Futurist Sobail Inayatullab cballenges rna,nagerc to create stractures wbicballow yoLt to respond to ubat you can'tforesee, AItll\A

FUTURE 'ilDTCAflYE

I t takes a different son of futurist toII rny you can't predict the furure.I But Sohail Inayatullah is up-frontabout the perils of gazing too inrendyinto crystal balls.

"l believe vou can predict trends.I've seen thar rime after time. But no-one can get the specifics right. And ifthev get it right once, it was that theyw ere lucky. If'you look at lAlvinl Toffler'ssruff he got a few' [trendsl righr, the resthe didn't ."

The irreverence of Pakistan-bornInavatullah. who was in New ZealandinJune to conduci a workshop for theFurures Trust. is refreshing. He's workedwith the likes of Toffler and John)iaisbin but would probably class him-self as less of a popularist.

He is also honest about the times hehas got it wrong himself. Along wirhseven other frrrurisrs, he was invited byHa*'aiian elecrical compan), Hawai-ian Elecrric to a rwo-day workshopwith senior managers. Each talked fbran hour ahout the key rrends whichv,'ould affect the companv in the furure.

The one evenr rhey didn't take inroconsideration was rhe likelihood of ahurricane. A few months laterthe com-panv took a loss of US$300 million

w'hen a hurricane!

left it overexposed to a local insurancecompany.

"The real challenge,' Inavarullah savswith hindsight, -is to ask how do ,voucreate strucrures which allow you torespond to what you can't foresee?"

Perhaps because he was bom inPakisun and educated in llalavsia endHawaii. Inal'arullah looks at the futurethrough the eyes of different culrures.Businesses would do w'ell to do thesame. he suggess.

He dismisses linear tbrecasting asjust the early phase of furures thinking.but he has done his share of it. For fouryears he worked for the Hawaiian stare

iudiciarv and in 1980 concluded. topeople's disbelief. that the next bigtrend for the state would be Hawaiiansovereignw.

Ten years later he s'as proved rightleading him to conclude forecasterscan get the general parameters of thefuture right.

"But the issue tbr us w'as frustrating.Ve were trving to tell people whar thefurure was when deep down we kne*'that reallv the furure was mysterious."he says.

Coupled with that. everv time amarket forecaster becomes famous. heor she starts to change the marker andpeople change their behaviour rs l

result. Inavarullah adds.'lf the'furure is interac-

tion bersveen our rc-tions. our beliets :rndour images then the

issue beconresless what s' i l lthe future be

like and morew h a t d o

a'e rvant.w h a t ' so u rv i s i o n

o f t h efuture?"

E n r e rthe busi-n e s s

SMITH reports.

svith corporare vision workshops andmission statemens.

Inavarullah. n-ho is currendy based ardre Queensland Lniversin' of Technol-ogy. believes vision workshops can beuseful as long as managers do not usethen simply to gain allegiance from rhetroops. Lsed properly. thel' can helpdefine a "preferred possibiliw".

-The furure becomes a possibilir,v tocreate dilTerenr r.!'pes of businesses anddifferent rypes of people.- he says.

The best businesses are the ones tharknow who thev are and in a crisis cango back to their basic sense of idendry.

Take IBM's line thar it is in rhebusiness of providing solurions. "Tharis saving we cannor forecast rhe fururebut w'e have a sense of what peoplereallv $'ant at some deeper level andrhat becomes a s'av to cresre the fu-Rrre." he sa1s. -There's als'avs uncer-tainw so vou have to have an organisa-tion which uses meraphors of irselfsvhich are fle-xible lnd fluid."

llvrhs and meuphors are amongInavarullah's t'avourire mechanisms formaking sense of rhe furure. The Japa-nese. for instance. draw'on old Contu-cian metaphors of harmonv. -lt's there-fore obvious to them that if you live inharmonv you have state and businessn'orking togerher.-

Other metaphors include the idea ofr tbrk in the road giving vou rw'odirections to choose. Or rhere's thedice - vou c3n r predict rhe furure sovou mav as w'ell just roll the dice. Ordrere's the American idea of totalchoice- the furure is an ocean and a com-pan)' cxn go svherever it plelses. Ortake Toifler's ider rhat the future is astream with hidden rocks to be watchedfor.

All of these are culturallv specific.Inavarullah savs. rnd must be derivedtrom how people inside '.rn organisa-tion see themselves.

-The kev [for a companvl is to findour what their os'n meraphor is and toask *'hether that helps or hurts theirmission.' If there is a mismatch. acompany is desrined to t'ailure. E

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SIPTE'UIIIR 1995 I$ANAGEMENT 35