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The first month of the year always features a deluge of articles, news stories, blogs and podcasts looking back on the previous year – month-by-month comparisons of 2021 and 2022, benchmarks for the year, how to apply those learnings to 2023.
Hey, hey – wait a minute! Have we forgotten the lessons of 2020-2022 already? 2023 will not be a repeat of 2022, give or take 3-5% for strategic planning purposes. As we know from my book Insightful Leadership, the future is a departure from the past, not a continuation. The Assumed Certainties of the past are now the Known Uncertainties of the future.
Today, Insightful Leaders need to use the foresight they have gained through their years of experience to develop insight into what Disruptions are going on to progress into Tipping Points, harness the power of those insights to identify paradigms that are no longer correct, developing a strategy to replace these obsolete paradigms, and deploy those insights to disrupt the status quo on the way to competitive advantage and major success.
So yes, look back at what happened in 2022 and years prior. It does give you a baseline. But unlike the past, that baseline does not give you 95% accurate assessments about your business plan and operations. A better figure would be 5% certainty, 95% uncertainty.
Don’t let the waves of Disruption sweep away your organization’s future. Take much of that time you would have spent on all the discussion of the past and invest that time in thinking about the future.
Jim Tompkins, Chairman of Tompkins Ventures, is an international authority on designing and implementing end-to-end supply chains. Over five decades, he has designed countless industrial facilities and supply chain solutions, enhancing the growth of numerous companies. He previously built Tompkins International from a backyard startup into an international consulting and implementation firm. Jim earned his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University.