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William C. Ashley is president of Ashley & Associates, a consulting center specializing in anticipatory management techniques. Ashley has more than 25 years of progressive and successful experience in leading market driven companies. He was chief architect of the anticipatory issues management and strategic trend programs at Sears, Roebuck & Company , McDonalds Corporation, and United Airlines. His anticipatory models for issues management and strategic trend systems have been used by leading automotive, chemical, utility, petroleum, and not-for-profit organizations throughout the world. As an international authority on the development of corporate anticipatory issues management programs, Ashley has been recognized as the "Dean of Issues Management" by the president of the Public Affairs Council. His clients refer to him as the "best in the business." Ashley is an organizational psychologist by education and experience, a merchant by training and experience, and a leading expert in and champion of anticipatory management techniques for use in business, education, and the military. Organizations benefiting from Ashley's council include the U.S. Chamber Foundation's Council on Trends and Perspective, the Foresight in Government Committee for the U.S. Congress, and the Global 2000 Task Force for the White House. He has shared anticipatory concepts with all levels of government including The White House, Congress and the Judiciary. His client list includes many FORTUNE 500 companies. He has served on the board of The Issue Management Council and is a frequent speaker at IMC meetings. Ashley coauthored (with James Morrison) Anticipatory Management: 10 Power Tools for Achieving Excellence into the 21st Century, which is being used in several colleges and universities as a text for graduate-level students and is expected to be translated into Chinese. He has written over 25 articles and contributed numerous chapters to books on the topics of issues management, public and government affairs in an era of change, and futures research. His latest articles are Anticipatory Management Tools for the 21st Century and Anticipatory Management: Tools for Better Decision Making (both with James Morrison). Ashley is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University where he teaches a graduate level course in anticipatory issues management.

As Machiavelli counseled a long time ago, being anticipatory affords great advantage. What Machiavelli did not share, however, was the secret for how an organization develops more anticipatory prowess in order to gain strategic advantage. In a complex and rapidly changing society, being anticipatory and gaining strategic advantage requires sophisticated intelligence gathering techniques, new decision process models, and practical accountabilities. Collectively, these tools allow an organization to capitalize on strategic outside intelligence, avoid being blind-sided by external forces, profit from new opportunities, and to turn emerging threats into opportunities.

Failure to anticipate can have destructive consequences. Significant examples of failures to anticipate dramatic outside shifts can be found at organizations with considerable internal resources. Major U.S. corporations such as IBM, GM, Sears, and CBS, just to name a few, all failed to anticipate dramatic external shifts. For example, for much of the 1980s, IBM ignored the signals that the computer industry was changing; although they made attempts to be a player in the PC business, they focused on the mainframe. GM failed to heed signals in the late 1960s of a potential energy crisis, or the increasing attractiveness of small, fuel efficient Japanese cars, particularly on the West coast, signals that were ignored until GM's market share skidded almost 30% in the U.S. Sears continued to fiddle with self-branded merchandise and monolithic department store and catalog delivery systems, while customers asked for name brand merchandise and for more quality in products and services. CNN preempted the networks in the 24 hour news category at a fraction of the cost CBS was paying for just one hour of nightly news.

Given that change has become the essence of today's business climate, the real strategic consideration is whether change will befall your organization as a series of crisis, or, will you be able to use foresight and anticipation to manage change in a calm, informed and systematic manner? Setting one's future agenda can only be done with sophisticated intelligence techniques, new models, and practical accountabilities. To survive and prosper in the future, you will have to perfect your outside-in thinking skills by relating the information from a strategic intelligence system about developments in the external world to what is going on inside your organization.

Technology is changing, and so are markets. Companies that anticipate the changes will thrive. Those that don't will have the hangover of the century when the party's over.

Alexander J. Trotman, CEO, Ford Motor Company

The purpose of this article is to describe anticipatory management tools, techniques, and processes that you can use to anticipate and shape your organization's future.

The anticipatory management decision process model (Figure 1) suggests an outside-in intelligence flow chart that has been employed with great success in a variety of corporate settings. It is called a decision process model because it focuses on surfacing emerging issues and affords organizational leaders an opportunity to evaluate and make decisions vis-a-vis those issues in a timely manner based on the issues' seriousness and potential impact on the organization. The discussion below describes this process and the tools used to surface and evaluate issues.

