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Future Present

The future is usually different than you think. The future (=arriving) present differs from the present (=expected) future. This difference is fundamental to the regulation of time systems. If a system confuses its own future expectations and plans with an actually arriving future, it will be blind to what is coming and instead will see what it wishes to see. This can end fatally or in bankruptcy.

This, however, is the case much more often than one would like to believe. Terms associated with this are tunnel vision, blindness, stubbornness, planning fixation, disbelief or wearing blinkers. Social as well as psychological systems can fixate onto the present future view so much, that they become blind to what others have been able to see for a long time: that the arriving circumstances will be different than assumed.

Especially in organisations, the paradoxical nature of time (the future is both open and closed at the same time!) creates the phenomenon that on the one side plans have to be made and these plans must be robust, and on the other hand a plan B is required so one can be ready for something completely different. The latter is often neglected.