Vices and Virtues that Impact Foresight, #14

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How many of us have tried to convince another about the merits of an argument using data, facts, science, evidence and logic, only to make no progress at all.  The biases and lenses we all use to filter information changes our reality and view of the future as the following examples demonstrate.

On a frozen January afternoon in 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 sat on the runway at Washington National Airport. Snow drifted across the tarmac, visibility was low, and ice clung to the wings and engine inlets. Inside the cockpit, Captain Larry Wheaton studied the power readings with a growing sense of unease. “That doesn’t look right, does it?” he said softly—less a warning than a quiet appeal.

His first officer sensed the danger too. The instruments looked wrong. The engines felt slow. Nearby aircraft reported dangerous levels of ice. Yet both men excused their concerns, hoping the other would carry the burden of truth. Their unease grew, but neither spoke with the clarity reality demanded. Weak signals accumulated around them like snow flakes.

Moments later, Flight 90 lifted off with too little thrust. The engines stalled almost instantly, strangled by ice. The aircraft plunged into the Potomac River, killing seventy-eight people.

There was no mechanical failure.

The system did not break.

The humans did.

This cockpit was not simply a tragedy—it was a perfect illustration of moral misalignment: the quiet internal distortions that disable clear perception, distort orientation, and prevent leaders from acting on reality as it actually is. The pilots were not incompetent or malicious. They were human beings under emotional pressure, swept along by subtle vices—fear, deference, denial, avoidance, ego sensitivity. Each distortion was small. Together they made catastrophe inevitable.

Most systems do not crash into icy rivers; they drift, little by little, until the drift becomes distance. And always, misalignment destroys foresight long before it destroys anything else. Every inflection point begins with weak signals. Every future arrives with early warnings. But leaders, teams and organizations who are internally misaligned cannot adequately perceive them.

You cannot anticipate what you refuse to perceive. Let me repeat this point, “You cannot anticipate what you refuse to perceive.” Weak signals register only in systems that are aligned enough—internally clear enough—to let discomfort become information that is acted upon. 

Flight 90 was surrounded by signals: ice on the wings, abnormal power readings, sluggish acceleration, warnings from other pilots. But misalignment muffled those cues until they were no longer signals—only noise.

When leaders and organizations lose alignment, they lose their future.

Practicing & Navigating the Future, #13

Imagine being assigned to repair a complex machine without proper instructions. You know it should function, but you’re not sure whether the leftover screws, washers and roll of red wire are optional or the reason it doesn’t turn on. That’s what leading without foresight feels like.

Frank Diana, principal futurist at Tata Consultancy Services, argues foresight is the instruction manual for navigating the future’s chaos. Only his manual doesn’t give you a single design—it lays out multiple possibilities.

Frank Diana’s Map of the Future

Diana’s core idea is simple: stop predicting one future and start preparing for many different possibilities. He calls the method possibility chains. Picture them as dominoes. One disruption triggers another, then another. Generative AI enters the office, hiring patterns shift, training budgets move, spans of control widen, real estate needs shrink, tax bases wobble, regulations evolve. Each trigger is a link in a chain, and together they form a picture of how the future might branch.

This is what makes Diana distinct. He isn’t interested in trend lists that sit in slide decks; he’s interested in how trends connect, converge, multiply and amplify. Foresight isn’t prophecy; it’s practice. Leaders rehearse possible branches the way pilots run simulators—so when turbulence comes, muscle memory kicks in.

The Great Energy Rethink with Expert David Carlin

In this episode of FOBtv, we tackle one of the most urgent questions of our time: Can the world grow richer without cooking the planet? Our guest, David Carlin, argues that we’re framing the climate challenge all wrong. The real goal isn’t to use less energy—it’s to use cleaner energy, and that shift in mindset radically reshapes how we think about growth, development, and the future of global prosperity.

Take a deep dive into the report: https://lnkd.in/ezQC8abU

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Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/dKrmUPmS

*I use AI in all my work.

************************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Futurist, and Lecturer at TCS

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Follow me on X @krbenedict

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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Loops, Truth, and Tempo: The Strategic Genius of John Boyd, #12

John Boyd never got queasy on a carnival ride. He loved loops. He flew them, he studied them, and eventually he turned them into one of the most powerful strategic tools of the modern age. In the cockpit, loops were his edge—rolling, climbing, and diving until he was behind his opponent in forty seconds or less. Later, in briefing rooms filled with generals and CEOs, loops became his metaphor for how to outthink, outmaneuver, and outlast any rival.

