Foresight (Part 1)

"Those who have vision can make some provision, others might always live in illusions"

I feel that although we are advancing, our ability to visualize future has not improved much. Probably we have better technology to predict how many foot prints of carbon India would be producing in 2017 but we also know that the current recession is a result of the incompetence of highly paid corporates and officers to foresee the wrong effects of sub-prime loans.

Raju is a young boy. You give him a problem he will solve it. But ask him to predict problems. He is at loss. He can be problem solver but not a problem predictor. So for recession he has an answer- Stimulus Package.

We enter a problem and then only we realize that we need to find a way out. In Mahabharta Vidur said to Yudhishtira " Kisi bhi ghar mein ghusne se pahle , ussse bahar nikalne ka maarg dhund lena chaiye". In management terms we call it as Exit Plan.

I believe Indians always have had better foresight but somewhere something is going wrong.
Let us think " how one's foresight is developed and why we could be loosing our this knack (if we are at all)"

1. Knowledge and Experience-

Those who do not know past and present cannot predict future. The person who does not know that Bulbs came first and then CFLs and then LEDs will find it difficult to extrapolate and find next light emitter. A politician’s single statement is enough for an experienced person to predict the next move. While deciding upon the architecture of my new house my dad purposefully kept his room and bathroom small. I insisted on keeping them big. He gave a simple reason "Dear, I am thinking 20 years ahead of you, when your mom and I would find it difficult to move in a large room just to get a towel or a medicine kept in a cupboard. We would prefer everything nearby so that I will not have to disturb you. I want my bathroom to be small so that when I will get old and my bones will get weak I can take the support of walls even if happen to slip." I was speechless. Here is a healthy man who can get better looking house but has visualized his life 20years hence and is planning accordingly. My father suggested a better utility design for a home than I could and probably a young architect can, reason- Experience. We feel the experience available with our parents is not useful today, but we forget even if the course books change the formula of water will not. One should always use the readily available experience with parents just like a reference book.

When we think about our future, we mostly think about our career, but we forget that career is part of future and not the other way round.