Mistaken Prediction #7

When we try to predict the future, we often allow our assumptions to argue for our own limitations, sometimes at our peril. In this series of Mistaken Predictions, we deride predictions that close our minds to the future and celebrate our collective visions that allowed us to imagine alternative scenarios. Equipped with tools that open us to near limitless options, we cheer the fact that the future is inherently unpredictable.

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“Ours has been the first [expedition], and doubtless to be the last, to visit this profitless locality.”
~ Lt. Joseph Ives, after visiting the Grand Canyon in 1861.

Ives couldn’t have fathomed that more than a century later, five million people annually visit this “profitless locality,” by car, foot, air, and on the Colorado River itself.

John Wesley Powell, a one-armed Civil War veteran set off on a bold and pioneering expedition to fully map the Colorado as it wended its way through the Grand Canyon. The journey was a death-defying undertaking in the fragile wooden dories of the days. Less than a hundred miles into the trip, one of the expedition’s boats had already been smashed, taking with it much of their food supply. Yet, Powell and his team persevered for 99 days, putting the Grand Canyon on the map of the US for the first time.

Soon, Powell was being celebrated as a national hero. When President Theodore Roosevelt visited the Grand Canyon in 1903, he made the famous remark: “The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children and all who come after you.” In 1919, it would become a national Park.

Although John Wesley Powell started a cascade of interest in the the Grand Canyon, he himself was wary of development around it. He prophesied that water shortages would be a major issue if the population of the American West soared too high. Powell would soon turn out to be right. By the turn of the 20th Century, some of the world’s most colossal engineering projects were in motion to dam and divert the Colorado River to help quench the water needs of rapidly expanding Western cities.

The result is that today some 10 dams and 80 diversions have turned the Colordao into a vast plumbing works, the natural flow that John Wesley Powell witnessed now completely regulated to the point that the river’s mouth – once a vibrant wetlands at the Sea of Cortez – has run bone dry.

Before the huge Glen Canyon Dam was built in 1963, the river carried 5000, 000 tons of silt and sediment in a single day. now, 95% of those nutrient filled sediments are trapped by the dam. The river runs clear and cold, which makes it less friendly to life.  River otters, muskrats, native birds, lizards and frogs are rabidly disappearing.

Source: River at Risk

Organizations of interest:

Waterkeeper Alliance

Glen Canyon Institute – dedicated to restoring a healthy Colorado River

Mistaken Prediction #6

“The guitar’s all very well, John, but you’ll never make a living out of it.”

John Lennon’s aunt Mimi was skeptical about his career plans.

John Winston Ono Lennon, (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980) was an English rock musician, singer-songwriter, author, and peace activist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles. With Paul McCartney, Lennon formed one of the most influential and successful songwriting partnerships of the 20th century and “wrote some of the most popular music in rock and roll history”. He is ranked the second most successful songwriter in UK singles chart history after McCartney.

Lennon was an often controversial peace activist and visual artist. After The Beatles, Lennon enjoyed a successful solo career with such acclaimed albums as John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band and Imagine and iconic songs such as “Give Peace a Chance” and “Imagine“. After a self-imposed “retirement” to raise his son Sean, Lennon reemerged with a comeback album, Double Fantasy, but was murdered less than one month after its release. The album would go on to win the 1981 Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

In 2002, respondents to a BBC poll on the 100 Greatest Britons voted Lennon eighth. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked Lennon number 38 on its list of “The Immortals: The Fifty Greatest Artists of All Time” (The Beatles being number one). He was also ranked fifth greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone in 2008. He was posthumously inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Mistaken Prediction #5

When we try to predict the future, we often allow our assumptions to argue for our own limitations, sometimes at our peril. In this series of Mistaken Predictions, we deride predictions that close our minds to the future and celebrate our collective visions that allowed us to imagine alternative scenarios. Equipped with tools that open us to near limitless options, we cheer the fact that the future is inherently unpredictable.

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“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”

~ Lord Kelvin, 1895.

This was predicted by British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society Lord Kelvin only eight years before brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright took their home-built flyer to the sandy dunes of Kitty Hawk, cranked up the engine, and took off into the history books.

‘Nuff said.

Mistaken Prediction #4

When we try to predict the future, we often allow our assumptions to argue for our own limitations, sometimes at our peril. In this series of Mistaken Predictions, we deride predictions that close our minds to the future and celebrate our collective visions that allowed us to imagine alternative scenarios. Equipped with tools that open us to near limitless options, we cheer the fact that the future is inherently unpredictable.

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“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.”

–Associates of Edwin L. Drake refusing his suggestion to drill for oil in 1859.