Boyd was a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, but calling him that undersells him. He was part pilot, part mathematician, part philosopher, and part troublemaker. He asked questions nobody wanted asked, and once he started, he wouldn’t stop until you saw the world differently.

The 40-Second Rule and Energy–Maneuverability Theory

Boyd’s legend began in the cockpit. They called him “40-Second Boyd.” His standing bet was simple: start in any position, and within forty seconds he would maneuver behind you for the kill shot. Nobody could beat him. What made him unbeatable wasn’t just raw reflexes—it was science. Boyd created the Energy–Maneuverability Theory, which quantified aircraft performance in terms of energy gained or lost during combat. Suddenly, dogfights weren’t just instinct—they were math. Pilots who flew by feel now faced someone who could calculate their every move in joules of energy. That gave Boyd an unbeatable edge and reshaped how aircraft were designed and flown.

The Birth of OODA in the Sky

To understand why Boyd created the OODA loop, you need to imagine the cockpit of a fighter jet in the middle of a dogfight. The airframe is rattling under g-forces that press your body into the seat like a lead blanket. Your vision tunnels. Blood drains from your brain. Every turn, climb, and dive squeezes your body until you fight to stay conscious. At the same time, you are calculating airspeed, altitude, fuel, weapons, enemy position, and the physics of the sky. One hesitation—one wrong assumption—and you are dead.

Boyd thrived in this environment. He constantly observed what the enemy was doing, oriented himself in relation to the changing situation, decided on the best maneuver, and acted—all before the other pilot could finish their thought. In aerial combat, that tiny advantage in loops meant life or death.

Fighter pilots in dogfights have to track dozens of variables at once: the position of the sun blinding the canopy, the enemy’s angle of attack, the feel of the jet shuddering near a stall, the shrinking margin of fuel, the blur of tracers arcing past. Every second, the environment changes. Every second, new data floods in. The pilot who loops through that chaos faster seizes the initiative and forces the other to react on stale information. That is the heart of OODA—speed to truth.

Hype, Value and Future of AI with Gartner Expert Deepak Seth

In this high-energy episode of FOBtv, TCS futurist Kevin Benedict sits down with Deepak Seth, Gartner Director Analyst and leading expert in Data, Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence, for a rare inside look at how AI is truly reshaping the enterprise. This isn’t another hype-driven discussion. Deepak cuts through the noise to reveal how organizations are actually extracting value from AI—what separates real transformation from empty experimentation, why analytics is evolving far beyond dashboards, and how top companies are collapsing the gap between data, decision, and action.

*I use AI in all my work.

************************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Futurist, and Lecturer at TCS

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on X @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Rome, OODA & the Importance of Loops, #11

Everything alive runs on loops. It’s how energy moves, how information travels, and how systems learn. A loop is a circle that keeps returning, adjusting, and refining. When loops are healthy, life expands. When they break, decay begins.

Leaders who understand loops stop thinking of organizations as machines and start seeing them as ecosystems—networks of trust, data, and purpose that depend on continuous circulation. Flow, is what keeps them alive.

The Circulation of an Empire

Rome was once the master of loops. Its entire civilization was a circulatory system that moved taxes, grain, soldiers, and loyalty across continents. Money collected in the provinces flowed back into roads, aqueducts, pay for legions, and bread for citizens. Grain from Egypt fed the capital. Roman law built trust that kept trade humming. The empire pulsed with motion, every part nourishing the whole.

Then the flow began to slow. Wealth stuck at the top as elites hoarded fortunes instead of reinvesting them. Emperors silenced dissent. Aqueducts crumbled, and grain reserves ran dry. What had been a living network hardened into hierarchy. Rome didn’t fall in a single night—the drag of friction increased loop by loop.

The same pattern plays out in businesses and nations today. When circulation stops, when feedback is ignored, or energy stops recirculating, collapse begins.

Investing in Sustainability with Banking Americas' Marie Clara Buelligen

In this podcast episode, Marie Clara Buelligen, Head of Sustainable Investment Banking Americas at Societe Generale, shares a candid and strategic perspective on the future of sustainability in business. With deep insights into the intersection of finance, technology, and environmental responsibility, Buelligen explores how emerging tools like AI, digital twins, simulations, and modeling are reshaping long-term sustainability planning and climate risk management. 

Read the full report: https://lnkd.in/ezQC8abU

*I use AI in all my work.

