The futurewise company has worked with MANN+HUMMEL on scenario planning and strategic foresight. The managing board wanted to build a new capability across the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We sat down with Kurk Wilks, CEO of MANN+HUMMEL, to hear what has changed. His answer was clear: the company has stopped trying to predict the future and started preparing for various scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cAs our chairman and the managing board thought about how to help this organization build this muscle on scenario planning, we really appreciated the work you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
When predictable markets stop being predictable<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
For a long time, MANN+HUMMEL could see its future coming. In its traditional markets, especially transportation, customers worked within a stable framework, and close relationships made demand easy to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cThe customers had a pretty consistent framework of what they would build. We had good intimate relationships with them. And as a result, we could predict what opportunities came from those futures.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
That certainty has gone. Wilks describes customer preferences shifting, new customers and competitors entering the market and displacing others, and disruption on the geopolitical front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cIn some of our markets that were pretty static and predictable, in certain segments, this has changed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
These are new topics for the company, he says, and they have forced it to become more flexible and agile in how it responds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From \u201cwhat will happen\u201d to \u201cwhat could happen\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The biggest change Wilks names is a change of question. Instead of betting on a single forecast, MANN+HUMMEL\u2019s leadership now maps a range of possible futures and asks whether the company is ready for each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cIt has given us a different methodology in terms of how to see the future: less trying to predict an absolute outcome, but more looking at signals of what could be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
He is candid about the old habit. The company was, in his words, probably optimistic about knowing what would happen. In a world with this much change, that no longer holds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cWe have to start to ask the question of what could happen. Now, it doesn\u2019t provide the excuse. It really just puts us into a more robust view of a scenario, from the most optimistic to the most pessimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The scenarios help teams spot early signals that already exist today, but that the organisation was never trained to notice. Many of those signals used to arrive for free, through customers and stable markets. Now the company has to go looking, using its own intelligence and different approaches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cTo determine what are the signals that we probably could see now if we were looking, but maybe aren\u2019t what our muscles are trained to see. And this is really the work I\u2019ve appreciated.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Wilks applies this thinking to each of MANN+HUMMEL\u2019s segments. The aim, as he puts it, is to find a common thread across varying scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Practical, not theoretical<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Foresight work can sound abstract. Wilks says his teams experienced the opposite, and they told him so more than once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cOf course there\u2019s some theory behind it. But our teams have told us repeatedly, as they\u2019ve gone through this project with you, it\u2019s very practical in terms of its application to the real world we live in, in our business, in the markets that we serve.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
In practice, MANN+HUMMEL\u2019s leadership teams worked through exercises such as futures wheels, exploring potential anomalies and the signals that would point to them. That work now feeds directly into today\u2019s decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cIt\u2019s really helped us then to determine, more current time, what adjustments we should be making now to make sure, again, we stay agile, flexible and resilient.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
A new muscle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Wilks returns to one image throughout the interview: a muscle the organisation did not have before and is now building. For the futurewise company, that is the goal of every engagement. Not a report on the shelf, but a lasting capability to see change early and act on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve really appreciated the new muscles you\u2019ve helped us build.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
We thank Kurk Wilks and the MANN+HUMMEL teams for their openness and their trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Watch the full video here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n