7 Steps To Predict Your Company’s Future: How the Big Boys Do It

Imagine being able to accurately forecast the future in your business. Will that new product be a success? Should we partner with this company? What future trends can we tap into now before anyone else does? 

Imagine what your company would look like.

You’d make fewer mistakes. Get to your targets more quickly. Save yourself a whole lot of heartache in the process.

The thing is, many industry leaders do thanks to the power of their intuition and thanks to a future forecasting method I’ve outlined  below.

Here’s how Donald Trump views predicting the future…

“We experienced a historic day in the financial sector. What happened on Wall Street was unprecedented, and it was rightly called “the shock market.” In mid-September of 2008, Neal Cavuto asked me to make a  comment about it, and he found footage of an appearance I’d made on his show eight months prior to this debacle in which I’d predicted something similar happening. I had seen the indications that we might be interesting a very difficult phase. Is this ESP? No, it’s just paying attention on a daily basis and looking into the future a bit. That’s insight and foresight working together.”

 (from his book, ‘Think Like a Champion: An Informal Education In Business and Life’)

My Invisible Genius series of books focus on how to harness the powers of insight and foresight. And here’s the thing about foresight…

When you’re looking into the future, predicting, forecasting or using foresight, don’t get hung up on whether it’s your logical mind extrapolating on past results to estimate a possible future based on trends, or your intuitive side making a premonition. They go hand in hand.

If you only use logical analysis and forecasting, you’ll miss seeing the unforeseen circumstances that can affect the future (events like weather, economic downturns and so on).

If you use intuition alone and have no real-world experience relating to the future that you’re predicting, you’ll find it difficult to apply your insight in a practical way. So – they go hand in hand.

In the book Flash Foresight, author Daniel Burrus talks about seven triggers that encourage a flash foresight. Here’s a summary of that process:

1. Start with certainty.

There are obvious trends happening in your industry right now. These are hard trends. By looking at where the market is heading it’s relatively easy to imagine what can happen in the future if these trends continue.

2. Anticipate.

Remember, the world is evolving at a rapid pace. Those who don’t keep up perish, but those who stay ahead of the curve thrive.

Ask yourself what problems are your company/customers/ society likely to face because of these hard trends in the next few months and the next few years?

Next – look for ways to solve these problems before they happen.

Also, Daniel Burrus suggests that you ask the question,  “What is my ideal future in 10, 15 or even 25 years down the track?” Then, “What steps could we take to create that future now?”

3. Transform.

Transformation is about being radically different.  When Barnes and Noble and others were capitalizing on the trend of creating book superstores, Amazon made the radical move of transforming the way people shop for books by putting their entire store online.

To determine what to transform your business into, ask yourself, “Using hard trends, how can I expect my own field or business to transform in the next few years?”

And, “How can I give my current and future customers the ability to do what they can’t do but would want to — if they knew it were possible?”

4. Take your biggest problem and skip it.

Burrus says that the biggest problem you are facing right now is never your real problem. It’s often simply a distraction. Your real problem is hidden beneath that.

5. Go opposite.

Look in the areas where nobody else is looking. See where everyone else is focusing their attention on and go in the completely opposite direction. Like Jeff Bezos did. When bookstores went big, he went small.

6. Redefine and reinvent.

Forget about competing. Instead create an entirely new product category like Cirque du Soleil did and like Bikram Yoga did.

7. Direct your future.

The way in which you view the future is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think the market is going to be tough it will. If you think your company will thrive, it will.

All the steps in this exercise are important but there is something else – something much bigger that brings all of these steps together and turns them into reality.

This is where intuition and visualization come in. It’s about directing your future.

It’s about projecting yourself into that future situation. See it. Feel it. Hear it. Taste it. Experience it. Then look back towards today and see the steps that you need to take to get where you want to go.

Question: What predictions or forecasting have you done that has been hugely profitable for your company. I’d love to hear it. Share it below.