************************************************************************

Kevin Benedict

Futurist, and Lecturer at TCS

View my profile on LinkedIn

Follow me on X @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Digital Intelligence

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Tempo: The Operating System of Success, #10

The different time dimensions of human time, digital time, and future time will impact us all, and when those different dimensions line up into a rhythm its a beautiful thing. It’s the operating system of the polyintelligent advantage.

You see it clearly in retail. A brick-and-mortar store runs on human-time. Doors open at ten, clerks work shifts, checkout lines move at the speed of hands and eyes. E-commerce, however, runs on digital-time. The site never closes, algorithms recommend products instantly, and payments clear in milliseconds. But neither works without future-time. Holiday promotions are planned months in advance, toys are pre-ordered based on trends, and shipping networks are prepared for the rush.

All three time dimensions—human, digital, and future—show up in every shopping trip. If forecasts are wrong, shelves are empty. If the website crashes, carts are abandoned. If delivery drivers can’t keep pace, the system collapses. The winners are those who can orchestrate the dimensions into one smooth tempo. 

Tempo Inequality – The New Wealth Gap

History shows what happens when tempos diverge. The winners aren’t always the fastest—they’re the ones who move in rhythm with the needs of the age.

In the mid-1800s, sailing ships could outrun early steamships when the winds were right. Clippers set records, shaving days off Atlantic crossings. But wind is a fickle partner. Voyages could double in length if storms hit or skies went still. Steamships, by contrast, weren’t glamorous sprinters, but they were steady. Liverpool to New York became a timetable, not a gamble. Merchants, bankers, and governments shifted allegiance to steam. Tempo inequality—not sheer speed—sank the sailing ship.

The Pony Express fell the same way. Riders crossing prairies in ten days seemed unbeatable—until the telegraph carried messages across the continent in ten minutes. Heroic endurance was irrelevant once a new tempo dimension arrived.

The pattern repeated in retail. Sears built its empire on seasonal catalogs, physical stores, and human-time logistics. For decades it worked. But Amazon entered digital-time. Its warehouses ran on real-time data, its algorithms anticipated demand, and its logistics promised delivery in days—sometimes hours. Customers adjusted to Amazon’s tempo, and Sears could not keep up. Tempo inequality shifted from a competitive edge to a matter of survival.

The lesson is clear: being stuck in the wrong tempo dimension isn’t just a disadvantage. It can be fatal.

When Scale Changes Everything, #9

Why talk about scale in a series on leadership and polyintelligence? Because scale is where small decisions stop being small. It’s where a clever idea, a promising experiment, or a niche technology suddenly impacts millions of lives. Scale is the moment the grid becomes a launchpad, not just a net.

Think about Zoom. Before 2020, it was one of many video-conferencing tools, used by tech teams and remote workers but hardly a household name. Then the pandemic hit. Within weeks, kindergarten classes, corporate board meetings, weddings, therapy sessions, and even funerals moved online. Zoom went from 10 million daily users in December 2019 to over 300 million by April 2020. That’s scale—when context and need snap into alignment and an “app” suddenly becomes social infrastructure.

Zoom didn’t succeed just because the software worked. It scaled because internet bandwidth, cloud capacity, user readiness, and cultural desperation for connection all aligned. The world was primed. Overnight, Zoom wasn’t just a product—it was a platform, rewiring education, healthcare, and workplace culture in real time.

Here’s the leadership lesson: if scale can happen this fast, leaders can’t just prepare for success; they must prepare for consequences. Scaling doesn’t only multiply opportunity—it multiplies responsibility.

The Future & Seventh Generation Principles, #8

Most business leaders are required to think in quarters. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy (made up of indigenous Americans) thought in centuries. Their Seventh Generation Principle asked leaders to make decisions as if seven generations of descendants were in the room. That’s 140–180 years of responsibility sitting across the campfire from you.

This wasn’t just a nice idea. It was wisdom written into the Great Law of Peace, the constitution that bound six nations together. Leaders who ignored it could be removed by the Clan Mothers—the original accountability committee. In other words, responsibility for the long-term wasn’t optional; it was enforced.

Why does this matter to us? Because the Seventh Generation Principle is one of the earliest examples of polyintelligent leadership. It combined human intelligence (through governance and law), ecological intelligence (through care for land, animals, people, generations, and water), and ethical intelligence (through responsibility to the unborn) into one operating system. Today, we need to add machine intelligence to that mix, but the principle gives us a template: decisions must serve more than just our short-term lives—they must cohere across generations.