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PART ONE
FORESIGHT
Sensing Provocative Futures

This book recommends that you use ten-year forecasting to improve your foresight and shape your vision for the future in order to get there early and win.

Foresight is derived from listening for, sensing, and characterizing futures that provoke your own creativity. Forecasts—specific chunks of foresight—should be designed to stimulate actions you might take in the present. Foresight can also be derived from experience and observation, when you see something that you believe is a precursor of the future. Vision is your own personal statement, or your organization’s statement, of the particular future that you intend to create. Vision is the beginning of strategy.

Even a forecast that never happens is worthwhile if it provokes insight for you. A ten-year horizon provides a futures context for current events and decision options. The best leaders sense the future in order to compete in the present.

Part 1 is focused on foresight as a source of leadership vision. Stimulated by foresight, you can create your own vision—a direction to pursue and an understanding of how to get there early. Part 1 begins to unfold the Foresight to Insight to Action Cycle with more detail on the foresight zone. Foresight is the beginning of the journey.