What’s “Supposed” to Happen

A couple of weeks ago, my client mentioned that her team members have recently started to preface their arguments about what’s occurring in federal education policy with what’s “supposed” to happen. For example: “The administration is supposed to send Title I funding to districts automatically.” Reflecting on those instances, she thought the uncertainty and chaos in the environment were causing her team members to default to the comfort of the normal and what they’ve known to date—even if they knew things had long since departed from normal. 

I thought about her insight on Friday afternoon while talking to a friend and colleague about the stock market decline. The friend received an email from her financial advisor advising that, despite the market tumult, the optimal financial strategy was the same as before—just stay the course. 

We laughed at how much that advice was both potentially wrong and entirely predictable. 

It’s potentially wrong because much of the data backing the “hold for the long term because the market always goes up” strategy is from the stock market experience under the post-World War II global economic system. Since that economic system is potentially changing, so should the optimal investment strategy. 

Still, the advice from the financial advisor was entirely predictable because most of us would probably struggle to say to our paying clients, “I don’t know what’s going on, and I have no clue what the future will look like.” Admitting that our training, experience, and knowledge might not be relevant is hard to swallow. It’s both intellectually and emotionally easier to say, “Based on the past, here’s what’s supposed to happen.”

I mention those examples because I’ve had many conversations over the last few months with leaders gaming out future scenarios for their organizations. Often, their predictions of the future implicitly assume it has the same general dynamics as the past. And I leave the conversations wondering whether that perspective is based more on a logical analysis or on the emotional comfort of defaulting to the known frameworks of their profession and thinking “inside of the box.” 

Of course, I can’t predict the future better than anyone else—if I could, I’d be busy making stock trades rather than writing this newsletter. But introducing a little productive paranoia to planning is helpful. The risk of overreacting to any day’s events is clear, but failing to imagine significant disruption increases the odds that our teams and organizations—and us personally—will be caught flat-footed, surprised, and unprepared to respond if that disruption happens. 

It’s also worth noticing our thought patterns and language when scenario planning. If we hear phrases like “what’s supposed to happen…” or “what usually happens…,” we may be too constrained in our thinking.

Last week, I also talked to someone who will be traveling abroad for vacation shortly. I joked, “Good luck getting back in the country!” Her response to that dark humor was to assert that, as a natural-born U.S. citizen traveling to a friendly country, there shouldn’t be an issue at customs. At the same time, she recognized that it’s worth thinking through what could happen if the customs agent failed to abide by the law, a basic assumption of every previous time reentering the country. 

I suspect that’s the right mindset to take into planning—don’t assume the worst, but actively imagine what life would look like if everything we’ve known to date were incorrect. When the reality falls somewhere in the middle of those two outcomes (hopefully), we’ll be much better prepared.