WE MIND THE FUTURE.

 

THE WORLD IS TOPSY TURVY

Said Mark Wahlberg, in a bold wake up call to the world. Look it up, great speech. And he’s spot on.

WE ARE ALL TRYING TO GRASP AND FLOW THROUGH THE GREATEST SEISMIC CHANGE SINCE THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. EVERYTHING CHANGES, EXPONENTIALLY.

We'll start with the Bottom line: If you’re not spending time understanding what current era is, what futures you are facing and what it means to your organization, you are effectively putting yourself in a fragile position of becoming obsolete.

Doing nothing is not an option any more. Don't get stuck with the unprepared.

THE NEW NORMAL STARWARS

These new warp-speed business spaceships are driven by a new breed of Astronauts that have left behind all earthly “ancient” orthodox ways of creating and managing companies. They have a more lucid glasses, they discover and conquer new planets, new business frontiers, while navigating the economy solar system, finding hidden Gems and turning them into gigantic yet agile companies worth gazillions of money, in a fraction of time. Old world company formations with old world management risk-averse, myopic, slow moving managers are looking at them with awe while rubbing their eyes and picking up they fallen jaws.

TO SURVIVE IN THESE NEW ECOSYSTEMS, ORGANIZATIONS, PEOPLE, BUSINESSES AND BRANDS MUST BECOME FUTURE-READY.

The global changes in this new radical era can be characterized by their seeming intractability. cultural, social, technological and environmental challenges are interwoven into a complex and persistent web of issues.

Addressing them will require concerted, coordinated effort

Today’s fast paced society and globalization requires broad and creative techniques that can motivate and anticipate an organization’s knowledge of the future. Every day, we see how science fiction is becoming science fact. Business as usual is dead. Exponential change is the natural flow. We are being pushed to shift to a truly new era, to a Post-normal world. Our most important institutions are running on an operating system that was designed over 100 years ago for a world that no longer exists.

FLOWING IN THE VUCA ERA

What is this VUCA anyway?

The acronym VUCA was first coined by the U.S. military in the late 1990s, It has since been adopted as a fundamental strategic descriptor of this radical era by organizations worldwide.

In a world described as VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous), there are unprecedented tectonic shifts that demand a new mindset of how organizations should adapt to this radical realities.

Here is a short description about VUCA:

V = volatility: the nature and dynamics of change and the nature and speed of change forces and change catalysts

U = uncertainty: the lack of predictability, the prospect for surprise and awareness and understanding of issues and events

C = complexity: the multiplicity of forces, confounding issues and the chaos and confusion that surround an organization

A = ambiguity: the haziness of reality, the potential for misreading situations and mixed meanings causing confusion between causes and their effects

Oops. Shift happens.

..and it happens as you read it now

In this New Post Normal era we can see a shift from the classical world of problems, characterized with demand speed, over-quantitative analysis, and high effort of trying to eliminate uncertainty to solve - to a world of dilemmas, 'Wicked problems' which demand high patience, multiple views of sense-making, and embracing an engagement of uncertainty. and chaos.

'We are OVERWHELMED BY OUR SCALE, if we are a Fortune 500 company, or we are OVERWHELMED BY OUR SCALING, if we are Slack, or Zenefits, or one of the new exponential growth startup phenomenas"

Aaron Dignan, Responsive org movement.

IS IT EVOLUTION OR A REVOLUTION?

It doesn't matter, really. Everything changes as we speak.

We are at an inflection point: it’s time to stop trying to add patches to an old model. Instead, embrace the new world of work.

Customers' mind-set: Frugality & Frustration

Customers demand: Reciprocity & Openness

Brands' reality: Fragility & Exponentiality

Companies DNA: Agility & Collaboration

Organizational code: Creativity & Empathy

Welcome to the "New normal"

Organizations in FLOW start off by embracing the fact that we are in an environment that’s going to keep changing, in an exponential pace and our planning is going to keep changing obviously .

Waking up to rhythm: the yet we’re going to develop and nurture an adaptive culture that’s constantly sensing and iterating upon the structure and rhythm of our organization so that we remain fully awaken, relevant and purposeful toward our mission in this world.