The first step in the anticipatory management process is to identify emerging issues that can affect the organization. Ian Wilson articulated the life cycle of an issue in four phases. He stated, "Without a proper business response, the societal expectations of today become the political issues (policy agenda) of tomorrow, legislated requirements (formalization) of the next day and the litigated penalties (control) the day after (1982, 5)." As shown in Figure 2, as the magnitude of the signals increase, organizational options narrow and organizational liabilities increase. Therefore, the earlier we can identify emerging issues, the more options we will have.

There are a number of tools that may be used to identify emerging issues and where they are in their life cycle: scanning and monitoring processes, challenging assumptions, conducting issue vulnerability audits, and scenarios.

A strategic intelligence system incorporates the tools of scanning, monitoring, and forecasting to gather and begin processing information about emerging trends and potential events. Scanning identifies signals of change, monitoring follows these signals, and forecasting estimates the duration, direction, acceleration, and amplitude of the signals. Trends are descriptions of social, technological, economic, environmental, or political (STEEP) movements over time. They define the context within which the organization will function in the future (e.g., the increase or decrease in households with incomes over $50,000). Events are developments that change the future when they occur (e.g., an oil embargo). Trends and events converge to form issues like environmental protection, product liability, energy availability and technostress.

A critical element in identifying issues is understanding the role that implicit assumptions play in decision making. We use implicit assumptions, deeply ingrained frames of reference, mental mind sets, and other understandings about the world in which we operate when making decisions and taking action vis-a-vis our business. Collectively, these assumptions form a paradigm. Implicit assumptions about business are held by managers at all levels of the organization. They develop over time and become decision screens for information about the industry; information that does not fit the assumptions is filtered out. This is not done overtly. That is, no one says, "Hey, that information does not agree with what we be believe around here." It is subconscious; not even mentioned, or dismissed as nonsense when mentioned by someone who uses a different screen. For example, the criticial implicit assumptions of the U.S. automobile industry in the seventies were developed through past experience, and served as guiding principals for success. They were:

Although there was nothing inherently wrong with these assumptions, by the mid-seventies, they were beginning to lose their validity. The global environment was changing. After the 1973 oil embargo, gasoline prices escalated, Japanese automobiles invaded U.S. shores, consumer values shifted from style to quality, families shrank, workers' attitudes changed, and dealings with government required cooperation and acceptance of interference. It took General Motors twenty years and wrenching board action to reassess the validity of their worn-out assumptions.

Another valuable issue identification tool that makes use of outside-in thinking is the issues vulnerability audit. The issues vulnerability audit, originally developed as a vulnerability analysis by SRI International in 1977, reveals subtle, overlooked opportunities or threats that fall outside the normal sphere of organizational activity. It lends itself to a kind of strategic thinking that forces managers to view trends through the eyes of both friendly and hostile stakeholders before the trends go critical.

Organizations are similar to ocean oil rigs whose supports go deep into the sea to rest on the bedrock. The bedrock is society and the supports are what they need from society for their continuance.

The issues vulnerability audit reviews these supports from the perspective of current strengths. The supports are turned into questions: What needs and wants does the organization meet? What resources does it rely on? What cost advantages are available? What special abilities does the organization require? What technologies underpin it?

To really grasp a sense of how vulnerable the organization might be to outside forces that are less than friendly or even hostile, the vulnerability audit then examines the supports' vulnerability to removal, alteration, or substantial disruption. Vulnerabilities may result from competitive forces, governmental intervention, special interest group initiatives, scientific discoveries, or media disclosures.

The results of the issues vulnerability audit further heightens the awareness of and sensitivity to external forces. These results can assist you to surface strategic issues before they become critical.

Scenarios are possible paths to the future. More accurately, they are a hypothetical sequences of events constructed for the purpose of focusing attention on causal processes and decision points, Scenario development is a way to think about issues and their causal processes, the manner in which they might develop, what the impact on the industry and on the organization might be, and what action plans might be the most effective in dealing with them.

The purpose of the scenarios is to illuminate uncertainty. Scenarios help determine ramifications of an issues development along several alternative paths, and enable organizational leaders to examine its implications over time.

Evaluating an issue requires a rich quantity of intelligence about possible issues that could influence the way the organization does business. An issue brief is a concise document that summarizes the issue for easy and comprehensive management consideration. In general, issue briefs are no longer than two single-spaced pages. They contain: (a) a statement of the focus of the issue; (b) a discussion of its background; (c) a description of the trends, driving forces, and stakeholders influencing it; (d) a forecast describing its future prospects; and (e) potential implications for the organization.

