How good are you at determining what is going to happen in the future? When it comes to human behavior, historically speaking, psychologists have never been better than chance at predicting future human behavior. However, there is a caveat to that, which is it refers to general clinical hunches. From the discipline of forensic psychology, a “multimethod” data gathering approach emerged that relies upon multiple sources of data to formulate opinions (predictions). As previously mentioned, the structured professional judgement approach also emerged, which unlike psychological tests, utilizes psychological research to guide decision-making in a structured framework to form scientifically guided thinking to arrive at clearer hypotheses about future behavior. To sum it up, one of the maxims goes like this: The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. That having been said, in your professional role being able to forecast accurately empowers you to plan more accurately and deliberately for the future. Ultimately, every business exists to buy or sell products or services. You are part of that ecosystem in some capacity, and in your unique role if you can get better at forecasting human behavior, you can make a valuable forecasting contribution. Now we also have AI to assist us with logical data analysis, which can further improve our forecasting abilities.

 

The Exercise:

Pick a goal for the next quarter in which it is desirable to know as much as possible about the likelihood of a particular situation and outcome. Create a structured framework to analyze the possibilities by looking at the following:

 

Similar past events and their outcomes. What circumstances would most likely lead to the desired outcome?

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What circumstances would most likely sabotage the desired outcome?

 

What are unlikely and unknown circumstances that could occur and what impact would they have?

 

Who are key decision-makers, and how has their behavior been influenced in the past?

 

Now, create a strategy with AI assistance based on your responses.