Preface

This book started from pain. As I have worked with top-executive teams—especially over the past few years—I have concluded that the most intense pain that leaders experience, the pain that keeps them awake at night, is caused by not being able to solve problems.

For many leaders, the challenges seem to be coming faster and faster. The challenges look like problems at first, but they don’t go away. The challenges seem to be getting messier even as solutions become more elusive. For today’s leaders, it seems as though solvable problems are morphing into no-win dilemmas before their eyes.

Most of today’s leaders, of course, were trained to problem-solve. They see problems everywhere, but they have trouble recognizing dilemmas—even when they see one up close. Dilemmas are problems that cannot be solved, problems that won’t go away. Leaders need practical ways to make sense out of complexity when problem solving is not enough.

Twenty or thirty years ago, when today’s leaders (including me) were in universities and graduate schools, they (we) were taught the theories and methods of problem solving and organizational control. Most of today’s leaders were never taught how to win when faced with dilemmas. In today’s world, every profession has become a dangerous profession—every leader is at risk, and the range of risk is growing.

About the time that the Enron scandal broke, I heard a joke about two women in a bar discussing two men who were sitting near them. One woman said to the other: “I love men in dangerous professions . . . like accounting.”

This joke is funny because we think of dangerous professions as skydiving or race car driving or stunt doubling in movies, but we aren’t used to thinking of everyday jobs as dangerous. Accounting used to be perceived as a conservative career choice, dependable and requiring discipline but certainly not dangerous.

In order to get there early, leaders need to tune their abilities for these dangerous times—to sense the future, to make sense out of threats and opportunities, as well as to decide when and what to decide.

Get There Early is written for leaders, present and future, official and unofficial. If you hold or aspire to a leadership position in business, government, or a nonprofit agency, this book will help you succeed even when faced with a situation you can’t solve.

In the age of the Internet, everyone has the opportunity to know what’s new, but only the best leaders have the foresight to sense what’s important, make sense out of their options, and understand how to get there ahead of the rush.

Get There Early is not just about speed; it’s more about timing. The Foresight to Insight to Action Cycle, described in detail in the book, helps leaders make strategic sense out of the mounting dilemmas all around us and pick the right timing for action—as well as the right action.

Get There Early includes a map to the next decade (on the back of the book jacket), drawing from the latest Ten-Year Forecast by Institute for the Future—which has a thirty-nine-year track record and is one of the very few futures think tanks ever to outlive its own forecasts. Our forecasting experience since 1968 gives us perspective and humility. We know firsthand that nobody can predict the future—but we also know that consideration of provocative futures can lead to better decisions in the present. Foresight to insight to action really works.

We struggled with how to present a forecast map within the physical constraints of a book. My colleague Jean Hagan had the creative inspiration to use the inside of the book jacket, which is just the right size for a map. We hope that you will take off the book jacket and leave the map open in front of you as you read—especially when you read Chapter 2, where the map is summarized in text. You don’t need the map to understand the content of the book, but we find that mapping is a very important tool for holding complexity in your mind.

Our Forecast Map unpacks a future that requires new forms of leadership beyond the quick-fix problem-solver style so common among today’s leaders, who love to solve problems but hate dealing with dilemmas. Leaders must develop the same kinds of complex emergent qualities as the challenges they are facing in the “VUCA world” of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity.

In creative response to the dangers of the VUCA world, the most successful leaders have a blending of Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility. The Foresight to Insight to Action Cycle helps leaders engage with the dangers and come up with a viable plan of action.

My goal is to help leaders lead—without prescribing exactly what to do. We all need to be leaders in these times of fluid hope; we need to learn to be comfortable leading in this often uncomfortable world. We need leaders who will get there early and take courageous stands—but express those stands and carry them out with humility. We need the skills to move gracefully and interactively from foresight to insight to action.

IFTF has a wide range of experiences with leaders in companies, government agencies, foundations, and nonprofits. I draw from these experiences and spice the book with stories to probe future dilemmas and draw lessons from them.

This book helps leaders resolve the constant tension—a dilemma in itself—between judging too soon and deciding too late.