Access and adaptability are more important than innovation. It's about the People that leads your company to new heights by flexible & adaptive culture and constant competence sharpening. Human Creativity precedes Innovation and disruption.

Moonshots are necessary. Your desired 'Disruption' and 'exponential growth' relies more on organizational capabilities than on technological innovation.

TEAMING What are you actually doing about your organizational and team Future-readiness? what new structures, skills, tools, and learnings should you embrace?

STRUCTURE How your organization should look, act, and behave like to meet the new world standards?

CULTURE How do you enable a vibrant, creative, and purposeful culture that flows with the VUCA world tempo?

CREATIVE DISTRIBUTION What tools, platforms, and training methods are you embedding in your organization to create, streamline, collect and utilize all the insights, ideas, and prototypes, creative energy that pave the path to an exciting and successful future?

TANGIBLE FUTURES In a correct state of constant preparation for the future as we all have to be - how do you develop the optional routes, prototypes, and practical knowledge to reveal possible, preferred and plausible futures?

ORGANIZATIONS HAVE ONLY TWO INVESTMENT IMPERATIVES: PEOPLE, AND TECH. PEOPLE WINS.

We believe People precedes Technology.

...and Creativity precedes Innovation. It's a People's business; Technologies are supporting elements. This radical era shatters 'cemented' work rules on a daily basis. For starters, by 2020, creativity will be one of the top 3 skills anyone who wants to be successful in the economy of the future will need, according to the Future of Jobs report.

Alvin Tofler in his book Future Shock claims that the rising rate of change in the world shakes inner equilibriums, radically changes the way we perceive and experience life in all its aspects. This fracturing stress and sudden disorientation caused by the exponential change of the ‘New Normal’ in too little time is called “future shock”.

This principle of Future shock when extended to a whole organization who needs to face and adapt to multitudes of changes might create a ‘change fatigue’ causing a drop in performance, innovation competency, and culture shock levels. Organizations need to be prepared for these shocks as the rate of change plus VUCA characteristics of the new world demands reassessment and reorganizing from bottom up.

Work should be reinvented for the benefit of survival.

Organization must be reinvented after more then 100 years. The industrial revolution is over. A new energy demands a new form, new meaning. A whole new paradigm. It is the time for a new breed of creatively future-resilient organizations.

“New Normal” Post-Industrial Work forerunners must be ready to step up to a new role; one that embraces multiple ways of perceiving the world, making a sense and shape of it, stimulating a buzzing culture of applied creativity and progress.

According to Mckinsey, “half of executives rate capability building as one of their companies’ top three priorities”, however, we believe it’s more than just about knowledge and skill building; it’s about building a culture of learning that leads to innovation and growth.

Bersin by Deloitte’s research shows that companies with strong learning cultures are 17% more likely than their peers to be top of their market. And C-suite leaders are paying attention. In the States alone corporate training grew by 15% in 2013 to over $700 billion.

New mindset, new skills. It's time to Flow. Your future is depending on it.

This is our time to modify and adapt our skills, working habits, and value creation ways so we could fit in and benefit from the abundance of the New Normal. BORN works with business teams that are too head-down with day-to-day tasks to rise up, stick to a lucid path, stick to the rhythm & pace of the new world, and create more value by properly adapting to uncharted new ecosystems.

Learn to be a SUPERFLY

Smooth Adaptivity. Superfly Suaveness elevated by redeeming characteristics such as intellect, sophistication, sensuality, charm and respect to the new world around you.

DO YOU HAVE THE NECESSARY PRE-REQUISITES FOR FUTURE SUCCESS?

WE ARE LIVING THROUGH SEISMIC CHANGE GREATER THAN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

FEW CRITICAL POINTS TO CONSIDER:

ONE. We is better than Me,

Bottom-up is the new Top-down, Organizations are getting flatter, as People, rightfully so, are back on being the most important asset. Talents creates futures. Anything that can be digitized or automated, will be - and anything that cannot be digitized or automated will become extremely valuable. Organizations are Human-made.

TWO. New Normal. We need to embrace the fact that our lives, our work, our organizations, will never be the same again.

Be good, or be gone.