Only one hundred fifty years passed since the first attempt to dig out oil from the ground met such contempt. Now, much of the global economy rests on this “black gold”. This fast diminishing resource rests at the center of armed conflict from Sudan to Iraq, and environmental devastation from tar sands in Alberta to global CO2 emissions.

Rumaylah Oil Fields, Iraq (April 02, 2003) – U.S. Army Sergeant Mark Phiffer stands guard duty near a burning oil well in the Rumaylah Oil Fields in Southern Iraq.  (U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 1st Class Arlo K. Abrahamson)

Mistaken Prediction #3

When we try to predict the future, we often allow our assumptions to argue for our own limitations, sometimes at our peril. In this series of Mistaken Predictions, we deride predictions that close our minds to the future and celebrate our collective visions that allowed us to imagine alternative scenarios. Equipped with tools that open us to near limitless options, we cheer the fact that the future is inherently unpredictable.

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“A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.”

–New York Times, 1936.

The first rocket to leave the earth’s atmosphere  was American-built WAC, launched on March 22nd, from White Sands, NM and attained 50 miles of altitude.

“An Act to provide for research into the problems of flight within and outside the Earth’s atmosphere, and for other purposes.”

With this simple preamble, the Congress and the President of the United States created the national Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on October 1, 1958. NASA’s birth was directly related to the pressures of national defense. After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in the Cold War, a broad contest over the ideologies and allegiances of the nonaligned nations. During this period, space exploration emerged as a major area of contest and became known as the space race.

A full-scale crisis resulted on October 4, 1957 when the Soviets launched Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite as its IGY entry. This had a “Pearl Harbor” effect on American public opinion, creating an illusion of a technological gap and provided the impetus for increased spending for aerospace endeavors, technical and scientific educational programs, and the chartering of new federal agencies to manage air and space research and development.

The United States launched its first Earth satellite on January 31, 1958, when Explorer 1 documented the existence of radiation zones encircling the Earth. Shaped by the Earth’s magnetic field, what came to be called the Van Allen Radiation Belt, these zones partially dictate the electrical charges in the atmosphere and the solar radiation that reaches Earth.

In 1957, Laika, the soviet space dog, became the first animal to orbit the Earth and, sadly, the first orbital death. On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in outer space.

Launched on July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 was crewed by Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited in the Command Module.

Mistaken Prediction #2

When we try to predict the future, we often allow our assumptions to argue for our own limitations, sometimes at our peril. In this series of Mistaken Predictions, we deride predictions that close our minds to the future and celebrate our collective visions that allowed us to imagine alternative scenarios. Equipped with tools that open us to near limitless options, we cheer the fact that the future is inherently unpredictable.

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“That virus [HIV] is a pussycat.”
–Dr. Peter Duesberg, molecular-biology professor at U.C. Berkeley, 1988

By 2006, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS and the World Health Organization estimated that AIDS has killed more than 25 million people since it was first recognized on December 1, 1981. During 2008 more than two and a half million adults and children became infected with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), the virus that causes AIDS. By the end of the year, an estimated 33.4 million people worldwide were living with HIV/AIDS. The year also saw two million deaths from AIDS, despite recent improvements in access to antiretroviral treatment.

The latest statistics of the global HIV and AIDS were published by UNAIDS in November 2009, and refer to the end of 2008.

	Estimate	Range
People living with HIV/AIDS in 2008	33.4 million	31.1-35.8 million
Adults living with HIV/AIDS in 2008	31.3 million	29.2-33.7 million
Women living with HIV/AIDS in 2008	15.7 million	14.2-17.2 million
Children living with HIV/AIDS in 2008	2.1 million	1.2-2.9 million
People newly infected with HIV in 2008	2.7 million	2.4-3.0 million
Children newly infected with HIV in 2008	0.43 million	0.24-0.61 million
AIDS deaths in 2008	2.0 million	1.7-2.4 million
Child AIDS deaths in 2008	0.28 million	0.15-0.41 million

Africa has over 14 million AIDS orphans.

At the end of 2008, women accounted for 50% of all adults living with HIV worldwide.

In developing and transitional countries, 9.5 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 4 million (42%) are receiving the drugs.

Soulful Data

“I see everything in the form of a story. Stories give data a soul.”

~ Alexander Tsiaris, founder of theVisualMD.com

What are Scenarios?

A scenario is a story that describes a possible future. It identifies some

significant events, the main actors and their motivations, and it conveys how the

world functions. Building and using scenarios can help people explore what the

future might look like and the likely challenges of living in it.

