HOW OUR BEST LEADERS VIEW FUTURE SHAPING
If you tire of always hearing from the tech bro billionaires, the platform monopolists, and egoistic leaders who really believe they are running (or was that word… ruining?) the world, you might be ready to hear from real leaders who live on planet Earth, the way the rest of us do.
After having worked with these unusually outstanding leaders, often for many years, we felt it was time you heard their gained wisdom directly from them, how they view the future and what they advise all of us who wish to shape a healthy, exciting,g and productive future.
In a series of video interviews, we have captured their insights along with our commentary.
Our Future Shaping Leaders (first three in a growing series):
Terry Moody
A highly successful CEO leader who specializes in transforming companies into category-leading, regenerative, and high-performance enterprises…VICTOR Advanced Technologies; FIVES (French, multi-$Billion) Global Industrial Engineering; ALPHA sustainable creative packaging; ALTOR regenerative transport systems and packaging.
Uffe Elbaek
A creative polymath educator, entrepreneur, political leader, journalist, and author…Former Minister of Culture and Member of Parliament for Denmark; Founder of the new Alternative Party; Founder and Principal of Kaospilot, a highly creative, game-changing, advanced education school for future shaping, social entrepreneurial new leaders.
Nick Coe
A retail visionary, master storyteller, innovative CEO, natural merchant, and creative brand builder (growing an $8 Billion brand) …Levi’s; Banana Republic; Lands’ End; Bath and Body Works.
Some of their comments will be confirming what you may know, but much of their thinking and focus may totally surprise you.
Surprise — Not everyone is in a spin about AI. It is viewed as clever and selectively valuable, but ultimately it is what the tech-savvy thought leader Tim O’Reilly called “Normal Technology”.
No, the future-shaping leaders in our series of video interviews focus more on the importance of human creative innovations and how to set conditions for creating value and enriching life.
Their insights on future shaping come from doing it successfully themselves, and their advice is practical wisdom, filled with lots of specific examples, that the rest of us can apply immediately.
We can all feel the collapse of what it was that brought us here.
Business models need to change rapidly, if not radically, to respond to ever shifting environment and economic realities. And then there is the Poly-Crisis that envelops us all.
(And in our hearts, we know the Poly-Crisis can usher in a new time of Poly-Potential if we shape a better future).
Please pardon the following doomscroll summary:
We are amid a Poly-Crisis that is real — Environmental existential threats; Institutional failings (which institutions do you trust to bring us a better future?); Geopolitical seismic shifts that question who we can trust; people feeling they can’t envision a better future.
Just look at the people issues — Why is it we can more easily envision an end of the world we know than to envision an end to the system driving it?
“People feel unnecessary, replaceable spectators of their own lives.” — Paddy Murphy
When feelings of hopelessness and even despair start becoming a habit, it is time to change.
When working in a time of breakdown, it is critical to be working on the next breakthrough.
“Don’t fix the old, transform it.” — That is one of the key, implicit/ explicit, messages of each of the leaders we interviewed.
Whether running a company or leading a society, zeitgeist-reading, savvy leaders clearly see the system that is not working and actively work to replace it with a new system that changes the game.
They imagine a new world, a new story of tomorrow, and then do their best to manifest it.
In other words, they shape a new future.
Taking on the role of shaping a new future is what we are all challenged to do in our enterprises, society, culture, and individual lives.
“Shape the Future to Create Value and Enrich Life” — That is ultimately what all leaders are challenged to do.
(This is just a partial summary of what the first leaders in our ongoing series told us)
If the world is changing 5x and you or your organization is changing 2x (or less), guess who is falling behind?
The leaders interviewed in the videos all underscored why (with examples from their own experiences) making fundamental, urgent, and important changes to their work and enterprises enabled them to make new leaps into future success.
Future shaping requires imagination and the courage to change to answer the call of the urgent and important.
The great business leaders continually challenged themselves with the question…”What business are we in?”
(We have learned through working with over 150 enterprises that too many companies misunderstand what business they are really in).
Based on their findings about what business they are really in, the leaders made the transformation to radically new business models.
Our European political leader, in this first series of interviews, discovered his country needed a new game-changing political party to better shape the future. He organized it and made it successful.
In this breakdown to breakthrough time, both companies and countries are building new systems and strategies based on renewal and regeneration.
While our press still focuses primarily on the obscenely rich successes from extractive, exploitative, or manipulative models, in the future, it will be those who can learn the new system of renewal and regeneration who will shape the future
Regeneration requires screwing up the status quo (“break the mold,” as one leader put it), making a mindset change (metanoia) based on an imagined new future, and then surging into a new system of regenerative performance. This is not always easy to lead, but it is always essential.
When times are tough, don’t abandon your transformative/regenerative strategy (like too many others do), instead, do the opposite — put your foot on the strategy accelerator.
When others are Zigging, it is your time to Zag.
Always return to your True North (purpose, values, mission, essential vision) and faithfully keep to this compass heading.
This may sound like advice you have heard before, but the reason it is being said again is that too many have abandoned their True North imperatives. Instead, they are answering the empty call to scale bigger through compromising what is authentically important (why are people boycotting Target, and why are Tech Bro’s buying into democracy threatening politics?).
Another key point — “A company is only people,” so Deeply Care for them (Even when the AI wise guys try to eliminate them…does the DOGE debacle some to mind?) — Every true future shaping leader focuses on bringing out the full humanity and power of their people. They know who really builds success.
First, imagine the future and build the environment (culture) and competencies that will shape how people will shape the future.
As one leader said, ”We too often lack the imagination for a new future”.
It is not that we don’t have the innate ability to imagine; it is that the environment and process of creation are not inviting or conducive to expressing that imagination.
Leaders need to go first by imagining and expressing their own picture of the future. They need to get away from the office, gain perspective by getting out in the world, and then think with creative people in an environment where they can let their hair down, talk freely, play with ideas, and imagine a new vision that holds a new system for the future. (This is not an indulgence; this is an imperative).
Then others, at many levels of the organization, need to challenge, build on, and make this future vision inspiring, juicy, and meaningful to them. By doing so, they take ownership.
Then, essential future competencies need to be created.
You can’t effectively make Change In an organization or system; you need to make Change Of it.
This most often means you need to develop essential Future Competencies (many of the old ones need to be put aside) that enable people to make Change Of the company or Society.
One of our Future Shaping leaders, who established a highly successful new school for impact entrepreneurship, identified four fundamental competencies he teaches all future leaders:
Gain Meaning and Understanding first
Build Relationships and Community
Grow through Change and Adaptation
Act for Solid Results
We added, complementary to these foundational competencies, the Future Success Competencies that are essential now and in the coming years:
Creative Innovation (“Innovation in everything we do”)
Storytelling (“Essential, motivating, tangible”)
Zoom Out/In & Handle Complexity (“Get out of the office, gain perspective” & “Connect the Dots”)
Potential Optimization (bring out the best in people and processes)
People’s potential was important to all leaders. One leader tells of a study that asked, “When do you feel most yourself, most fully human?”
The answers were universal… “When I am Creating, When I am in Nature, and when I am in Service to others.”
He suggested we should organize our society around these if we hope to bring out the best in people.
Final Note:
In this introductory article, we only had time to touch on a few of the wisdom, insights, and advice given by our Future Shaping Leaders.
We invite you to view their video interviews…posted on our home page.