Respect the past, leave it to archaeologists

We want innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity at the speed of light … but often still see the present as a continuation of the past. That won’t work. You need to ruthlessly change focus from the past to the present and the future. If you love the past so much, you should become an archaeologist.

In today’s global environment, the past may not be the best guide for dealing with the future, let alone for predicting it. Organisations, like people, face a great challenge in managing the past. How much value is there in moving forward at full speed, ignoring the past and acting as if each moment is new? And how much value is there in continuous learning from the previous experiences, the past? The latter is the more conventional teaching. But ‘too much experience’ is a form of baggage that stops you from approaching the future from a fresh, unbiased angle. There is a lot of value in healthy forgetfulness.

There are managers who are too attached to the past. You can identify them easily by their constant references to their previous companies or experiences: “When I was at X…” They can be particularly irritating at times when you want to move forward from a fresh angle. These are 10 approaches for dealing with the past:

1. Past as pride and pillar. Looking back, you can see the foundations, the raison d’être, the justification for today’s existence.
2. Past as baggage and shame. Looking back, you recognise the mistakes and the liabilities; the things you wish never happened.
3. Past as Pain. Sometimes the past can be of a haunting nature: it is there all the time to remind you of something, to ask you for understanding/relief/an explanation.
4. Past as vacuum filler. People who use the past to fill a vacuum are sometimes insufficiently linked to the present.
5. Past as comfort. A benign form of the above, this is the ‘been there, done that’ approach.
6. Past as rear-view mirror. ‘Rear-view mirror’ people and organisations constantly look at the past for reference, almost automatically and unconsciously, like when driving.
7. Past as predictor. What happened before is seen as a good way to predict the future and therefore deal with uncertainty. People who use the past as a predictor of the future live rather linear lives, determined by previous experiences.
8. Past, what past? This is another extreme, which is more frequent than you think. People and organisations can easily go into denial mode and survive like that for a long time.
9. Past as perspective. Some people seem to manage to use the past as a healthy perspective for their own present reality. Healthy detachment is one of the best-kept secrets.
10. Past as a profession. For some reason, some people choose to become historians, palaeontologists, archaeologists or psycho-analysts. They all have a (probably genetic) fascination with the past in common.

We are what we are: it’s all in our genes (genetics) and our jeans (the environment).

• Dealing with the past is an ability usually influenced by a mixture of genetic predisposition and past experiences. Organisations need to decide (and this is a good exercise) how they want to integrate the past…
• How organisations deal with their past reveals a lot about their innovative ability.
• How organisations hire people and how those people deal with the past are both good indicators of the company‘s values and beliefs.

You should focus uncompromisingly on the now and the future, using the past only as a reference. Most of the time organisations spend in the past is not about learning, but about ‘digging’.

• Allocate a minimum amount of (protected and perhaps respectful) time to the past, but move forward quickly. Every minute spent in corporate archaeology is one less to spend on moving forward. There is only a limited amount you can learn from the past - unless you are an historian. Re-inventing and re-starting is a very healthy alternative. I am not talking about dismissing the past, but about ‘using it’ (and using it fast) as a way to move forward.
• Ask for historical references only as a way to frame them (i.e., how much time are we going to allocate to this?).
• Ban talk of ‘when I was at X’ from meetings and reviews.
• Define a time border for ‘past’. Last month may be relevant, but last year or when the company was founded may not be.
• For each time that people refer to an experience from long ago, ask them to give two references for more recent ones.
• Stop using benchmarking as a safety net to know what worked in the past or what is working now. Benchmarking is a race against somebody who has already won. Find a new race. Also remember that not all ‘Best Practices’ are best. In many cases, they are simply the best available, but this doesn’t guarantee they are the best.

In summary: learn form the past (fast), have your feet firmly planted in the now and your eyes focused on the future.

Prefer Feed-Forward to Feed-Back. Learn from the past fast so you can spend most of the time in fast-forward mode.

Write the script that explains how you will get to the desired outcome ‘tomorrow’ and I mean that literally.

Ban ‘When I was at X’ or invite those who say it to go back.

New game:

Inventing the future: 5 - Analysing the past: 0.

The Future is already happening.

Copyright © - Leandro Herrero - 2008