– Scenarios: an explorer’s guide, Shell International

The Fiction Effect: Plausible Scenarios that Shock

Written by Mark Vickers from i4cp on July 17, 2009

Scenario planning is faddish for a lot of companies, like shorter hair or diagonal tie patterns or wearing watches. It’s usually the bad times that bring out the scenario planners.

“It’s sort of like flood insurance,” Michael Raynor, a Deloitte Consulting LLP corporate-strategy expert, recently told the Wall Street Journal. “Everybody runs out and buys flood insurance the year after the flood” (Tuna, 2009).

It’s human nature, of course, to start planning harder for the unexpected only after the unexpected has happened. That occurred after 9/11 and it’s happening again in the wake of the harsh global recession.

People are simply stunned by major events. I call it the “Fiction Effect.” One day you’re plugging along, living your life, working your job, maybe a bit bored by mundane affairs. The next day, something happens that you can barely believe, something that is supposed to occur only in the realm of fiction or long-gone history rather than in your current all-too-real life.

The Fiction Effect gives you a jolt, opening you and others up to the fact that life really is stranger than fiction in many cases. Hijacked jet planes flying into the Twin Towers? The almost instant demise of several great financial institutions? The sheer immensity of the Maddoff Ponzi scheme?

Yes, strange and threatening things happen, as do strange and great things. Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series? Only in fiction. The election of a black U.S. president? Only in some far off future.

But no, they are realities, and pretty soon they don’t seem strange at all. They’re just another part of the landscape, like cell phones or cloning or water on Mars.

What scenario planning can do is prepare you for the strangeness of reality, allowing your organization to react quickly to possible and often plausible scenarios while others are still stunned into inaction or scattering in panic.

For those who aren’t very familiar with business scenarios, the Scenario 101 introduction goes something like this: Scenario planning has been used since the 1940s by parts of the U.S. military and was made famous by Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s, when the scenario-creating corporation was reportedly able to react better than its competitors to the 1973 oil shock.

Since then, many companies have used scenarios, with a Bain & Company study finding that about 70% of executives said they used scenarios in 2002 (Tuna, 2009).

Scenarios are, in essence, alternative stories about the future. Shell, which is an i4cp member company, notes that scenarios “identify some significant events, main actors and their motivations, and they convey how the world functions.” Shell also notes that these stories are not linear or mechanical forecasts. Rather, scenarios “recognize that people hold beliefs and make choices that can lead down different paths. They reveal different possible futures that are plausible and challenging.”

i4cp and its predecessor, the Human Resource Institute, has written scenarios for many years – whether they were in vogue at the time or not – integrating them into each of its knowledge centers and highlight reports. These scenarios can be used by companies to look at a wide range of human capital issues.

But, although such “off-the-shelf” scenarios can be helpful, scenarios are best when they’re the result of a group interaction within organizations, such as operating managers and planners working together. As a group, such a team identifies a topic of interest and then tries to isolate the driving forces that influence that topic. Those forces are grouped together so organizations can see the patterns, and often the drivers are ranked by their potential impact and certainty.

There are different kinds of scenarios, such as inductive, deductive, incremental and normative. Without getting too deep into the scenario weeds, it’s often best to start with deductive scenarios, which rely on a four-quadrant “payoff” table. Let’s say, for example, that something shocking but still fairly plausible happens in 2012, such as a major war between India and Pakistan that China is drawn into. What happens to your organization if it has outsourced huge components of its businesses to one or all of these nations? How could the company react in a timely and effective way to continue meeting the needs of customers?

Now let’s say that, during that same period, your company loses several crucial patents and has no other blockbuster innovations to take their place. How would it survive, especially if certain manufacturing or research operations abroad suddenly stopped producing due to geopolitical instability?

In this particular scenario – which involves Asian instability plus revenue declines – some organizations could find themselves in serious danger of collapse. Such a scenario is not created to predict such dire events, but simply to help business leaders consider what would ensue if such events were to occur. By thinking through the possibilities, an organization might have two advantages. First, it would be less likely to be paralyzed by the Fiction Effect and therefore better able to react quickly to the realities of the situation. Second, it would be more likely to have made contingency plans in the first place, ones that ameliorate the crisis.

There are many examples of scenarios, of course, Some assume good news, others bad news, and others ambiguous news. But what they all have in common is that they help managers and planners question their assumptions about the future, preparing themselves and their organizations for the myriad events that are stranger than fiction.

Documents used in the preparation of this TrendWatcher include the following:

• Shell (2009). Looking ahead: Scenarios.
• Tuna, Cari (2009, July 6). Pendulum is swinging back on ‘scenario planning.’ Wall Street Journal.