Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World - Couverture rigide

INTRODUCTION
Listening for the Future

If a man take no thought of what is distant,
he will find sorrow near at hand.

CONFUCIUS

LISTENING FOR THE FUTURE is hard work. Leaders must learn how to listen through the noise of a VUCA World of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity.

But leaders can make a better future. We need not and should not passively accept any future as a given. Disciplined use of foresight can help leaders make better decisions today. There is short-term value in long-term thinking.

It is hard to think about the future, however, if you are overwhelmed by the present. Surprisingly, when the present becomes most overpowering, foresight becomes most useful. A global futures perspective can help leaders make a way through the chaos of the present. Looking to the future can help you decide what to do right now.

Many leaders today are overwhelmed by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Some of their leadership behaviors are not constructive, and the prospects for leadership in the future are far from secure.

In these troubled times, many leaders are judging too soon and judging too simplistically. Others are deciding too late and paying a price for their slowness or lack of courage. Some leaders react to the VUCA World with anger and disdain. Some pick a side and start to fight. And some leaders truly believe that the chaos will go away as things somehow get back to what they remember (often romantically) as normal. Such leadership responses are understandable, but they are also dysfunctional and dangerous.

When I listen for the future, I hear four overarching messages:

1. The VUCA World of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity will get worse in the future.1 Solvable problems will still abound, but senior leaders will deal mostly with dilemmas, which have no solutions, yet leaders will have to make decisions and figure out how to win anyway. Many people are already living in a VUCA soup most of the time—especially people on the wrong side of the rich–poor gap.

While I was writing the first edition of this book in 2008, the VUCA world got a lot easier for me to explain as the markets around the world shook—and they are continuing to shake intermittently. Since the first edition, the VUCA World has gotten even more intense and obvious. More financial crises have shaken the markets, but so have a series of natural (or semi-natural) VUCA World events. On April 15, 2010, for example, I was in London talking about Leaders Make the Future with a group of innovation leaders from all around Europe. My morning keynote focused on the VUCA World and cloud computing. That afternoon, a cloud of volcanic ash descended upon London and closed British air space for the first time in history. I was grounded, with many others, in London for a week—at twelve-hour intervals, with no idea how long the shutdown would go on. Later that same week, the infamous BP oil spill erupted in the Gulf of Mexico. Two global VUCA events in one week.

If you are not confused by current events, you are not paying attention.

2. The VUCA World will have both danger and opportunity. Leaders will be buffeted, but they need not allow themselves to be overwhelmed, depressed, or immobilized. Some of those in authority positions today have turned nasty out of frustration. Leaders must do more than just respond to the whirl of events, though respond they must. Leaders can make their way in the midst of chaos. Some things can get better, even as other things get worse. You cannot listen for the future if you are deafened by the present or stuck in the past. Signals from the future are already here, all around us. There is also lots of meaningless noise, however, and leaders must learn to distinguish the signals from the noise.

We don’t just live in the present. We are rooted in the past and we have chances to make the future. The VUCA World, even with all its threats, is loaded with opportunity.

3. Leaders must learn new skills in order to make a better future. Traditional leadership practices will not be enough to deal with startling external future forces. Leaders must have new skills to take advantage of VUCA opportunities—as well as the agility to sidestep the dangers.

This book introduces ten new leadership skills for the future: maker instinct, clarity, dilemma flipping, immersive learning ability, bio-empathy, constructive depolarization, quiet transparency, rapid prototyping, smart-mob organizing, and commons creating. When I completed the first edition, I assumed that others would suggest new leadership skills—beyond the ten I identified. To my surprise, in the hundreds of workshops we have done over the last three years, there were no obvious additional future leadership skills that were suggested to me. I am now confident that these ten future leadership skills cover most of the territory—even though the language to describe the skills may vary from organization to organization.

4. Something more is needed than traditional approaches to leadership development and executive training. In order to increase their own readiness and ability to make the future, leaders must immerse themselves in the future and practice their skills in a low-risk environment.

