Daily Inspiration: ““There’s a lot of ‘guessticating’ going around right now. You might want to forecast your future on something more than just an estimate or a hunch!”

“There’s a lot of ‘guessticating’ going around right now. You might want to forecast your future on something more than just an estimate or a hunch!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Guessticating – you are probably surrounded by it every single day. Heck, you are probably making a few guessticates every day too!

Think about it – lots of people are trying to predict when we will ‘get back to normal,’ without really having a clue as to what they are talking about. Predicting how the economic recovery might play out, when we really are in truly unprecedented territory. Or working hard to tell you how the pandemic is going to unfold from this point in time, when their knowledge of science comes from their work as an auto-mechanic or ice-cream maker.

Trying to forecast our future based on an absolute ‘shot-in-the-dark’ guess takes you into risky and unpredictable territory, particularly if you are working to make decisions on issues that matter. You can’t plan future inventory levels based on a gut-feeling; commit to a large scale fixed asset investment plan built on an assumption of gut-feelings; or plan a workforce strategy based on how you ‘think’ things might turn out.

The fact is, facts matter. Accuracy of forecasts matters, and experts are equipped with the proper tools that provide them a foundation for insight. In my own case, while I’ve lost a lot of business in the last several months, but there are certain key tools that I have not shed from my portfolio.

One is my go-to tool of the last 30 years, a massive online research database, Dow Jones Factiva, that costs me several hundred dollars per month. The service is a key part of the process by which I form a realistic foundation for my predictions; it lets me access thousands of newsletters, newspapers, magazine, research reports and much more information, allowing me to do a highly targeted, sophisticated search so that I can zone in on the specific industry issues at hand.

I describe that in this short video here.

So – your future – built on a whim, a hunch, a guess – or something more?