Many of the companies that I work with spend fabulous amounts of energy predicting the future. They call it differently, of course, like planning, goal setting or strategy development. In practice, it is all about looking into the crystal ball and making some wild-assed guesses about where the world is going. If you don’t believe me, simply go and read the predictions of so-called stock market experts from 12 months ago. Virtually all of them are wrong and the ones that are right can easily be explained by randomness. Although I recognise that companies have good reasons for needing to plan and predict, my problem is that in many cases this becomes a truth within the company as everyone starts to act as if the prediction is actual fact. We easily fall into one scenario that will cause everything to fall apart if the world behaves differently. Instead we need to be critically aware of the assumptions underlying our predictions and constantly evaluate our plans in relation to the validity of the assumptions that these plans are based on. Or do you really think you can predict the future?