Are you amongst the Enlightened Leaders who are struggling with the following fundamental set of questions?
(1) Should we prepare for the possibility of a profound societal change, a possible challenge to the old order: economic, social, political, institutional?
(2) Is it possible to predict its nature, content, direction, path, and implications?
(3) What reasons should lead us to be proactive, to anticipate the movements, to become agents of change to come?
(4) Will it ever be possible to reconcile the plural views and feelings that these issues raise?
(5) How on the contrary to welcome them all, respect each, discover their respective merits, turn them into superior intelligence, turn plurality into a powerful action leverage for today and tomorrow?
(6) Can we solve the “innovator’s dilemma”: creating on the one hand the means to freely exploring , developing and testing the hidden opportunities in an unpredictable future, while on the other hand unwaveringly remaining tightly focused on the present; leveraging our present strengths, remaining on our current trajectory, reinforcing today’s “core business”.
(7) How to solve this dilemma while at the same time interweave the lessons learned from both perspectives, thereby gradually building the organizational agility indispensible to embrace all aspects of our future winning competitive differentiation?
(8) How to probe / discover the future from the future: from a space of total freedom for thought and action, allowing us to experiment unencumbered by past habits, norms and constraints that guide our everyday individual and collective thinking and behavior?
Dear Leaders, the answers to these questions exist:
They are buried in your organizations.
They are also to be found among your customers, especially those who are not satisfied, those who rebel or otherwise confront you, leave you, those you’ve rejected, those you don’t even know of.
Finally, the answers also hide in the hubbub of the world in motion, they are hidden among disturbing voices that have not yet reached the mainstream media. More so, among those who are actively obscured in some way by the prevailing orthodoxy. Finally, they are sprouting out of the myriad path-breaking initiatives initiated by those who are called the “Cultural Creatives”. They mostly remain discreet, unnoticed on our conventional radar screens.
Answers are valid if successfully proven in practice.
Experience shows that solutions are best implemented by those who benefit from it, who have defined the problem to be solved in first place, who have provided the answers. Setting up mixed teams of employees, existing and potential customers, would be partners and other key stakeholders, and total strangers to keep the system open, is key to success from beginning to the end.
The processes to support them are known, they are resolutely trans-disciplinary in kind, powerful, adaptive and promote learning, personal and organizational growth. Implementing them is gradual and lightweight, is best achieved by reduced budgets and simple means to start with, and the work done outside the organization. The path that should allow your organization to invent and implement its best possible future is not difficult, it requires creativity, openness, diversity, courage and determination.
Just wonderful Charles!!!