Reader,

Organizations, whether armies, companies, charities, universities, or city councils are designed to achieve shared goals. Some succeed and some fail. And some fail catastrophically.

Background

Because some of my thinking was formed during my time in the Marine Corps, I often turn to military history to find models that can be applied, as appropriate, to business education and advising.

One of my favorite books is Military Misfortunes, The Anatomy of Failure in War (Cohen & Gooch, 1990). I believe it identifies issues that are not only applicable to military failures but to organizational failures as well.

They examined three kinds of failures:

• The failure to learn obvious lessons.
• The failure to anticipate predictable situations.
• The failure to adapt to new and unexpected circumstances.

They concluded that:

• Where learning failures have their roots in the past, and anticipatory failures look to the future, adaptive failures suggest an inability to handle the changing present.
• Failure to learn and anticipate can usually be handled if you can adapt.
• But catastrophe usually results when all three kinds of failure come together.

From the Telegraph to Virtual Reality — The Repetition of Failure Over the Centuries

Here are three historical stories of catastrophes.

19th Century — Western Union and the Telephone

LEARN: Assumed telegraph dominance guaranteed permanent control of communication despite their own disruption of land-based and signal communication.

ANTICIPATE: Dismissed Alexander Bell’s telephone as a “toy,” failing to see the social power of voice communication. They refused to accept Bell’s offer to sell his patents for $100,000.

ADAPT: Reacted defensively through litigation instead of innovation. They formed the American Speaking Telephone Company in 1877, using patents developed by inventors Elisha Gray and Thomas Edison. They lost the lawsuit.

What if they had used the skills of observing, imagining, and challenging and were curious about emerging social behaviors?

20th Century — Kodak and the Digital Revolution

LEARN: Equated past film success with future dominance; ignored lessons from earlier format disruptions such as Daguerreotype and Dry Plate.

ANTICIPATE: Saw digital imaging as niche and unprofitable; missed signals of changing consumer habits.

ADAPT: Stuck with the profits of film and chemistry even though they held an early patent for digital image processing.

What if they had used the skills learning, reflecting, and deciding to reward the questioning of their core business model?

21st Century — The Metaverse Bet

LEARN: Meta assumed that dominance in one platform (social media) guaranteed success in the next (immersive experience).

ANTICIPATE: Meta misread consumer and technological signals and overestimated the demand for expensive VR immersion.

ADAPT: Meta doubled down on the Metaverse despite weak traction and shifted late to AI and messaging.

What if they had used the skills of reasoning, challenging and observing to balance their vision with skepticism and foresight?

The Skills of a Prepared Mind

Here are eight skills you’ll need to be prepared for the future:

Observing -- Notice patterns and clues others miss

Imagining -- Visualize possibilities that don’t yet exist

Reflecting -- Map your journey to understand where you’ve been and where you’re heading

Reasoning -- Understand how things connect and influence each other over time

Challenging -- Test assumptions and stay open to contradictory evidence

Deciding -- Make sound decisions quickly by blending analysis with pattern recognition

Learning -- Learn through hands-on experience and experimentation

Enabling -- Create environments where diverse talents contribute to a greater whole

The need for balance

Here are the combinations you might use as you prepare to “think across time.” Maintain balance among all eight skills:

• Past: Reflect + Learn + Challenge >>> Wisdom from the past
• Present: Observe + Decide + Enable >>> Bets for the future
• Future: Imagine + Reason + Challenge >>> Foresight

Weakness in any single temporal domain is recoverable but weakness across all three domains has been shown to lead to organizational catastrophe.

Leaders at all levels need a balanced blend of thinking skills to intercept the future.

The Prepared Mind Project

Julie, Jim, and I will be launching this soon.

The pain points we’re addressing center on the leadership preparation gap – the emerging reality that leaders fear being left behind or becoming irrelevant in our increasingly wicked world.

They need to be prepared – and we can help.

Bill