2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
The social decisions, which are influenced - consciously or unconsciously - by expectations, are most importantly taken by the individual; by you, your friends and your acquaintances. To influence the future, therefore, you - and the many others like you - must influence a sufficient number of the individuals involved; which, depending upon the exact circumstances, may be as few as the leaders of the developed world or as many as their whole populations.
The principle is, however, exactly the same. Hence, you must first know what are their existing expectations, the outcome of their previous conditioning by the environment in which they operate. Then you must either plan on the basis of the future those expectations map, or you must shift them. If you successfully shift the expectations of the whole group involved, or persuade a sufficient proportion of them to swing their overall decision, you will have determined the overall outcome - and shaped the future. This is the power you, and others, have over the creation of the future.
It may sometimes still be possible to persuade the individuals to override their reasonable expectations - to suspend disbelief, in the way that politicians have traditionally done; but this requires a level of legitimation which seems to be no longer available to most leaders!
At the government level, the techniques are, in many respects, those already used by sophisticated marketing organisations; except that the measurement of expectations may require special treatment. The use of modified forms of scenario forecasting, from which our own research results are derived, may often be the most suitable approach to this. On the other hand, the tension between existing expectations and desired outcomes - even using the conviction marketing techniques which the more effective politicians now use - may often be difficult to reconcile. Whatever the need, the techniques already exist - the material on this database demonstrates that - but are not used!
15 May 2003
Other pages you might like to consider are:
5155 LEGITIMATION, 5037 CORRUPT GOVERNMENT, 5069 THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES, 5128 WESTERN REACTIONS TO POLITICAL CHANGE, 5150 MANAGEMENT FOCUS, 5022 ESTABLISHMENT GROUPTHINK, 5138 THE SCENARIOS, 5199 SHAPING THE FUTURE, 5086 EXPECTATIONS, 5198 RATIONAL EXPECTATIONS AND LIMITED INFORMATION , 5088 HYPOTHESES RELATING TO EXPECTATIONS
Copyright © 2005 Future Observatory
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