This will be a recurring theme in this book: immersion in the future. Leaders must immerse themselves in the future (through games and immersion experiences) and return to the present ready to make a better future.

Our societal ways of thinking about the future have shifted fundamentally. This artifact came from the 1964 World’s Fair Futurama pavilion sponsored by General Motors. (See Figure 1.) Made of lightweight metal and designed so that it could be attached to your pocket or shirt, the motto reveals the prevailing public view of the future in 1964. In those days, thinking about the future was the mysterious territory of government, science, and very large companies such as General Motors. The future was distant and driven by technology and science. The future was created by others in positions of authority. The rest of us were supposed to accept the future with awe and applause, not create the future—except for small energetic pockets of activists that always felt they could make the future.

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FIGURE 1. Badge from 1964 World’s Fair Futurama pavilion sponsored by General Motors. Source: IFTF personal GM artifact, 2008.

Today, is anyone trusting GM—or any other large corporation for that matter—to create the future? I think not. We think GM will survive, and most of us hope they will succeed, but few are counting on GM to make the future. Today’s consumers expect to make the future themselves and they don’t like to be called “consumers.” Consumption will be reimagined in the future world they are creating. Consumption won’t go away, but it will be different and people won’t be called consumers.

In 1964, the future looked so complicated that everyday people could only glimpse it if the big companies, powerful government agencies, and scientists allowed them to do so. The distant iconic leaders in this world were trusted to create the future for the rest of us.

In 2008, after discovering this 1964 vision of the future, my colleague Jason Tester, who designs artifacts from the future at IFTF (he calls this art human/future interface), hacked the original slogan “I have seen the future” and injected it with modern maker spirit. (See Figure 2.)

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FIGURE 2. New version of an old slogan. Source: IFTF, The Future of Making, 2008. SR# 1154.

This artifact captures the spirit of futures thinking today. Big companies, government agencies, or universities are no longer trusted to create the future. “I am making the future” is a call to action, with an attitude.

The maker instinct is the most basic future leadership skill, and it energizes every other skill. All ten of the future leadership skills proposed in this book build on each other and work together. Clarity, for example, wraps a leader’s vision in practical but inspirational language that motivates people through chaos. Commons Creating is the most ambitious, demanding, and important new leadership skill. Every leadership skill is linked to every other skill, and leaders need to decide which skills to emphasize when. Leadership teams need a mix of these future-inspired leadership skills.

On the map inside the book jacket is a summary of the external future forces that will shape leadership over the next decade. Leadership must change because of the external future forces we are facing.

The global rich–poor gap is the most basic and the most extreme future force—and the gap is growing dangerously. People who are poor already experience the VUCA World: their lives are volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous every day. Realistically and sadly, it is hard to forecast a narrowing of this gap, but easy to imagine it getting wider.

In Get There Early, I wrote an entire chapter on “The VUCA World: Danger and Opportunity.” VUCA is not new. There has been plenty of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity for leaders to deal with (or not) in the past. The need for leadership in the face of uncertainty is also not new. Life has always had its VUCA elements, and leaders have always lived VUCA lives. But I think the next ten years will be different.

What will be new in the years ahead is the scale and intensity of the VUCA World. Having spent forty years forecasting, I believe that the future world will be more volatile, more uncertain, more complex, and more ambiguous than we have ever experienced as a planet before.

In my nearly forty years of ten-year forecasting, the forecast inside the book jacket of Leaders Make the Future is the most frightening I have ever done. It is also, however, the most hopeful forecast I have ever done.

It bears repeating that nobody can predict the future. The purpose of forecasting is to provoke, not predict. I hope that this forecast provokes new insight about how to avoid the most dire aspects of this forecast. Many people, I hope, will dedicate themselves to proving this forecast wrong. There are many elements of this forecast that I hope will not occur. I hope that leaders will be smart enough to avoid them.

