Environmental Scanning

It is time to put your antenna up and out, get your radar and sonar on line, open your eyes and ears - yes your nose and taster as well plus your skin and inner senses.

This course is about preparing our organizations for the future. To do that we have to know where we are today and where we might be headed. So we look at current situations in the environment of profit, nonprofit and public organizations - i.e., we look at everything around us on the planet, above and below (your know that they have found solid natural gas formations deep in the ocean of the Western Pacific with enough gas to supply the US for a century - any one else read or hear that - or see the implications?).

But how we see things depends on how we see ourselves and our lives - on our own personal solution to very real problems of how we move forward in our own lives (indeed, what moving forward actually means to each of us).

So this course gets D-e-e-e-e-e-p at times and it will challenge some of your personal values. But please do not take it personally. When I or a classmate ask you to think again about a subject that may nudge the boundaries of what your personal faith, philosophy, or creed dictates to you, we are not challenging you to mortal combat. Yes, I realize it may come to that in a very real, internalized self-debate.

But if I believe that our society can only move forward by self-sacrifice and elimination of all stimulations toward greed - and you believe in the thrill of the chase, dog eat dog and winner take all - is there a basis for discussion?

If you think that technology can solve all problems and I think that technology causes more problems than it has solved (in the long run), will we just talk past each other forever?

If we understand why each other has the theoretical bias, the philosophical bias, indeed the spiritual and religious hopes, dreams, and aspirations - some or all of which each of us have - will we not understand our customer better? And are we not each other's customer?

There was an interesting article in the Financial Times (FT - http://www.ft.com) print edition some time ago on the requirement that by 1999 in the UK, business and industry must make provision to recover or recycle (by other than landfill) 50% of all packaging - 25% must be recycled as I recall. I cannot honestly say whether they made it. Even if they did, this is just a small, first step. Supermarkets are at the top of the list of businesses that must be concerned. And we as customers rather than taxpayers will start to pay the bill.

In logistics we think of the life cycle of a product from conception to disposition and ask that our clients think in terms of life cycle costs.

Proactive thinking and pro-activity really refers to thinking through all the consequences of what we might, or want to, do BEFORE we do it. [Yes, this can lead to the classic inactivity syndrome, but it can also avoid the classic American syndrome - frenetic activity accompanied by little else - and leap first, think never - (remember "shoot first and ask questions later")]. Those of you into hunting, fishing, collecting - or working on computers, with people, etc. - will know the value of patience. But our mission in life cannot be just waiting - if we are not constantly alert for the next clue yet willing to wait until it comes, learning all the time, we may never reach our goal or get our prize. We will not reach our goal by shooting the messenger or telling workers we do not have time to listen to their complaints or cutting our client visits short because we have a quota to fill - or forcing our sales force to do the same. Being proactive means realizing a different vision of progress.

Now I want you all to start now on an article file. Get your articles from anywhere. I want you to collect articles related to this course and the subjects we are studying. Organize the articles anyway you want to, but try to find something every day and share it with the class.

Oh yes, share something no one else has brought up. Because of the time delay, this will not be so easy. If two or more people present the same article or largely duplicate each other, then I want each of them to go back and find another to present.

I want each of you to bring one topic from current periodicals - related to the course - each week or find and report on one web site. This is a class effort, so share your article; then if there are duplicates, get another.

I trust you will be truly amazed at the breadth and depth to which this course will take you in surveying the planet and activities around us.

For example, do the decisions of the German Bundesbank affect American business? What about Swiss bankers who hide gold taken from dead Jews - or live ones - by the Nazis? What about a new power plant in India or England - or battery operated vehicles in California? Or the purchase of MCI by WorldCom - or the alliance of BA and AA? Or the discovery of one of the genes responsible for hereditary Alzheimer's disease - or the congestion and spamming on the Internet? Or monopoly power - or the role of the monarchy in England? in Saudi Arabia? Or the IRA or fundamentalists? Or the use of gambling as a way for the American Indians to reclaim some of the wealth admittedly taken by force from them? Or the right of the victor to rule the vanquished?

As you can clearly see, I can go on - and on - and on . . . .

As you move through this course you will want to reorganize the articles in your growing article bank. I think you will find that a meaningful organizational pattern at one point will have less validity as you near the end of the course - at least I have (other than an alphabetical sort by the first letter of the first word on the page - which does not have a lot of utility anyway).

I hope I have plotted a course for at least some of you and a portion of our activity. Even if you do not have your books, you can surely see from the syllabus and the ideas presented here, some areas to scan the Internet, you local S+S paper, magazines, journals, radio, TV, conversations at work or at the bar, etc.

So my message is - Engage.

(What, me a Trekkie? Never, that's my wife!)