Drucker Thursday: Identifying the Future
The important thing is to identify the “future that has already happened.” — Age of Discontinuity, Peter Drucker
Strategy at its core is making decisions in uncertainty in a changing environment that creates the future.
I wanted to kick off Drucker Thursday’s with a focus on the future.
Drucker had a unique view of the future – he wasn't about predictions, but identifying what was already set in motion.
Drucker was a big fan of thinking about the changes that matter in the environment about us. He always had a clever way to make his point. This quote is no different.
Already happened. His focus was always on action.
He was not a big fan of forecasting. He did not see that this can work. However, he was keen to understand the “future that has already happened”.
But the most important work of the executive is to identify the changes that have already happened. The important challenge in society, economics, politics, is to exploit the changes that have already occurred and to use them as opportunities. The important thing is to identify the “future that has already happened”—and to develop a methodology for perceiving and analyzing these changes.1
This is a different take about the future. For example, AI capabilities are doubling every 6 months to 12 months. What does this mean for us? In five doublings, AI will be 30 times powerful from the time chatGPT was released in 2022. 30 times going to 100. This is an example of a way to understand the future that has already happened.
If this is true, what does this mean to jobs and skills? What skills will be easily done by AI? Which jobs can be effected? How can you be effected? How do we understand and use AI?
Reader Pointers: What are the changes that you are seeing in your work? What are the challenges already occurred in society, economic, politics, and technology connected to your work? How can you create opportunities around them?
The Daily Drucker by Peter Drucker and expertly edited by his long-term collaborator Joseph Maciariello is a great source for his quotes and thinking and is a source of knowledge for Drucker Thursdays.