Graham T. T. MolitorDirector of Government RelationsGeneral Mills, Inc.(S.A.M. Advanced Management Journal, Summer 1977)

The best that any organization can expect to do in dealing with ever-increasing federal regulation and the fast-changing socio-political environment is muddle through, right? "Wrong!" says the author. Such an approach is too costly and too dangerous. Besides, he says, it is possible for a company, through an understanding of public-policy genesis and development, to anticipate what public-policy changes will occur and accommodate them with a minimum of stress and costs. Forecasting with a very thigh degree of accuracy specific public-policy developments covering ten years ahead is possible, in the author's opinion, simply because such developments don't come as a bolt out of the blue. Generally, a period of ten years elapses before substantial interest in an issue develops, prompting action to be taken. In his article, the author identifies some key factors for tracking and measuring the evolution of public-policy changes.

Today, important changes are taking place in what people and, more important, the government expect of business. Hindsight confessions from an organization about its failure to perceive the new requirements imposed on it are no excuse and will carry little weight. That's why the skill to anticipate and adapt to social and political change is becoming increasingly critical to business.

In a world of uncertainties, where change is the one thing we can count on, businesses need the ability to anticipate and adapt successfully to change in both matters of public policy and their own market pursuits. Through marketing and sales forecasts, organizations can obtain the information they need to understand trends and deal with the rapid and often illogical ups and downs of the marketplace. Through a better understanding of public-policy genesis and development, organizations should be able to foresee public-policy changes and be responsive to them. Such an approach enables change--that is the key concept, change--to be accommodated with minimal disruption.

Public-policy anticipation affords an organization the opportunity to minimize, if not avoid, the sometimes protracted and always costly defense of the indefensible. Merely muddling through--"benevolent neglect" as some have described it--is too erratic, too costly, and even too dangerous a course for dealing with "sudden" changes in the priorities of society at large.

Public-policy prediction model

After several years of experimenting with techniques for tracking and predicting probable implementation dates for public-policy issues, a number of approaches have been developed. So far, well over one hundred specific quantitative techniques have been identified and are being refined. An understanding of the basic concepts can lead to a better understanding of how change imposed by public policy can be anticipated.

The basic approach focuses worldwide, concentrating on the era of industrialization starting from the mid-1800s. Based on an examination of thousands of issues with wide currency during this period, it appears possible to predict the emergence and probable implementation date of most new public laws, for any country, at any point in history.

Anticipating specific public-policy developments looking ten years ahead is possible with a very high degree of accuracy. General predictions can be made as far as 60 or 70 years ahead; however, such long-range predictions are less accurate and mainly of academic interest.

Such predictions are possible simply because public-policy determinations don't come as a bolt out of the blue. New public policy isn't made overnight. New laws proceed through an evolutionary process. Their actual appearance is preceded by long shadows - long trains of activity. At bottom are certain structural forces that gain momentum over time and giver rise to what I term "issue environments." Some of these underlying forces may span as much as one hundred years of longer.

Combinations of these structural undercurrents come together as an issue progresses. This convergence of forces raises such "noise" or dissonance within the social system that demands for political response will soon follow.

There hasn't been a new federal law enacted in recent times that didn't require less than six to ten years to proceed from initial discussion to

enactment. Generally, a period of some ten years elapses before sufficient interest and pressure develop behind a n issue to force government to take action. To be sure, there are many false starts. But that ten-year period, during which the issue often undergoes a tortuous course of adversary confrontation, provides a substantial period of time for discussion and debate before the cry for a public-policy change is forged into new law of regulation.

The process of change

In the accompanying figures, key factor in tracking and measuring the evolution of public-policy changes are shown. They illustrate that the process of change invariably starts with aberrant and unique events that, when aggregated, reveal meaningful patterns. Authorities in the scientific, technical, and professional fields undertake to comment on and analyze such phenomena. Shortly thereafter, the observations of leading authorities are reduced to the written word and begin appearing in leading publications.

These writings lead to widespread dissemination of the ideas, increase interest in them, and give rise to various kinds of organizations that institutionalize the cause and provide a sustained base for advocating change. Politicians, who try to reflect the popular will, pick up on such trends. Finally, governmental bodies on national and international levels take action in response to the cry for legislation.

