Future Savvy: Identifying Trends to Make Better Decisions, Manage Uncertainty, and Profit from Change
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.94 (533 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0814409121 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-02-06 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
While everyone knows a future-focus is crucial for strategic vision and organizational readiness, what information from the endless sea of sources is valid? How do you know which predictions to take seriously, which to be wary of, and which to throw out entirely? Which ones do you let guide your decisions? Future Savvy provides a hands-on approach to judging predictive material of all types, including providing a battery of critical tests to apply to any forecast to assess its validity, and judge how to fit it into everyday management thinking. In a colorful book with many examples, Adam Gordon synthesizes information assessment skills and future studies tools into a single template that allows managers to apply systematic "forecast filtering" to reveal strengths and weakness in the predictions they face. The better leaders' view of the future, the better their decisions - and successes - will be. Apparently helpful forecasts are ubiquitous in everyday communications such as newspapers a
"Future Savvy…will help you become a better consumer of forecasts, from economists, governments, think tanks and, yes, even journalists." The Globe & Mail (Toronto) "a book that will make fascinating reading for anyone involved in forecasting" --Foresight Magazine “If you care at all about preparing for the future, read this book.” -- Online Magazine "Given recent developments in the US economy and their implications and probable impact insofar as the global economy is concerned, the publication of this book is indeed timely." -- Dallas Business Commentary Examiner "a guide for prognosticators and scenario planners, a set of warnings against such common errors as overreliance on numbers, overlooking your own bias, and ignoring the oscillations of history…” -- Strategy+Business "… offers a great deal of common sense that often gets left behind in analytics and forecasting…” -- Inland Empire Business Journal "Gordon's book will be a useful primer and refresher on the art of proper forecasting and on detecting the artifice and subtlety of persuasion via anticipatory declaration." --Research Technology Management
"Develop a Forecasting Mind" according to J. Gary. You will not find a better book than Future Savvy on how to cultivate a forecasting mindset. I teach futuring workshops for mid-career professionals. I have just adopted Future Savvy as a textbook for my graduate students. Why? Future Savvy is accessible. It contains a wealth of managerial wisdom about bias traps, perceptive frameworks, change drivers and change blockers. You may know your industry, but Future Savvy will help you think beyond the limits of trend extrapolation to analyze your changing macro context. It will teach you how to define a cone of uncertainty . How to gain benefits and avoid losses with successful foresight Adam Gordon explains how to "identify trends to make better decisions, manage uncertainty, and profit from change." To the extent possible, he presents the material in layman's terms so that it is accessible to those who have only recently begun a career in business as well as to C-level executives. It will hardly be an "easy read" for the former, to be sure, but he patiently explains the fundamentals (including nomenclature) of forecasting. The audience he has in mind includes decision makers in commercial, policy, and nonprofit sectors but also "ordinary people" in d. Anders Hemre said A must for understanding future forecasts. The future ain't what it used to be said Yogi Berra. Maybe he was thinking of the many failed predictions of the future that have been served up over long periods of time by futurologists, experts and ordinary people alike. Berra could have said it ain't easy to remember the future. At least not everything that is being said about it. And that may be just as well as most of it will probably turn out to be wrong. Then again, maybe not so fast. Help is here as I have recently learned.In Future Savvy author Adam Gordon takes the art of thinking about the future a step fur