Fear of the future – a new management approach

This article addresses the question of what new planning paradigms are emerging to help take control of the future despite the many uncertainties which still remain. Also suggests that there are a number of quite different categories of uncertainty, which each demand different approaches: hidden certainties, expected outcomes and random uncertainties. For each of these categories, suggests a range of new approaches, suitable, at one extreme, for smaller organisations to ensure their long‐term survival and, at the other, for governments to intervene more effectively. Suggests also that by using these new approaches and by deliberately separating long‐range planning from the production of short‐term corporate strategy, managing uncertainty need not be anywhere near as difficult as managers fear. As with most fears, once managers understand what is happening, the forebodings disappear.