Each of the steps along the way, when structured in a time-series manner, tends to follow an "S-curve" pattern. As the accompanying figures show, at the outset, the slopes of these curves take off slowly, then rise steeply, and finally taper off. Each sequence of events plotted involves "leads and lags," one to the other. By overlaying the time-series plotted for each o the five forces, it is possible to describe the point at which they converge. Convergence diagrams describe "points of critical mass" - that is , the take-off juncture for serious and intensive action on a public-policy issue. Let's look more closely at the process.

Figure 1

Leading Events - -Deployed in a time-series, isolated events build up to a "data wall" describing an abuse or excess so unconscionable that remedial action is virtually assured.

Key Tracking Point: "Data walls" amass to "critical mass," "take off" points at which time (depending on "cost benefits") a virtually irreversible course for change is reached.

Leading Events. Figure 1 depicts how isolated events, often viewed at first as bizarre or unique, eventually are pulled together, and also how aggregation or the events prompts analysis and the identification of patterns or trends. The first heralding of an idea may be an emotional response to limited, often faulty data and inadequate supportive reasoning. The penchant for overreaction in democracies often blows issues out of proportion in early discussion. Only over time does a balanced understanding of the new phenomena develop.

Figure 2

Leading Authorities/Advocates - -Intellectual elites who analyze and articulate social problems tend to emerge around an issue - - likewise the victimized, even though less capable of articulating their plight, emote their feelings and often become powerful propaganda symbols for change.

Key Tracking Point: Usually less than 12 innate innovators can be pinpointed on any issue; by monitoring these early vanguards whose ideas ultimately are diffuse widely, early indications of change can be forecasted.

Leading authorities/advocates. Figure 2 depicts how random phenomena or isolated events are focused on by authorities and advocates who begin discussing and interpreting the issues involved. The schema patterns the various classes of authorities who engage the issues. In this figure, notice that most classes of authorities who engage the issues. In this figure, notice that most politicians tend to join the vanguard for change relatively late in the game.

Figure 3

Leading Literature - -Written records progress from modest benefits to the more prolix which serve to explicate parameter and refine thinking, then to mass literature for public consumption.

Key Tracking Point: Various classes of literature emerge at different times -- lead-lag times of up to 100 years can be involved -- therefore, "early warnings" about emerging problems can be obtained from careful literature search.

One commentator has estimated that politicians take up a cause after 20 to 40 percent of the people have begun to think that the issue involved is important. Since legislators usually reflect the views of their constituencies, this comment appears logical. Political statesmen and ideological leaders enter the process much earlier, often rallying favorable public opinion behind unpopular and even obscure matters.

Figure 4

Leading Organizations--Innate innovators attract adherents which build up into formal followings and usually become institutionalized.

Key Tracking Point: Growth of institutional backing for a cause--whether measured by number of organizations, persons involved, or resources committed--follows exponential increases which tend to force serious consideration of the issue by public policy makers.

Leading Literature. The third figure shows the ways that experts begin to revise and set down in permanent form their comments on the issues. After speaking out and commenting only informally, these authorities begin to write about their ideas. Eventually conjecture and hypothesis find their way into the permanent written record. Often there is as much as one-to-six-year

lag between the time when an expert first talks about an idea and the time when his views are finally published in a serious journal.

Shown in Figure 3 is a continuum of the various kinds of journals. This schema illustrates the approximate time lags between publication in various classes of literature. Scientific, technical, and professional literature constitute that real core area. Once an idea has been widely written about and has become well established, a "point of no return" on the issue has been reached. Implementation is not far behind.

Leading organizations. As all of this is happening, various organizations of one sort of another begin--informally at first, then much more formally--to gather around the issue. A lightening-rod effect occurs, as shown in Figure 4. Interest among organizations usually develops first at a local level, then flows until, ultimately, it reaches the international level. The organizational base provides continuity and a cadre for pursuing the issue.