Evaluating issues requires addressing critical questions: What is the probability that the issue will go critical? What is the probability that it will affect the organization? Can the organization influence the issue? Should the organization try to influence the issue?

The prioritization process categorizes issues into three types: high priority, those requiring action (Category I); those that do not require immediate action due to their maturity, their inability to be managed, or their relative unimportance (Category II); and those requiring no action (Category III). Category I, high priority issues are dealt with using a 10-step issue management process. Category II issues are too mature in the issue life cycle to manage effectively but may require the framing of an organizational policy statement or action on the part of certain sectors of the organization. Category III issues require no current action but due to their potential impact on the organization may need to be monitored and periodically revisited.

To manage those issues requiring organizational action a 10-step issues management (IM) process provides an effective step-by-step approach to managing the issue:

Performance evaluation is a review of how the action plan was implemented. It assesses how well objectives are attained and how stakeholders respond to the plan. Since the action teams disband once the plan is set in motion, performance evaluation is the responsibility of the office charged with anticipatory management function in the organization. This office may be called the issue management office, the public affairs office, or the strategic planning office.

For Category II issues, the emphasis is not on external management and influence, but internal containment and compliance. Based on the issues' maturity or lack thereof, the organization cannot presently influence the issue. Nevertheless, the issue may require an internal structural or policy readjustment to align the organization with the direction the issue appears to be moving. Clearly, the 1992 Americans with Disabilities Act was not something that could be managed in 1992. Internal policies regarding hiring and architectural adjustments needed to be developed.

Such adjustments generally require the involvement of several departments or divisions. Questions must be asked early on about which departments will be affected most, or who in the organization has the most information about the issue.

Establishing policy on a mature issue, whose full impact is unclear, requires the best strategic thinking the organization can muster. This work should not be left entirely to the anticipatory management personnel but should include members from the departments most affected.

At this point in the process, senior management knows that the issue will affect the organization. Reaching consensus on what, where, and how it will impact the organization requires linking "hard" and "soft" information vis-a-vis strategic thinking.

Staff and members of impacted departments examine the dynamics of the issue from both the outside-in (finding trends, driving forces and stakeholders) and from the inside-out (linking those trends to the operations of the organization). In so doing, the group will identify information needs (e.g., positions within the industry and similarly affected industries).

It is important to remember throughout this process that an issue may be in its emergent stage for one's own organization, but it may be much further progressed for another. Consequently, another organization may have considered the issue for a much longer period of time and have valuable information from which to draw. For example, when United Airlines confronted the video display terminal (VDT) issue, a review of companies outside the airline industry uncovered information that made policy formation much easier for United.

Once the group completes its work, the appropriate course of action is apparent. At this time, it is important to identify further information needs and charge the anticipatory management staff with monitoring these needs.

Because the future is unpredictable and issues do not always behave as expected, a manager must be able to move an issue into management mode easily. Shifts in the environment (e.g., changing social patterns; economic variables emerging that were not present when a policy was formulated; a new technology that makes the organization's position less tenable) could lead to a decision that the issue is now Category I. The shift may also be within the organization-a new strategic direction or new product introduction that makes the existing policy less valid.

While category III issues may require no action, they should continue to be monitored for shifts that could affect the organization's future. If such shifts occur, the issues are re-evaluated and may be dropped or assigned a category I, high priority status.

Understanding the movement of information through an organization goes beyond delineating the decision phases of the issues process. The accountability model diagrammed in Figure 3 shows the movement of strategic information from outside the organization to inside the organization via various accountability gates. Without such a road map, you may find yourself befuddled by an issue for which ample information already exists somewhere in the organization. A good example was Motorola and the potential neurological damage caused by cellular phone. In the late 1980s, Motorola had an enormous amount of information about the relationship between cellular phones and possible neurological damage. However, they did not use the information to manage the issue; an outside stakeholder presented the case for a positive link between the two and set the public debate. Motorola took a real bashing.