THREE. We are living in the most chaotic, radical, and super creative times. Time to embrace abundance thinking, and get rid of scarcity approach that blocks your creativity and flux of opportunities rising now in the new world.

FOUR. Daily, We're witnessing dazzling cultural and economic shifts offering us an abundance of new exciting opportunities for organizations. All organizations are being challenged, disrupted, and transformed by the extra-rapid cycles of changes in the VUCA world.

FIVE. Remember:

• “The average half-life of a business competency has dropped from 30 years in 1984 to 5 years today.”
• “89% of the Fortune 500 companies from 1955 are not on the list today.”
• “In the next 10 years, 40% of all S&P 500 companies will disappear from this list” ('Exponential orgs', Yuri Van Geest & Salim Ismail)

SIX. Progressive-adaptive organizations of the new Post-Industrial Work VUCA world are crafted in a new way of working that is designed to flow with uncertainty rather than predictability.

SEVEN. The consensus is that we are living in a world in which change at warp speed is affecting more people than ever before. Leaders need new ways to deal with these highly challenging circumstances.

BORN helps organizations become more progressive and fully prepared.

THE SPLASH

A splash is a good metaphor for Strategic & System foresight practitioners. We aim at where, where from, how, and when the splash takes place.

We observe the size and shape of it, what are the elements and forces that caused it. We detect the one spot in which the catalytic event happened, how can we ride it or deviate from it.

More then that, we look for the ripples - these elusive and impactful effects of a change that often happen in

various dimensions, and ecosystems. We follow where these ripples flow, when, and what they might cause.

1. WHAT IS A STRATEGIC SYSTEMS FUTURES PRACTICE?

• Futures thinking is the process of developing a range of experiential and experimental views to solve complex problems and vexing issue.
• Futures thinking is a process to explore ways in which preferable, possible, probable and plausible futures could be anticipated, developed and prepared for.
• Futures thinking offer practical ways to understand outcomes that people can comprehend what choices and decisions can be taken today to create desired tomorrows.
• Futures thinking stimulates innovation, gives space to alternative opinions and views, and can be a very useful strategizing tool.
• We can help evaluate considered trajectories, your strategic steps and offer fresh perspectives.

FROM THE EDGE OF NOW TO YOUR NEAR FUTURE

A. We are a very grounded strategic foresight R&D practitioners. We are Not out-focused far futures dreamers.

There is a difference in having professional strategic futurist enhancing your strategy session, or decision-making meetings.

B. As Systems Futurists we focus on where not only the organization will probably and preferably be in the future. We go deeper to where the ecosystem, society, culture, market, competition, customer, economy, your brand, and other bespoke factors are heading, in order to optimize your decision making.

*Let's not forget: Beneficial innovation programs starts with an experiential story about the future. openly imagining, exploring, and sharing desires and fears about the futures is a way for all of us to shape it as we want.

1. POSITIVE REVOLUTIONS

BORN work in a Social - Commercial matching effort. Meaning, every drop of work to commercial organizations flows and nourishes Social organizations on the other side of our projects portfolio. You know, the world still needs to get a bit better.

2. FLOW TEAMS IN FLOW TIME

We assemble bespoke teams of partners for each project from BORN global practitioners network. We curate the specific set of skills and practical experiences suited for your project. Every project has its leader that emerges from the issue at hand so vertical and horizontal knowledge, expertise, and processes are smoothly aligned and flowing to enable top results.

3. CATALYSING & MOBILISING

• Our work can mobilize & catalyze people towards creating that desired future.

• We manufacture practical programs, new future-led experiences, new knowledge and usable materials that significantly impact your business, organization, brand and people.

• The more people have the right knowledge, tools and confidence to articulate their desires about the future, the more those futures will be accurately shaped and achieved.

4. WE ARE FOCUSED ON DELIVERING CLEARER REALITIES.

• Your organization now knows how to respond to and utilize the emerging opportunities in its ecosystem.

• Being hyper-adaptive to the swift changes of the new radical VUCA world

• An organization with a working environment that amplifies people's collaborative assets, by nurturing the needed skills, competencies, and energy to flow in an increasingly complex and volatile reality.

• Your management and teams are now free from obsolete knowledge, and assumptions. How about that?