Figure 5

Leading Political Jurisdictions --Early innovators and experimenters show the way to others -- after idea is proven, other jurisdictions emulate, follow.

Key Tracking Point: Some 4-6 countries (and often simultaneously their internal local jurisdictions) invariably are the first to innovate by implementing new public policy ideas -- these leading jurisdictions vary with different times in history and for different issues.

Leading political jurisdictions. During the course of this process, governments--which can be termed "precursor jurisdictions"--begin to take action to implement the idea. This stage is shown in Figure 5.

Once a new law is implemented by a number of jurisdictions, both internationally and domestically (at state and local levels, other jurisdictions tend to follow suit. That is, provided the new policy is proven to effective. The process of other jurisdictions following the lead of early adopters can be termed "diffusion patterns." For different periods of history, particular

countries or groups of nations have been "early adopters." Sweden in a variety of issue ares is now such a leader.

For several years, I have conducted extensive interviews in Scandinavia, primarily in Sweden. I have talked with several hundred private and public figures to develop an in-depth understanding of impending issues, particularly consumer-policy developments. Largely based on this work, it appears there are some two thousand consumer issues not implemented by the U.S. federal government. A substantial portion of these issues will most likely be implemented in the United States over the next 20 years or so. (Most major consumer issues over the last 30 to 40 years were implemented in Sweden as much as two to 20 years ahead of the United States.)

Figure 6

Conclusion

In summary, there are five basic forces that prompt public-policy changes. These forces follow sequential patterns, at some point swelling toward a convergence, thereby creating a dissonance within the society that demands laws to "correct" the problems. As events flow over time, authorities pick up on them. Nest, the number of articles builds up, providing a permanent record on the issue and wider dissemination of the ideas. At about this stage, a number of organizations begin to converge around the issue, bringing the cycle to a close. Political jurisdictions finally are pressured to respond to demands for change.

None of the data plottings I suggest is subjective. All are based on hard numbers--quantitative data. The figures show that, as a trend moves along, the speed with which it moves increases at a very rapid or exponential rate. By overlaying the time-series plots, as shown in Figure 6, it is possible to determine the point where "data tracks" coalesce and form the point of critical mass, the take-off point. A the take-off Point, the pace of change itself creates pressures for action. The issue now has reached a level where it begins receiving intense and special attention. From this point onward, the forward momentum is so strong that the ability to alter the idea's course becomes most difficult.

The schematic overview provides a basis to begin making forecasts. Such predictions should enable management to address itself to public-policy changes in an anticipatory way. Such an approach would:

Lessen or avoid the often costly impact of political or social determinations on a business.

Enable a company to prepare or develop with ample lead time alternative products of procedures.

Permit an organization to plan how to use its resources more astutely. Provide opportunities for exercising industry leadership and

improving the business's image.

 Graham T. T. Molitoris director of government relations for General Mills, Inc. in Washington, D.C. He completed political science undergraduate studies at the University of Washington and graduated from American University Law School. From 1969 until 1974, Mr. Molitor taught courses in government-business relations and corporate social responsibility from American University. From 1972-73, on leave of absence, he worked fro the White House as director of research, White House Conference on the Industrial World Ahead. Presently he is a member of the White House Advisory Committee on Social Indicators and over 40 other committees, advisory boards, and organizations.

Trend Analysis vs Emerging Issues Analysis

by Jim Dator

    Trend analysis is the most common formal method anyone attempting to look at the future uses.

    The technique is conceptually simple: identify something important in the present, trace back its historical development and then cast that rate of development ahead into the future and see what that reveals.

    For example, if you want to forecast the population size of a community for the next twenty years by trend analysis, you might find out what the population was twenty years into the past, and see how it has grown (or fallen, or cycled up and down) each year to the present, and then extrapolate whatever you find to be the historical "shape of the curve" into the future. If population has grown at a more or less steady amount per year in the past, then you might extrapolate that amount steadily into the future. Or if you find that the rate of population growth has increased more or less steadily each year, then you might use that increasing rate of growth to forecast the future (and you would get a much larger number if the "rate of growth" were used in contrast to the amount of growth year: the rate is multiplicative while the amount is just added to the total).

