NOTE: Future Here Now will take a week off next week while I travel with family. We’ll resume on or about June 26 — with a new series. Stay tuned!
This week’s Future Here Now focuses on another one of those things that we don’t do nearly as well as we think we do: pick winners. Whether it’s an economic development incentive or something much more mundane, our ability to pick winners successfully gets worse and worse the farther we get into this Fusion Era transition. VUCA environments be like that. Which means that we’re gonna need better tools.
Try It On
The hard part about a TIO for this topic is that you have to let some time pass before you know how well you did. So you probably won’t have an answer on this one for a couple of weeks. Also, landscape architects and botany nerds are disqualified from this one. Nyah!
Go to a park or a place that you don’t visit every day that has plants growing in it. Identify two plants that look different to you - larger and smaller, different leaf shapes, in the sun and not in the sun, whatever. This works best if you don’t know what they are. No fair using iNature! Do make sure that you know how to find that specific plan next time - note how far it is from a tree or the curb. If you can, take a picture of both plants today. And make your best guess as to which one will grow more by the time you check it next.
In two weeks, go back and compare your photos to the plants.
Which one did better?
Can you tell? Does part of it depend on how you defined “better?"
Did anything happen that you hadn’t planned on, like mowing or a hungry deer or a weed killing spray?
How confident were you in your choice two weeks ago? How different were your results from what you expected?