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The Power and the Promise of Prescience

We all can learn something from chess masters:

  • Chess masters set themselves apart from other players of this most difficult of games in several ways. To name one example, a true chess master has a vast understanding of what is called “Opening Knowledge.” This has to do with the many variables involved in one’s opening move. Knowing these variables can be crucial in gaining a small but often significant advantage in selecting one’s opening move.
  • Another thing that sets chess masters apart is their ability at pattern recognition. The ability to recognize the myriad patterns that develop on the board during a game is often instrumental in discerning tactical motifs such as skewers, or pins, or forks, and enables them to make quick decisions.
  • But I think the thing that sets chess masters apart from less accomplished players concerns their abilities at calculation and anticipation. A true chess master is able to calculate several moves ahead with excellent precision. They can actually foresee potential threats, opportunities, and nascent pitfalls long before they become an immediate problem. In a word, they are prescient because they can see around corners, look down the corridors of time and envision how things are likely to unfold.

Prescience is something that all of us could benefit from developing. Prescience means foreknowledge. Prescience is the act of knowing something prior to it taking place. Prescience anticipates how things are going to play out, enabling one to respond in a way that is advantageous.

Let me give you two historical instances of prescient statements by world figures that are instructive. The first comes to us courtesy of Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain during a time when World War II was raging. The second comes to us from Albert Einstein and was uttered also during World War II, albeit during its final days. Both statements are excellent illustrations of prescience.

World War II began on September 1, 1939 when Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland. This invasion caused Great Britain and France to declare war on Germany on September 3, 1939. Japan entered the war, as did Italy, with both countries becoming allies with Nazi Germany. Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union also became allies. The Nazi military apparatus was a juggernaut and seemingly unstoppable, both on land and in the skies. Great Britain desperately wanted the aid of the United States to join the war effort, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt wouldn’t hear of it. This caused Winston Churchill great angst, and he had high levels of anxiety on whether Great Britain would ever succeed in overcoming the Nazi war machine and Imperial Japan.

All that changed on December 7, 1941 when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Upon hearing that the United States had been attacked, Churchill looked down the corridors of time, realized the United States would now have to enter the war, and he declared, “So we won after all.” That’s prescience. Churchill was now invigorated and he burst forth with renewed energy and confidence, and was successful in rallying his countrymen to fight like victors.

Let’s consider Albert Einstein. A pacifist by nature, Einstein was no fan of World War II. Einstein was aware that Germany was working feverishly to develop an atom bomb, but the United States, with its super-secret Manhattan Project, succeeded in developing the bomb first. After dropping two such bombs on Japan, devastating Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, with the bomb nick-named “Little Boy,” and then again on August 9, 1945 when they dropped the bomb nick-named “Fat Man” on Nagasaki. Einstein, understanding that the bombing of Hiroshima instantly evaporated more than 70,000 people, and that the bombing of Nagasaki instantly reduced 40,000 to 75,000 people into clumps of smoking, charred blobs, contemplated the future of warfare. Here is what Einstein is purported to have said: “I don’t know how World War III will be fought, but I do know how World War IV will be fought: with sticks and stones.”

Einstein considered the devastating power of World War II-era nuclear bombs, realizing that the atom bombs used the science known as fission, and that the newer hydrogen bombs under development would be using the even more powerful technology known as fusion, looked ahead to the future generation of deadly bombs and realized he himself could not even conceive, with accuracy, just how devastating they would be. But he understood the level of destruction with these new bombs would be so unfathomable, that they would blow us back to the Stone Age. Hence, his prescient statement.

What can we learn from Churchill and Einstein?

We learn that there is great value in being prescient. If you work in an organization, you can be of enormous value to your employer. When any sort of major change takes place within your company, be it the hiring of a new executive, the establishment of a new policy, the loss of a major client, or a new government regulation or law being enacted, take some time to think about the long-term ramifications of such changes. What is likely to happen? What is probably going to eventuate? Where might this lead us?

By carving out time to go to a quiet place where you can be contemplative, where you can ponder things without interruption, you will start to get good at projecting future outcomes. You may well get it wrong at first, because being prescient is a skill and any skill can be developed. So when you get it wrong, go back to the drawing board and try to sort out why and how you got it wrong. Try to learn what contributed to your error. Be thoroughly honest with yourself. In time, you will start to develop some skill. With practice, that skill will grow. Eventually, you will be seen as an extremely valuable contributor at work as you may be one of the few capable of sorting out details, cutting through the complexity, and presenting creditable prognostications to your peers. This will open doors for you over time.

Now you can do this.

So do it.

Ara Norwood is a multi-faceted and results-oriented professional. Spanning a multiplicity of disciplines including leadership, management, innovation, strategy, service, sales, business ethics, and entrepreneurship. Ara is also a historian, having special expertise on the era of the founding of our republic.
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