    However, you may find that the population rises and falls in some steady pattern of inmigration and outmigration, and so forecast that cycle into the future.

    The point is, whatever you find to be the case historically is what you trend-forecast into the future.

    Trend analysis is very useful. It helps you see what might be the case "if trends continue" in the future as they did in the past. But trend analysis is seldom an accurate "prediction" because "trends seldom continue." Something always seems to happen to interrupt most trends. And these things might be the things which could better be understood by the methods of cyclical, age-cohort, or technological analysis.

    Or, the trend might not continue because of interference by an "emerging issue."

    So let's take a look at what "emerging issue analysis" is in contrast to trend analysis. We are following the perspective first identified by Graham Molitor in his article, "How to anticipate public-policy changes".

    As we have said many times before, very thing that exists now at one time did not exist. Everything that is a big problem now--that everyone know about, is concerned about, has an opinion about, hears discussed on talk shows on TV and the radio as well as over the backyard fence, is the subject of speeches in the legislature--everything like that at one time did not exist. This thing that everyone knows about may be a technology, a social institution, a religious belief, a political ideology, a disease, an astronomical event--anything!

    But at one time it did not exist. No one had ever heard of it, or worried about it, or perhaps even imagined it. But now, every one does.

    Well, everything like that at some point in time "emerged"--peaked up into view, although almost no one saw it when it did. But some one did, and said so, but no one paid any attention--she was known to be unreliable, a bit flaky, always worried about things that bothered no one.

    But a few of her companions also noticed it, and began to talk about it. But who were they? Outcasts, druggies, criminals, misfits, malcontents, street people, college professors.

    Yes, a finally a college professor noticed it, and mentioned it in class, where no one else could hear. The students had long since known to discount anything that professor said. "Loony toones" they said.

    But then a few of the professor's loony companions took it up, and began to talk about it over coffee. And then someone wrote an article about it, but no respectable journal would publish it, so they posted it to chatline, where it was roundly dismissed. Except that someone in Finland read about it, and said he had seen the same thing in Bosnia when he was there recently.

    So more and more people began to notice it, and talk about it, and write about it. Respectable journals of highbrow opinion began to publish articles about it. Then it was mentioned, in passing, on "All Things Considered"--public radio that hardly anyone listens too.

    But it did appear in a back page of the New York Times. And then a public access TV show in San Francisco did a show on it. And that was picked up by a local TV station in the Bay Area, and later by the San Francisco Chronicle.

    Meanwhile, academia had begun to focus in on it. It was being discussed by many scholars. Conventions were being held, and it was often debated online.

    Finally, it hit the major TV stations and newspapers. Oprah had some children of perverts who had taken it to extremes tell embarrassing stories about their mothers who had done it.

    Finally, people were demanding somebody do something about this. There ought to be a law. It ought to be outlawed. It was disgusting.

    But others said no, that it was divine, and began to worship it, and demand religious protection.

    It became the talk of the town; the rage of the continent. Something everyone had an opinion about. Sen. Jesse Helms declared it thoroughly un-American and disgusting. Congressman Richard Gephart built it in as a plank for his presidential campaign.

    But, eventually, the furor past. People got used to it. Young people grown up with it all around them, and treated it as perfectly natural and ordinary; certainly no big thing.

    And eventually it just sort of died out. No one noticed it any more. In fact, there wasn't much to notice.

    And then, years and years later, someone wrote a PhD. dissertation about it, and that was that. It was as dead as a doornail--whatever a "doornail" is.

    So there you have it--the life cycle of everything: from nothing to something tiny, to something growing rapidly, to something very prominent, to something accepted and barely noticed, to something declining, to something dead and buried.

    And sometimes staying buried, but often then, years later somehow rising from the dead as something new, unnoticed, controversial, and...well, on and on it goes.

    Trend analysis focuses on things when they are already well under way--long after they initially emerged, but before they have become commonplace.

    Trend analysis focuses on things that already have a history of development that can be traced and forecast.

    Emerging issues analysis, in contrast, focuses on things just as they are emerging--as close to their very first notice as possible; certainly before they become a well-established "trend," and never as a commonplace "problem".

