Solving for X
The future asks only that you be relevant.
In business, we’re always looking toward the future. We may have a big goal, an ambitious vision, an innovation opportunity, or a simple hunch that’s pulling our attention. However it shows up, our future state is calling, compelling us to get busy building What’s Next. But how?
Too often, we run straight to strategic planning or the doing when we get excited about a new idea yet haven’t spent time on the thinking part of the work. This can result in a plan’s elements, like goals and objectives, being more arbitrary and aspirational than strategic.
‘Solving for X’ is how we start to think like a futurist. It’s an investigation into the factors that are common to all grand ambitions: the time it takes to achieve it, needs being met, future conditions, and the unique purpose that motivates you to build this future.
By following this process, your compelling-yet-hazy idea will grow into a ready-to-implement project. You’ll be able to scope research, you’ll learn new insights that inform your plan, and ultimately you will unlock a clearer picture of your ambition fulfilled. It’s a thinking tool that helps you understand the necessary pieces of an effective and relevant future. Without understanding, you might be trend-chasing or, worse, misguided entirely.
Build your path to what’s next
Step 1: Orient your inquiry
Understanding your X is the first step. This starts to get at why you’re ‘Solving for X.’ In pursuing [insert your grand ambition], it’s important to determine the ultimate benefit to you, your customer, and stakeholders you believe this work can offer. By defining your X first, you’ll also define what a good solution looks like.
Why is this ambition important?
Describe success in terms of value to stakeholders, including:
Your customers/clients/users (focus on needs met)
Your organization
Your community
Social impact, R&D, industry leadership
What are the barriers and opportunities you may run into?
Even if results are disappointing, why would this project be worth pursuing?
Step 2: Establish your time horizon
Ambitions don’t neatly fall into planning calendars. In fact, they often need time to unfold. Whether your horizon is 10, 5, or 2 years, for instance, will go a long way to helping you scope research for the other factors in the ‘Solving for X’ equation. When estimating your horizon, ask yourself:
What are your instincts about how long to ‘prime relevance’ and ‘prime advantage’ for this work?
Is there a ‘maturity horizon’ for some of the trends you’re following?
Are there organizational or market cycles you’re trying to get ahead of, or that may impact your outcomes?
When is the most likely time for a pilot to be launched?
Step 3: Identify the needs you hope to meet
Solving for people’s needs will ensure you’re relevant and adding value to the people, the market, the industry, and the community. To determine human needs, ask yourself:
Who is the audience/customer you wish to serve?
What do you understand/not understand about their needs and motivations?
What impact do you hope to have in their lives?
What do you hope they will feel, believe, see, do as a result of your ‘solution’?
What are your assumptions about how these needs shift as life stage, culture, and context shift in the future?
Step 4: Investigate the changing conditions
To anticipate the changing conditions and context of people’s lives, we need to learn about where and how they’ll make their home and family, work, and attend school, as well as what they'll likely care about, and the pressures they’ll be facing. To see how changing conditions will impact the issues you care about, ask yourself:
How might the effects of climate change influence lifestyles in the next years (energy, water, food production, domestic and international migration, catastrophic events)
Which technologies will likely have the most significant impact on the way people live, work, play, communicate, socialize, and buy goods and services?
How will shifting demographics (age, culture, worldview) affect region, industry, workplaces, and communities?
How will political, economic, and regulatory changes influence how you operate? Implications in your customer’s lives?
Step 5: Use purpose to filter your best ideas
Every organization is mission-driven. Yours exists to meet the needs of a particular group of people in a particular way. While you may have many competitors, the core beliefs, values, methods, and models with which you do it is unique. After the research you’ve done on needs and conditions in Steps 3 and 4, now you build scenarios and sort for ideas that fulfill your mission. Ask yourself:
Adapted to changing conditions, how does your organizational purpose stay true?
What new opportunities do you see to meet your audience’s needs with more ease, deeper connection, and greater relevance?
What will you have to build (organizational capacity, partnerships, awareness) to meet this future opportunity?
What is your proprietary advantage in this new world? How does this perspective influence strategic intent and readiness or your brand’s position?
when you can benefit from ‘solving for x’
If you want to investigate a ‘white space’ of opportunity or challenge. By defining and refining the various conditions, you create a clearer sense of what is possible, sensible, and doable.
When you want to find your way or your contribution. After following an inquiry through research and learning, you will get an outcome unique to your business, purpose, offering, and value.
When you’re feeling stuck. Often when we’re stuck, it simply means that we’ve come to the limit of our understanding, and we have to learn more. ‘Solving for X’ will show us a path of learning to make sense of your future’s requirements and opportunities.
When what you’re doing feels fuzzy. That fuzziness indicates there is something else to make sense of before you turn to action.