The Fog of Now
Working on a today without thinking about tomorrow
In 1999, people were collectively focused on a future scenario that had become sensationalized in the news. In this future, a cataclysmic cyber event called Y2K was poised to bring the technological world crumbling down, negatively impacting the lives of people across the globe. Clearly, this scenario did not happen, but until we all knew for sure that it wouldn’t, people were hyper-focused on that future, and many began to take action to mitigate its potential negative consequences. In strategic foresight, this method is called Backcasting, which is to imagine a future scenario and then work backwards to understand all the elements necessary to either prevent that future or ensure that it happens.
Ironically, while the world was focused on an event that claimed to have the potential to change the future trajectory of technology we use in everyday life, a device was released that would do that very thing, the BlackBerry 850. A pager that was the first of its kind, capable of reading and replying to emails while being small enough to slide into your pocket. BlackBerry continued its innovative journey a few years later by releasing the world’s first smartphone in 2002.
As BlackBerry grew to become the market leader of the smartphone industry, it would appear that this Canadian tech company was utilizing its strategic foresight skills to solidify its place as an unstoppable leader on a global scale, until the iPhone was released in 2007. When Apple entered the market with their touchscreen phone, BlackBerry understood it as a unique contender, but remained unconcerned. BlackBerry felt that it knew its customers, understood their needs and was confident that the upcoming models they were releasing were exactly what customers wanted. Three years later, Apple overtook BlackBerry as the market leader in the smartphone industry.
So what happened? BlackBerry, a company that was synonymous with carving out the future of the smartphone industry, became so focused on meeting the customer needs of today that it failed to understand the customer of tomorrow. I call this effect The Fog of Now.
What is The Fog of Now?
The Fog of Now is the phenomenon where individuals, teams, or organizations become so anchored in the present-day business landscape and customer needs that they lose sight of how these factors are likely to evolve, resulting in strategies that are misaligned with emerging realities and unfit for the future.
The Fog of Now is a system failure that continues to reprioritize the immediate at the expense of the future. Companies get stuck in a whack-a-mole strategy where they only focus on surface-level changes, things that are within clear view, rather than looking toward the horizon. There’s a reason why horses wear blinders on the race track, and it’s so that they focus on what’s ahead, instead of getting caught up in what’s around them.
This is why it is imperative that we change our ways of working by adopting a more innovative approach, but to do that, we need to first address one of the biggest contributors in the tech industry to The Fog of Now, the agile methodology. At least, in its current form.
An altered approach to the Agile methodology
Time after time, I work with teams that have adopted an “agile mindset” or are in the process of becoming more “agile”, but are doing it in a way that jeopardizes the future of their products. Now, it is undeniable that the agile methodology has brought real value to product development by increasing team productivity, speed, and responsiveness, while bringing into focus user-centricity. Unfortunately, the agile methodology can also unintentionally thicken The Fog of Now.
By emphasizing minimum viable products, short sprints, and immediate user feedback, agile often encourages teams to focus narrowly on what’s directly in front of them, leaving little room to think beyond it. This operational tunnel vision deprioritizes long-term exploration, future shifts in customer/user behaviour, and horizon-scanning for emerging opportunities. The result? Teams optimize for the present at the cost of the possible.
Ask yourself, how much time is your team really thinking about the future? How far in the future are they looking? What methods are they using to guide their vision? Are they routinely discussing emerging trends? Developing future scenarios? Or understanding how the needs of the personas they’re building for today may change a year from now?
To be clear, I am not calling for an end to agile ways of working, but rather suggesting we evolve it by layering it with strategic foresight methodologies. Developing clear visions of the future that are guided by emerging trends that are uncovered by your own product and design teams. Building innovative prototypes that solve the needs and problems of tomorrow and backcasting to identify the building blocks necessary to make that product an eventual reality.
It’s time for teams to stop viewing their products and customers through a lens fixed only on the present. Innovation demands foresight, and foresight requires a deliberate process that makes space for the future.