    Trend analysis can use facts and figures, since the thing has been noted, documented, tracked.

    Emerging issues analysis has no such clear facts and figures. Instead, it tries to see things that barely visible. Its sources are crazy people, marginal people, off-beat publications, in the recesses of the mind of some scientist or engineer. The concern of some artist or poet, or unpublished novelist.

    Or at least, after it has emerged a bit, in obscure academic publications or listservs, talked about over too beers at Anna Banannas. Or after hours of food and sleep-deprived meditation.

    Or, if you can't locate anything in the earliest and subsequent period of emergence, then look for emerging patterns--for something that is for the first time being discussed in lots of different journals, listservs, or academic circles. Patterns are often more important than isolated items, but they are a bit farther up the life cycle of growth of an issue.

    Now, both trend analysis and emerging issue analysis are important. But if you really want to be a futurist, you need to become good at emerging issues analysis.

    So we have two homework assignments for you. One is to demonstrate to yourself that theory of emerging issue analysis is correct by taking something obvious and commonplace in the present and finding its earliest mention. Then trace its growth to the present.

    Then we will ask you to find an emerging issue of your own--something hidden, obscure, unknown BUT REAL in the present which could grow into an important problem or opportunity in the future.

    OR OPPORTUNITY. We have been talking entirely about the emergence and growth of "problems", but you must understand that "opportunities" follow the same pattern of emergence and growth. There are solutions to present "problems" lying in future "opportunities" which you should try to identify, and nurture.

    So emerging issues analysis looks both for emerging opportunities as well as emerging problems.

    Sometimes this process of looking for emerging issues and trends is called "Environmental Scanning." Note that this use of "environment" does not mean just looking at ecological or "natural" objects. Here, "environmental scanning" refers to the act of looking for evidence of emerging issues or trends that might be of importance to you, your firm, your institution, or your community. The article by Richard Slaughter shows that more and more organizations are involved in Environmental Scanning in an effort to prevent, or be prepared for, future problems and to take advantage of new opportunities as soon as possible.

Environmental Scanning -A Knowledge Industry For 21st Century

by Richard A. Slaughter

    The global environment is constantly emitting an infinite number of signals about many, many processes. No individual, no organisation, can pay attention to more than a tiny fraction of them. In addition, the early signals of potentially influential phenomena are usually small, indistinct and hard to separate from the background noise. Yet the earlier they can be detected, the longer is the lead-time available to respond. So the central task of environmental scanning (ES) is to reconcile sensitivity to new and significant information with careful, systematic selection criteria. Given the turbulence of the early 21st century environment, the dysfunctions embedded in social, economic and some technical systems, and the rapid pace of change, ES promises to be one of the most widespread industries of the near future. It is quintessentially an information-, and knowledge-based activity. It will become ubiquitously necessary as organisations at all levels struggle to find their feet amidst the turbulence and create viable strategies for moving forward.

 

    There is a human and a technical aspect to ES. The human side is primary because the skills involved demand high-order cognitive skills.

 

    Significantly, this is where futures work based on humanistic, critical and cultural sources comes into its own. From this perspective it is understood that all cultures contain non-rational elements, that values, institutions and traditions are socially-constructed, and that language and meaning are far more subtle and open-ended than earlier scientific and empiricist views allowed. So to carry out ES well requires an in-depth immersion in cultural understanding and the humanities. In this view, the most productive insights about the emerging future are less available through standard methodologies such as trend analysis and forecasting than from immersion in a high-quality futures

discourse and the subsequent development of reflexivity, judgement and discrimination [1].

 

    That said, the technical side of ES is also important. One of the earliest tasks for an organisation setting up an ES system is to create its own particular scanning frame. This is a device for paring away 99.99% of reality in order to focus on the signals, the processes, that have a direct bearing on the present and future functioning of the organisation. The scanning frame acts as a dynamic filter to screen out unwanted material. But, in so doing, it may also miss new and significant information. Hence the frame must be constantly re-assessed and revised to take account of the new, the novel, the lone signal that may herald entirely novel phenomena. Entire books have been written on how to set up an ES system within an organisation [2]. They contain all the basic knowledge needed: the key purposes, the operational requirements, the information systems needed and the uses to which the products of ES may be put by decision-makers. These technical and organisational issues must be resolved on a case-by-case basis. There is no one right way to set up an effective ES system.

