The pace of change continues to increase. As it does, the most effective leaders will be those who are best able to anticipate and accommodate those changes.

Everyone else will be left feeling frustrated, lost or left behind.

Here are some tips for building your ability to lead into the future:

Understand the Constants

Perhaps ironically, understanding what won’t change will help you anticipate what will change. The problem is that many leaders don’t differentiate between what they hope won’t change and what actually won’t.

Here’s what won’t change:

• Everything is about people. All change takes place either because people wanted it, needed it or are adapting to something else. The environment might change, the climate might change, the economy might change, technology might change – but none of those changes matter if they don’t matter to people.

You don’t have to agree with them. But you do need to pay attention to what people are paying attention to.

• Leaders lead people. You don’t lead machines. You lead people. You lead through relationships. Healthy relationships are better and more productive than unhealthy relationships.

Learning to listen well, communicate, encourage, negotiate, resolve conflict and mentor others will never stop being critical leadership skills.

• People need a purpose. Remember that you lead people. People need a purpose. They need a sense of vision. People with a sense of purpose can take a miserable job and do it beautifully. People without a sense of purpose will take a beautiful job and make it miserable.

People’s need for purpose and significance will never change.

• People desire security. Most political promises are around helping people feel safe. The media is fueled by stories that cause people to feel unsafe. The fears of danger, loss, rejection or lack of gain are powerful.

People’s desire for security will never change. Most people will construct their entire lives around feeling safe – physically, economically, relationally or in another way.

These core facts about leadership and people won’t change. They haven’t changed through history or culture, war or peace, times of feasting or famine. Only the methods may change.

At any time in history, when a society has started to move away from one of the core principles above, it has always self-corrected.

• Whenever people are devalued, the consequences of this eventually become too great to bear. It may take time, but it always corrects.
• Whenever leaders forget that leadership is a relationship, people leave the relationship and stop following or respecting their leaders.
• Whenever people lose a sense of vision or purpose, their motivation, drive, and creativity go with it. Then they shift their attention to something that does provide a sense of vision or purpose.
• Whenever people feel insecure, they will move toward security.

By knowing what doesn’t change, you have some insight into what is likely to happen in the future.

The Principle of Principles

What I’m describing above is the principle that principles don’t change and if you understand them, you have gained valuable insight into the past and the future.

What I’m describing above are some of the core principles of leadership. Those don’t change.

The place where you lead also has core principles that can guide you into the future. It doesn’t matter what kind of team or organization it is. Understand those principles and you’ll have insight and foresight.

Forecasting What Will Change

The change you create

The easiest change to forecast is the change that you are going to create.

This seems obvious, but many leaders are still surprised by the results of their own actions.

Perhaps the most classic example of this is when leaders of an organization plan for rapid growth. Typically, they have a vision for all the benefits or impact that will be the result of their growth.

They may even have a general strategy for how to accomplish that growth.

Most miss what will be required to fuel or support that growth. In particular, the new leadership/management and staffing need that will be required (with associated costs.)

As a result, they hit bottlenecks in growth. They experience the frustration of having opportunities but not having a deep enough bench.

However, you can forecast this. Simply by planning backward: Defining where you want to end up – and thinking back through what will be needed (and when) to build each stage of growth.

The change you anticipate

• Experiential intuition: It has appeared to me that leaders who have wide or deep experiences also seem to have a more highly developed sense of intuition. They’ve seen “it” before. They recognize changes in the “weather patterns” so to speak.

Always cultivate your experience. Make sure that you are being exposed to new challenges. Don’t rest on your laurels. Don’t become removed from your environment.

Then you’ll be better positioned to notice or pick up on possible changes.

• Cross-Sector Similarities: Most of the changes that I’ve been able to anticipate have come from heavily exposing myself to multiple sectors and industries.

When my clients in health care talk about the same things my engineering and government clients are talking about – I know there is something going on.

This is reinforced if I notice it is expressed in the arts, academia, the media or trends in family dynamics.

I look for similar (or related) changes, issues, concerns or opportunities across these sectors. They are indicators of the future.

• Pay attention to exceptions: I’ve learned to pay attention to exceptions. For example, in every recession, some businesses will prosper.

Why? I try to learn about what made those business or leaders different. From that, I can anticipate the impact of certain future events.

Because I understand these principles, I can help an individual business gain insight into its readiness to face the future and how it might want to adjust. (Or how it can take advantage of coming opportunities.)

• Pay attention to history: Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” I have found it helpful to read history – across eras and cultures. As a result, it becomes easier to notice current trends that seem similar to a historical trend.

It then becomes possible to consider that some elements of the future may look similar to how those historical events resolved.

• Listen to others who have a history of being clear-eyed about the future: Everyone wants to predict the future. Nearly everyone gets it wrong. Political pundits – who achieve national media attention and notoriety for predicting the outcomes of elections and political events are famous for being no more accurate than a coin toss. Stock market predictions are usually wrong and day-traders tend to lose their money.

Despite this, some people are surprisingly clear-eyed about the future. I pay attention to a couple of economists who have been able to make surprisingly accurate forecasts. I pay attention to the President of our local economic development corporation for the same reasons.

What I’ve noticed is that these people don’t pull predictions out of a hat. They don’t try to offer predictions on any issue you bring to them. But what they can forecast, they offer.

I pay a lot of attention to what most people say. But I listen to them. I found that by doing so, others think I’m smarter than I am.

Stay Curious: Don’t Resist Change, Ask What It Means

When we feel pressure or change – the most basic human impulse is to resist it. But first, we should try to understand what it means. Otherwise, we are only reacting. We aren’t leading.

These questions may help:

• What is the future we are trying to create and what do we need to create it?
• What is our current process or habit when it comes to assessing the future?
• How widely and deeply do we expose ourselves to other industries and sectors in our community?
• What might be the relevant principles that apply to a given situation? (Or, what did we think was a principle and perhaps we were wrong?)
• What are people’s top-of-mind concerns?
• In what situations and circumstances are people’s time and resources being wasted?
• What do people want that they don’t seem to be getting?

Forecasting the future isn’t about putting on a robe, finding a mountain top to live on and becoming a prophet. It’s about making educated guesses. The better educated, the better.

It’s a little like forecasting the weather. Where I live, the weather forecasts are frequently inaccurate. However, if rain is predicted, it’s still a good idea to bring a rain jacket.

That’s all we’re trying to do. Become better leaders by taking a little time to look further down the road.

Take good care,

Christian

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