Three Qualities of Future-Focused Leaders
Learn from the past, grasp the present, anticipate tomorrow.
I can’t help it - I have the itch to write - but for now, I’m just going to share this framework that I’ve been working on.
Three Change Principles
Vision, commitment, and training represent what leaders do to create change.
If we’re going to be effective in our roles as leaders and team members, we need to be aware of three change principles:
A vision — Big dreams for a different future
Commitment to sustain our focus
Training to equip and prepare us.
It sounds simple. Leaders are most effective when they cast a vision about where they’re leading, what they expect, and what they want to accomplish. Teams perform best when they understand where they’re going, why it matters, and what they must do along the way.
Is the framework perfect yet? Probably not. Bear with me.
Three Characteristics of a Future-Focused Leader
I originally wrote about these three characteristics in The Society of Extraordinary Strategists Substack:
Extraordinary Strategists confidently lead by learning from hindsight, guiding with insight, and acting with foresight to direct the company along a clear path to its desired future.
These three principles represent how leaders think across time. Future-focused leaders
Learn from hindsight
Guide with insight, and
Lead with foresight
Together, they integrate thinking with doing. Sustainable change is influenced by how a leader thinks over time (looking back, now, and ahead) and acts to spark change (dreaming big, sticking to it, and building skills). Think of it as a Think x Act Matrix.
You can’t design a different future or build for tomorrow unless you’re an architect of sustainable change.
A Think x Act Matrix could look like this:
That version is a bit stiff at this point; here’s where I’m going with it. The rows show how you think about time. The columns (Actions) show what you do to push ahead and create change and a different future.
That’s it for now. Try it, apply it, and let me know if it works for you.
Thanks for being a subscriber and for joining me on this journey! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this framework; don’t be shy.