Future

There are writers galore who have underlined a focus on the Future as an essential aspect of leading. Charles Handy sums it up with:

No vision. No leader!

Peter Drucker advocates a proactive approach with:

The best way to predict the future is to create it.

Soren Keirkegaard emphasises the importance of a sense of possibility in:

If I were to wish for anything I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of what can be, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?

And check out on the right the quote from two of the top writers on strategy and the Future, Gary Hamel and CK Prahalad.

So that's the job; you have to be in touch with a Future you want. And for you to be at your strongest, that Future will be directly linked to what you care about.

Hamel and Prahalad

A sense of possibility is just as important as a sense of foreboding in inducing a company to escape its past. However unappealing a company's present situation, it is unlikely to abandon the past for the future unless it has created for itself an alluring vista of future opportunities that presents a compelling alternative to simply reliving yesterday's successes.

To give up the bird in the hand, a company must see a dozen birds in the bush. The future must become just as vivid and real as the present and the past. Senior management must help the organisation build an intellectually compelling and emotionally enticing view of the future.
Hamel and Prahalad Close