Eamonn Kelly, a partner of the Monitor Group and CEO of Global Business Network, a scenario strategy consultancy, offers the thinking manager a clearly marked path towards a future full of uncertainty. It is a bit unnerving to consider all the obstacles he lays out end to end: fundamentalism, the rise of non-state actors, risky scientific and technological inventions, the aging of nations, increasing economic inequity, threats to the environment, and all the attendant ramifications for organizations. You may want to batten down the hatches. Powerful Times is more contemplative than typical management books, focusing as it does on economic, social, and geopolitical trends. But with the future as Kelly's business for the past fifteen years, his advice is considered and credible, and there is lots of room for optimism.
Four sections put focus to such an unwieldy topic as the future: “What's Happening? Predicting the Present,” “What If? Changing for the Challenges Ahead,” “What's Next? Scenarios for the Next Decade,” and “So What? Acting in an Era of Transformation.” The book is further subdivided into chapters on technology, governance, prosperity, innovation, and so on. The chapter on innovation, for example, addresses sustainability and the potential for motivated people to design technologies and policies in the spirit of innovation. He writes, “There are reasons to be optimistic that the emergent economies might manage to develop themselves along a more sustainable path and gain real advantages by doing so. With less installed base and fewer legacy systems, they can design more efficient and sustainable processes and products. . . .They may be able to adopt patterns of recycling and reuse that have eluded the West. Many of the economies now taking off have a long history and culture of mending, tending, and making do; they are not 'throw away' cultures.”
In the end, he says, empathy is what will make the future bright. Companies must be empathetic, too. It's essential to extend the meaning of “we” beyond our homes, neighborhoods, cites, and organizations, and try to unite the best interests of people around the world, he writes. “We have globalized the economy and culture, but we have not yet globalized our sense of ourselves; that lies in our better future.”