FUTURIST SPEAKER: HOW TO BECOME AN ANTICIPATORY LEADER

It’s not enough to just think like a futurist if you want to get ahead in tomorrow’s world. If you want to translate future-focused insights into business gains, do be advised as well. It’s also important to note that becoming an anticipatory leader requires more than just exercising your imagination and possessing a good instinct for where things are headed tomorrow. Rather, as authors authors Anika Savage and Michael Sales note, it demands thinking in three dimensions: As a Futurist, Strategist, and Integrator.

FUTURISTS act as curators of sorts, (a) exploring developments in various industries, sciences, and markets (b) collecting ideas from conventional and obscure sources and (c) tracking patterns and trends to understand how they impact an organization.

STRATEGISTS see the possibilities that each trend holds, and can weave disparate information sources into useful connections and combinations. They build high-level strategies that tie these insights together to create positive business results.

INTEGRATORS go beyond observing and analyzing, and translate understanding into action – in other words, they know how to work within organizational systems, and inspire colleagues to produce positive results.

As you might note, to be an anticipatory leader means not only being able to see systems –industries, markets, etc. – as networks of interacting forces, and understanding the cause-and-effect relationships that these forces create. It also means being able to determine where these dynamics present opportunities for growth and innovation – and being able to take complex concepts and break them down into tactical day-to-day steps that an organization can take to achieve its goals.