The Idea Of Prescience For Managers

Read The Vision Idea For Managers
PRESCIENCE

Prescience is something for which you really have to work at.
Prescience is having foreknowledge of the future. Particularly as a Protector, you have to know in advance the external events which impact upon your team. The key is information and there are three type:

• information you hear (tit-bits about travel, meetings, etc)
• information you gather (minutes of meetings, financial figure, etc)
• information you infer (if this happens then my team will need ...)

Information is absolutely vital. 

Surveys of decision making in companies reveal that the rapid and decisive decisions normally stem not from intuitive and extraordinary leadership but rather from the existence of an established information system covering the relevant data. 

Managers who know the full information can quickly reach an informed decision.

The influences upon you and your team stem mostly from within the company and this is where you must establish an active interest.

 Let us put that another way: if you do not keep your eyes open you are failing in your role as Protector to you team. Thus if your manager comes back from an important meeting, sit down with him/her afterwards and have a chat.

 There is no need to employ subterfuge, merely ask questions. If there are answers, you hear them; if there are none, you know to investigate elsewhere.  If you can provide your manager with suggestions/ideas then you will benefit from his/her gratitude and future confidence(s). 

You should also talk to people in other departments; and never forget the secretaries who are normally the first to know everything.

Now some people love this aspect of the job, it makes them feel like politicians or espionage agents; others hate it, for exactly the same reasons. 

The point is that it must be done or you will be unprepared; but do not let it become a obsession. 

Gathering information is not enough on its own: you have to process it and be aware of implications. The trick is to try to predict the next logical step from any changes you see. 

This can get very complicated, so try to restrict yourself to guessing one step only.

 Thus if the sales figures show a tailing off for the current product (and there are mutterings about the competition) then if you are in development, you might expect to be pressured for tighter schedules; if you are in publicity, then there may soon be a request for launch material; if you are in sales, you might be asked to establish potential demand and practical pricing levels. 

Since you know this, you can have the information ready (or a schedule defence prepared) for when it is first requested, and you and your team will shine.

Another way of generating information is to play "what if" games. There are dreadfully scientific ways of performing this sort of analysis, but reasonably you do not have the time. 

The sort of work this article is suggesting is that you, with your team or other managers (or both), play "what if" over coffee now and then. 

All you have to do is to postulate a novel question and see how it runs. 

A productive variation on the "what if" game is to ask: "what can go wrong?"
By deliberately trying to identify potential problems at the onset, you will prevent many and compensate for many more. 

Set aside specific time to do this type of thinking. 

Call it contingency planning and put in in your diary as a regular appointment.

Best Wishes.