Leave survivors to their survival. How do you prepare for the ultimate unknowable … the future? We humans typically do it by analysing the past for patterns and projecting those into the future. However, when we do this, we load those projections with plenty of cognitive biases, assumptions and blind spots of which we are not even aware.
This leads to us most often getting it wrong. So how can you prepare for a good 2025 and avoid these pitfalls?
I am so glad you asked. Be more mindful of your bias when making projections.
This is easily achieved by asking ‘what if…’ of your scenarios.
For example, if you made inroads into a particular industry and you’ve spotted that pattern and, as a strategy for 2025, are planning to go all-in on that industry, ask yourself what if …
- What if this is merely coincidence?
- What if this is limited?
- What if this is a function of my network, rather than a trend?
You can see immediately how alternative strategies suggest themselves in response to these questions. My favourite bias that must be addressed when looking to the future is Survival bias, also known as survivorship bias. This is what happens when we only concentrate people or strategies that have succeeded and ignore those that have failed.
The best-known illustration of this was the analysis done of the damage patterns on World War II bombers when they returned to base. By analysing the damaged bombers and seeing where they took a lot of hits and survived, you might be tempted to reinforce those areas. But what was left out of that analysis are the bombers that failed to return. If bombers returned with damage in these areas, that damage was survivable, which means all the areas where the surviving bombers did NOT take damage is what needs to be reinforced.
When we are looking at our results, and success stories from social media, we are seeing the equivalent of the returning bombers. We MUST think further and spot the equally important pattern of what did NOT work, what resulted in failure.
There is often no direct correlation between what worked with one business or strategy and a general rule of it working all the time. That is no more than an assumption. One of the major pitfalls of social media is that so many business influencers are peddling what worked for THEM as recipes for success for everyone.
They are not.
They may work for some people, but there is simply no one-size-fits-all solution. In over two thousand years of commerce since the industrial revolution, such a solution would have been discovered if it existed.
So, to best prepare yourself for 2025, don’t study the successes, the big wins, the low hanging fruit. Unpack the failures, the interested but failed, the diverse, the alternative.
There you will find a gold mine of promising ideas and strategies that, with some adaptation, can help you get where you want to go.
Just remember to first get clear on where you want to go.