Anticipatory management relies heavily on processes and responsibilities. Marrying the flow of strategic intelligence through an organization to the accountability for that intelligence is critical to the successful operation of the process. While emerging issues may be complicated and difficult to understand, the process by which issues are dealt with should not be. The use of the decision/process model in Figure 1 and the accountability flow chart shown in Figure 3 help you follow the flow of strategic intelligence and the accountability for that intelligence in the process of managing an issue. The structure should be kept simple. Management's time is at a premium. Although the overall process can have significant bottom-line potential, it need not be complicated, cumbersome, or intrusive on day-to-day operations.

The key elements of the Anticipatory Management Accountability Model are as follows:

The title of the manager charged with the anticipatory management function varies within organizations (e.g., issues manager, public affairs manager, vice-president for public relations, or vice-president for strategic planning). For the purpose of describing the duties and functions of such officers, we will use the the generic term AM manager. The AM manager must:

The steering committee is made up of senior managers selected by the CEO to screen and prioritize emerging issues presented by the AM staff. Individuals selected for this committee generally report directly to the CEO. These managers have continued growth and profitability as part of their job description, and they possess an in-depth knowledge of the organization, and an open mind to the external forces with influence on the organization.

If an issue has been rated Category I, you should attempt to influence either its direction or its impact on the organization. Responsibility for resolving the issue must rest at the senior management level. To relegate responsibility to a lower level is to belittle the rating scheme and the organization's commitment.

Once the steering committee determines an issue is a Category I, it assigns ownership for the issue by determining the department that could most benefit from or be hurt by the issue. The officer responsible for that department or unit is designated the owner.

Ownership does not imply that work on the issue should be carried out exclusively within the owner's department. Establishing ownership is merely the first step in preparing Category I issues for management. While a senior manager may own the issue and be responsible to the CEO for its successful resolution, that manager may appoint someone else within his or her area as chair of the action team. The issues manager works with the chair to select the action team, set the agenda, and facilitate team meetings as necessary.

Organizational leaders analyze the issue using a 10-Step IM methodology described earlier and more completely in Ashley and Morrison (1995, pp. 131-146).

Should the steering committee classify the issue as Category II-that is, an issue that does not require management by an action team-the committee returns the issue to the anticipatory management function for policy formulation. Other departments may need to be involved so that the internal position is consistent with the issue's status.

The monitoring activity for issues in Categories II and III concentrates on environmental shifts (these shifts might include, but not be limited to, changes in the direction of events, trends, and driving forces) and corporate shifts (these shifts might include, but not be limited to, changes in organizational policies, products, services, marketing strategies, or operating procedures) that could turn them into high priority, Category I issues needing analysis and management. Monitoring events and trends on a systematic basis insures that all necessary information will be evaluated.

Understanding corporate and environmental shifts is the essence of anticipation. A major obstacle to AM is senior management's tendency to evaluate managers based on short-term performance. Whenever a new opportunity or threat is revealed, recognition will be resisted by managers whose performance will be affected by any shift in ongoing activities. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.)

Issues monitoring should be responsibility of a separate issues management staff. If the issues manager determines that an issue needs to be reconsidered as Category I, the manager resubmits the issue to the steering committee in the form of an updated issue brief.

At this stage, the steering committee reviews the action plan presented by the issue owner, including details of what is to be done, why it is to be done, who is to do it, when it is to be done, how much it will cost, and where the money will come from. Because many action plans involve cross-disciplinary work teams, it is crucial that all parties agree to it. The steering committee then forwards the plan to the CEO.

The CEO is responsible for reviewing the action plan. The CEO will usually ask the issue owner and action team to present the plan at a steering committee meeting. Because the issue may not fully have crystallized, stakeholder positions, along with technical and operating objectives, should be presented to ensure everyone's involvement and commitment to the principals.

When both the decison process and the accountability models are used together they assure the highest and best use of senior management time and provide maximum insurance that the organization is actively linked and proactive with its external world.

The power of anticipation must be tapped if U.S. business is to succeed in the global arena that will be the battleground of the 21st Century. If you spend your time solving problems and resolving crises, you will have little time for innovation. The tendency to race headlong into the future while looking in the rearview mirror (how it was done in the past) and side windows (how the competition is doing it) has proven unproductive over the long haul. With foresight and anticipation, you will be more productive with the resources and assets they have at your disposal. In 1990, Senge noted that today's managers have to shift their mind set from seeing themselves as separate from the world to seeing themselves as connected to the world, from seeing problems as caused by someone or something "out there", to seeing how their actions create not only problems but also opportunities.