One of my jobs as a forecaster is to help people learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable—but certainly not passively comfortable. The most important value of forecasting is to help people learn to lead energetically even if they feel uneasy. As a forecaster, I am seeking to empower, not overwhelm. Discomfort will come with the territory for the next ten years—but the possibilities for positive action are everywhere.

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FIGURE 3. The Foresight → Insight → Action Cycle. See Get There Early for more detail. Source: IFTF, 2007. SR# 1038.

Leaders must get used to an amplified VUCA World and learn to like it. If you are lucky enough to experience a future that is less chaotic, take it as a blessing and be happy that you are prepared to be surprised, since you are still likely to experience surprises later. For most leaders, very few experiences will be predictable or slow moving.

Figure 3 summarizes the Foresight to Insight to Action Cycle that I introduced in detail in Get There Early. Foresight provokes Insight; Insight seeds Action. The purpose of forecasting is to make better decisions in the present.

Notice the positive definition of VUCA inside the Foresight to Insight to Action Cycle. Leaders in the future will need to have Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility. The VUCA World is not unyielding:

· Volatility yields to vision.

· Uncertainty yields to understanding.

· Complexity yields to clarity.

· Ambiguity yields to agility.

The biggest danger is getting caught off guard, but you can control that by preparing yourself and your organization. The best way to begin your preparation is to listen ten years ahead, but you must listen through the awful noise.

Ten Years Ahead: The Magic Time Frame

Making the future begins with listening. Even in a VUCA World, the directions of change are usually discernible—if you listen carefully. The large hot zones on the map (see inside book jacket) highlight the zones where change is most likely to erupt. At Institute for the Future, we’ve found that the sweet spot for forecasting is about ten years ahead. Ten years is far enough in the future to be beyond the planning horizon of most organizations, yet it is not so far out that it seems unbelievable or irrelevant. Ten years is also far enough ahead to see clear patterns that are not visible in the noise of the present.

Starting from Institute for the Future forecasts, this book looks ahead to explore the leadership skills that will be necessary to succeed in the future. This introduction gives a tour of the forecast. I recommend taking off the book jacket and leaving the map open as you read this Introduction.

As a forecaster, I can provoke you with foresight, but it is up to you to come up with your own insight and actions. Again, it doesn’t matter if you agree with my forecast or not. In fact, some of the best forecasts are those that you don’t like, those that make you squirm in your chair. Forecasting is about provocation, not prediction. Nobody can predict—especially in a VUCA World.

Each chapter is organized around a future leadership skill. Then links are made between the forecast and how it is provoking the need for that particular skill. Each of the ten future leadership skills corresponds to an iconic image that leads each chapter. These Zen-like images are intended to evoke the emotions of that particular skill. Artist and documentary filmmaker Anthony Weeks, who has worked with me for years to visualize the futures that we discuss in our workshops, has created the icons for each future leadership skill.

When you take off the book jacket and study the forecast, notice the look and feel of this map. It is an organic matrix that aptly represents the forecast for the next ten years in that we are moving into a world in which changes will unfold organically and also threaten nature. Engineering and mechanical thinking drove the last economic era; the next era will be driven by biology and what we are starting to refer to as the global well-being economy, which includes sick-care, wellness, and all the various aspects of well-being such as financial, social, physical, vocational, and spiritual. The forecast map is linked to nature in underlying metaphors and background graphics. This forecast sets a futures context for the rest of the book. These future forces will shape leaders and they will define leadership.

The book jacket forecast map summarizes on one page the external future forces that will be important for future leaders to consider. To the right of the map, you see the ten leadership abilities that are most important for this future world. The ten chapters that follow describe each of those skills, along with the abilities, competencies, and traits that will fit together to create a new leadership profile for the future. The book concludes with personal guidelines for future leaders, with a focus on what you can do to be more prepared for the future you intend to make.

