
Consumer preferences
Regulatory action
Corporate actions such as mergers and acquisitions
Patent filings
Venture capital investments
Corporate strategists need a clear line of sight to the horizon. Sensing can be an invaluable practice for them-hence the title of this book, Signals for Strategists. But sensing is not just for those for whom strategy is a formal part of the job description. No matter your role in an organization, understanding emerging trends can make you more effective on the job.
At Deloitte, the environment in which we operate is always changing. So is our approach to sensing. We use a combination of custom-developed and off-the-shelf tools to acquire, aggregate, and analyze information from outside the firm. Some of these tools highlight patterns in quantitative information such as mergers and acquisitions and venture capital investments. Some use natural language processing technology to analyze news stories to discover and quantify patterns. Alongside these tools, we rely on old-fashioned human intelligence-conversations with a diverse group of knowledgeable professionals inside and outside the firm.
Our organization is large, and the scope of our businesses is large. So we are interested in a broad range of trends. We pay particular attention to signals in the following domains: macroeconomic, regulatory, technology, human capital, and, of course, the activities of our clients, collaborators, and competitors. We are working to make sensing an integral part of our culture.
Each chapter in this book describes a trend we identified using our sensing methodology. The chapters start with a list of signals-facts we observed that, taken together, helped to reveal a trend. The impact of new technology is a thread that runs through every chapter, whether it focuses on a specific set of technologies such as the Internet of Things or intelligent automation; the impact of technology on the role of the CIO and CMO; how technology is changing knowledge work and manufacturing; or how organizations need new technologies and new approaches to counter a rising tide of cybercrime. The oldest of these pieces was originally published in 2012. Some of the signals are from 2010 or 2011. Where practical, we updated the data cited in the original article. Even if some of the signals presented here are slightly out of date, they serve to illustrate the process of sensing. In all cases, the trends we identified have continued to unfold with growing significance for our organization and our clients.
As you read about each trend, I encourage you to reflect on what it may mean for you and your organization. Is your organization affected by, participating in, or evening propelling this trend? Could it be doing more to take advantage of new opportunities presented by this trend, or to hedge against the risks it brings? I also invite you to examine what your organization is doing to tune into signals of emerging trends that may be relevant to it. In a world where the pace of change continues to accelerate, sensing has become an essential discipline for all organizations.
Technology is an indispensable tool for detecting signals of emerging trends. But so is human interaction. Whether you have reactions to any of these trends, see signals of new trends, or would like to share lessons from your own sensing efforts, I would be very happy to hear from you. Feel free to contact me at [email protected] or follow me on Twitter at @dschatsky.