Anticipatory management techniques provide systematic and formal ways of understanding the world outside the organization. However, anticipatory management only becomes strategically significant when it penetrates your "inner world" of the manager, inside your mind where you make decisions. The human mind works by using accumulated experience to construct an internal model of the external reality. The tools of anticipation offer important additional information about the outside world. More significantly, they fundamentally alter perceptions, challenge prejudices, and open the your mind to new insights that were previously beyond your reach or blocked out by tightly-knit decision screens that we all have.

It is fiscal folly to wait until an issue goes critical and then expect public affairs folks to contain it and public relations folks to explain it. Most people place heavy emphasis on an inside-out perspective; they are encouraged to take a narrow perspective on their area of responsibility. Metaphors and analogies abound in reinforcing this narrow perspective: keep your head down and charge, keep your nose to the grindstone, if it ain't broke don't fix it, stay out of other peoples sandboxes (or more correctly, in our present business environment, foxholes) to mention just a few.

While change and uncertainty are inevitable, they need not be terminal. We cannot count on a natural evolution to a more predictable world. Success, and in some cases survival, require sophisticated intelligence systems. The pervasiveness and bottom-line significance of today's strategic issues demand that you use a systematic and formal way to recognize and manage these issues. Anticipatory management models, processes and tools help you to know what to do, who will do it, how, when it will be done, and what the outcome might be.

Ashley, W. L. & Morrison, J. L. (1995). Anticipatory Management: 10 power tools for achieving excellence into the 21st century. Leesburg, Virginia: Issue Action Publications

As any chess player, military strategist, or athlete can tell you, being anticipatory gives you great competitive advantage. But what is the secret to developing anticipatory prowess, and how do you use it to gain strategic advantage?

These are key questions that all organizations face, whether businesses, schools, government agencies, or community groups. In a complex and rapidly changing society, being anticipatory and gaining strategic advantage requires sophisticated intelligence-gathering techniques, new models of decision making, and ways to judge the results. Collectively, these tools allow you to identify new opportunities, avoid being blindsided by external forces, and to turn potential threats into opportunities.

Failure to anticipate can be deadly: Your community is overrun with subdivisions and shopping malls with no concern for citizen well-being, and you organize only after it is too late. A competitor anticipates customer wants and overruns your territory, gobbling market share: Checkmate. Even big organizations with considerable internal resources have failed to anticipate dramatic outside shifts and have faced the unanticipated checkmate. For example, GM failed to heed signals in the late 1960s of a potential energy crisis, as well as the increasing attractiveness of small, fuel-efficient Japanese cars. Ignoring these signals cost GM almost 30% of its U.S. market share. Sears in the 1970s continued to "fiddle" with self-branded merchandise, monolithic department stores, and catalog delivery systems, while customers asked for name-brand merchandise and for more quality in products and services.

Change has become the essence of management, so to survive and prosper in the future, you and your organization will have to perfect "outside-in" thinking skills: to relate information about developments in the external world to what is going on internally. The bottom line is whether change occurs as a series of crises or you use foresight and anticipation to manage change in a calm, informed, and systematic manner.

The purpose of this article is to describe anticipatory management tools and processes that you can use to anticipate change and shape the future of your team, company, or community.

One way to understand what's going on outside the organization and use that understanding to make better decisions and plans is to follow the Anticipatory Management Decision Process Model (Figure 1). This "outside-in" intelligence flow chart has been used with great success in a variety of corporate settings--from United Airlines to Royal Dutch Shell to McDonald's. In 1983, for example, McDonald's undertook the largest toy recall ever, yet it went largely unnoticed by the public. The company discovered that one of the toys it planned to promote had a possible choking hazard. McDonald's promptly recalled the product, avoiding potential disaster.

The decision process model focuses on uncovering emerging issues and gives you a way to evaluate how serious those issues are and what impact they may have on your organization, so you can make decisions in time.

The first step is to identify emerging issues before they strike, much like earthquake forecasters scan fault lines for signs of abnormal activity. Because significant issues may emerge from unexpected places, it is important to scan the macroenvironment for social, technological, economic, environmental, and political developments. Anything can happen in any of these sectors to change the future, such as an oil embargo, a wave of immigration, or a new zoning ordinance. Trends and events converge to create issues, such as environmental protection, product liability, energy availability, and technostress.