Extreme imbalances in wealth are fundamental disruptors. For much of the world, hunger, safety, and subsistence are daily challenges. It is hard to do a ten-year forecast where the rich–poor gap gets smaller; it is easy to do a forecast where it gets larger. IFTF’s annual Ten-Year Forecast for 2011–2021 said it this way:

Resil...

“Bob Johansen’s thesis that we, as business leaders, can create and guide our own future in a competitive and ever-changing marketplace has permeated throughout our organization at Scripps Networks Interactive. In Leaders Make the Future he takes his thesis to the next level, providing readers with a wise and thought-provoking guide to success in a changing world. It’s going to be a must-read at our company.”
—Kenneth W. Lowe, Chairman, President, and CEO, Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc.

“The first edition of Leaders Make the Future opened new vistas for visionary leaders and provided a road map for them. The second edition creates urgency to develop skill sets necessary to lead by describing the time compression of change and the resulting dynamic interdependencies of the complexity of the changes. These complexities not only require flexible and agile responses but also describe a world in which new measurements are required. These measurements can best be determined using a combination of learning from the social sciences combined with analytical applications or in a sense a set of social differential equations.”
—Alfred A. Plamann, CEO, Unified Grocers, Inc.

“Bob Johansen focuses on how leaders can make decisions and perform when the pace of decision making and its consequences in our interdependent world have never been greater. Leaders Make the Future provides an analytical and operational framework for decision making in the VUCA soup.” 
—Thomas H. Glocer, former CEO, Thomson Reuters

“At EA University, we rock with the excitement and dangers of volatile and uncertain futures for our industry. Heck, for our whole world! We use Bob Johansen’s concepts and future capabilities in preparing our high-potential leaders for this future. If there is uncertainty in your future, you will want your leaders reading this book.”
—Andy Billings, Vice President, Profitable Creativity, EA University, Electronic Arts

“Leaders Make the Future is required reading for my students and essential reading for all interested in a better world and social profit. It is concise, readable, understandable, useful, necessary, replete with examples relevant to now and to tomorrow’s world, and applicable to both career and daily life.”
—Linda Golden, Marlene and Morton Meyerson Centennial Professor in Business, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin

“Leaders Make the Future applies the maker mind-set to leadership. The best leaders in the future will also be makers.”
—Dale Dougherty, founder, MAKE magazine and Maker Faire

“Bob Johansen offers clear and inspiring guideposts to deal with profound leadership challenges that face us in the 21st century. Leaders take note: you will need both strategy and learning, expressed with great clarity. This book is an important call to action."
—Willie Pietersen, Professor of the Practice of Management, Columbia Business School

“Kudos to Bob Johansen for this revised edition of Leaders Make the Future! Not only can the leadership skills Bob outlines be applied toward producing effective leaders, but they are excellent for promoting happier, healthier ones too!”
—Kelly Traver, MD, CEO and founder, Healthiest You

“Having lived and worked with the future for almost forty years, the Institute for the Future’s Bob Johansen returns to the present and shares his key insights on how leaders can move their organizations forward. If you want to thrive in the future—or even create your own—then reading this book will be time well spent.”
—Tom Kelley, General Manager, IDEO, and author of The Ten Faces of Innovation 

“We find the unique perspective that Bob illustrates in this book incredibly important as we prepare our top leaders for the future.”
—David Small, Vice President, Global Talent Management and Leadership Institute, McDonald’s Corporation

“Bob Johansen has made Leaders Make the Future even better since anticipating the economic meltdown in 2008 and closely tracking events since then. By asking what skills leaders will need, working backward from future-shaping forces he and the Institute for the Future have identified, he offers a fresh and important call to action. The book is full of practical advice from watching Silicon Valley’s booms, busts, and recoveries for more than three decades.”
—David Sibbet, President, Grove Consultants International, and author of Visual Meetings and Visual Teams

“Johansen offers steps to strengthen our skills as well as insights to inspire us to build a better future. It is the must-read partner to his other recent book, Get There Early.” 
—Jean McClung Halloran, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Agilent Technologies