 

    Overall, it seems to me that high-quality environmental scanning will necessarily become a core competence within a wide range of organisations. The informal, CEO-led, ES of the past which depended solely on a personal, idiosyncratic, reading of the external environment is now as useful as a paper hat in a hurricane. The torrent of change we are all immersed in will certainly overturn many industrial era assumptions and the organisations based upon them. We can already see this happening with schools, government departments and many, many businesses. In each case the imperatives operating within organisations are increasingly out of sync with those of the wider world. So, like the human capacity for foresight in general, ES is a necessary innovation which serves to protect from anticipated dangers and also alert us to whole new areas of opportunity. Here are three brief examples.

 

    Many people are aware of the uncomfortable fact that old diseases such as malaria, typhoid and bubonic plague are re-emerging around the world. But fewer, I suspect, may be aware that the underlying character of the

epidemiological environment is shifting. In brief, humans have penetrated to the heart of what once was unpopulated wilderness

    Organisms which once cycled endlessly in limited populations of animals and insects have been disturbed and are making their way out into the wider world. The story of the Ebola virus is well known. But it is by no means the only example [3]. Another factor is that humans have created an extensive battery of chemical weapons in the war against microbes.

 

    In so doing, and in the absence of wider systemic awareness, they have merely exerted selection pressure on those same populations. The result is the emergence of drug resistant species. The point is that the dynamics governing the epidemiological environment in which we live are changing. We need to be aware of this in order to deal with the problem at source, not merely through palliative measures that merely perpetuate our collective vulnerability.

 

    Years ago I came across an academic paper with a title something like: Up and Down With the Issue-Attention Cycle. It suggested that here was a cyclic process by which certain issues sprang to public notice and then seemed to vanish for long periods of time. This is exactly what has happened with what some call the life-extension revolution. Over the years I have noticed a stream of signals both about fundamental research into the mechanisms and control of aging, and also those speculating about the possible implications. It seems that the life-span of each species has been arbitrarily set by nature. Furthermore, once the process of aging has been fully understood, so a dramatic set of social and ethical choices and decisions arise. How long should we live? Who should choose? etc. Such choices are hard enough, but there is another feedback loop that should concern us. With world population set to exceed 6 billion and to double in a short period thereafter, does not life extension exacerbate an already impossible situation? It is a prime example of a proposed innovation for which we arguably do not have the values, ethics and wisdom to use well. The same is arguably true of the last example.

 

    I first read about nanotechnology in a book by Stewart Brand [4]. I then discovered that perhaps the first signal to indicate that something new was in the air was a paper delivered by US physicist Richard Feynman in 1959! The

nanotech issue developed rapidly and has now become a multi-pronged R&D effort complete with conferences, organisations (eg. the Foresight Institute) and web sites. The perspective is stunning. Materials, machines, structures will no longer be created out of large lumps of matter; they will be constructed atom by atom from the basic building blocks by so-called replicating assemblers, tiny machines capable of building anything from anything [5]. Nanotech is not yet a proven reality. But enough signals now exist to suggest that it will become one over the coming decades. Even a modest implementation of nanotech would overturn many industries, provide new shocks to social structures and economies, and yet again raise major questions about the purpose and viability of human life on this earth. I regard this as one of the single most dramatic examples of the need for foresight as a social capacity.

[This article first appeared in Foresight Connections Vol. 1 No 1, published by the Futures Study Centre].

[1] See Slaughter, Richard 'The Foresight Principle', Adamantine Press, London, (1995).

[2] Choo, Chun Wei, 'Information Management for the Intelligent Organisation: the Art of Scanning the Environment', ASIS/Information Today, Toronto, (1995).

[3] Brand, Stewart 'The Media Lab', Penguin, (1987).

[4] Brand, Stewart op cit.

[5] Regis, Ed, 'Nano', Bantam, (1997).