A signal may be a demographic trend, such as a "baby bust," which may mean a severe dearth of entry-level workers in the future, or an environmental trend, such as a buildup of greenhouse gases, which portends global warming. As signals like these get louder, your action options narrow and your potential liabilities increase. Therefore, the sooner you can identify emerging issues, the more options you will have. You can use the following tools to identify emerging issues and where they are in their life cycle:

The next stage in the Anticipatory Management Decision Process Model is to analyze the intelligence you now have about issues that could affect your organization. An issue brief is a concise document that summarizes an issue for your leadership's consideration. A typical issue brief (about two pages) contains a statement of the focus of the issue; a discussion of its background; a description of the trends, driving forces, and people and groups with a potential interest in it; a forecast describing its future prospects; and the potential implications for the organization.

In the next stage, you must address crucial questions: What is the probability that the issue will become critical? What is the probability that it will affect the organization? Can or should the organization influence the issue? Issues must then be prioritized based on whether they require an immediate action or simply should be monitored and periodically revisited. For example, the failed safety inspection of half the county's bridges demands action, while lapses in mowing roadside grass can be dealt with later.

After your group has taken an action on a high-priority issue, you must review how well the action plan was implemented, whether objectives were attained, and how the people and groups involved have responded. Sara Lee's response to repetitive stress disorder is a classic example of how to effectively manage an issue. Rather than dismissing employees' complaints about repetitive stress, Sara Lee hired a physician to observe the workers and make recommendations. The company also hired an ergonomics engineer to evaluate the assembly line. Recommendations from the doctor and the engineer were put into action and complaints of repetitive stress decreased 80%.

It is important to remember that an issue may be in its emergent stage for your organization, but it may be much further progressed for another. Look for other organizations that may have already considered the issue. They may have valuable information that you can draw upon. For example, when United Airlines confronted the issue of radiation from video display terminals in 1983, their review of companies outside the airline industry uncovered information that made policy formation much easier. The anticipatory issues management team used this existing information to draft position papers, form coalitions, and write testimony. The lead time allowed concerns to be shared and addressed. Ergonomic architects were brought in to evaluate each reservations center and accomplish the necessary work on United's time and budget rather than a government-imposed time and budget.

It is important to understand how strategic information flows from outside to inside your organization. Otherwise, you may find yourself befuddled by an issue for which ample information already exists somewhere in the organization. A sports trainer may know that the star player has a degenerative back condition, but if he or she does not tell the coach, the team may suffer when the condition becomes serious later on. In the late 1980s, Motorola had an enormous amount of information about the relationship between cellular phones and possible neurological damage. But the company did not use the information to manage this potential issue. Instead, an outsider presented the case for a positive link between the two and set off a somewhat hysterical public debate, in which Motorola took a real bashing.

Anticipatory management relies heavily on processes and responsibilities. The decision process model described earlier helps you follow the flow of strategic intelligence through an organization and assign accountability or responsibility for responding to that intelligence. While emerging issues may be complicated, the process by which they are dealt with should not be.

Using the decision process and the accountability models together assures that your organization is linked to its external macroenvironment and ready to act.

If your organization spends its time solving problems and resolving crises, it will have little time for innovation. The tendency to race headlong into the future while looking in the rear-view mirror (to see how something was done in the past) and out the side windows (to see how the competition is doing it) has proven unproductive over the long haul. With foresight and anticipation, your organization will be more productive.

Anticipatory management provides systematic and formal ways of understanding the world outside the organization. However, anticipatory management only becomes useful when it penetrates the "inner world" or mind of the participants. The human mind works by using accumulated experience to construct an internal model of the external reality. The tools of anticipation offer important additional information about the outside world. More significantly, they fundamentally alter perceptions, challenge prejudices, and open your mind to new insights so that you and your organization will know what to do, how to do it, and what the outcome might be.

William C. Ashley is an adjunct professor at Northwestern University and president of Ashley and Associates, 1942 Cheshire Lane, Wheaton, Illinois 60187. Telephone 1-630-668-3065; fax 1-630-653-4387; e-mail WCAshley@aol.com.

James L. Morrison is editor of On the Horizon and co-editor of The Technology Source. He is a Microsoft Scholar and professor of educational leadership at the University of North Carolina, CB 3500 Peabody Hall, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599. Telephone 1-919-962-2517; fax 1-919-962-1693; e-mail morrison@unc.edu.