Future Leadership

We live in a time of vast changes that include accelerating globalization, mounting quantities of information, the growing hegemony of science and technology, and the clash of civilizations. Those changes call for new ways of learning and thinking in school, business, and the professions. Listen as psychologist Howard Gardner defines the cognitive abilities that will command a premium in the years ahead.

Everyone would benefit from seeing further into the future, whether buying stocks, crafting policy, launching a new product, or simply planning the week's meals. Unfortunately, people tend to be terrible forecasters. As Wharton professor Philip Tetlock showed in a landmark 2005 study, even experts' predictions are only slightly better than chance. However, an important and underreported conclusion of that study was that some experts do have real foresight.

The world is changing faster and faster because of the internet and technology. The rigid models of leadership and long-standing rules of engagement and power we’ve come to count upon for generations are no longer reliable in this new hyper-connected and digitally-charged world we find ourselves in. This world is being fueled by openness, connection, transparency and shared power. The future of leadership mandates new levels of personal courage, self-awareness, and authenticity. To be blunt, navigating this new world can be incredibly confusing and frustrating.

We stand at an inflection point where technology can be leveraged to unleash human potential, or it can pit humans against machines. Heather McGowan and Chris Shipley have dedicated the last five years to understanding how technical, business, and cultural shifts have brought us to this place in order to construct this comprehensive and approachable guide to the future of work.

Kissinger's six leaders are Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew and Margaret Thatcher. All of them were formed in a period when established institutions collapsed all over Europe, colonial structures gave way to independent states in Asia and Africa, and a new international order had to be created from the vestiges of the old.

In their book Abundance, best-selling authors and futurists Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler tackled grand global challenges, such as poverty, hunger, and energy. Then, in Bold, they chronicled the use of exponential technologies that allowed the emergence of powerful new entrepreneurs. Now the best-selling authors are back with The Future Is Faster Than You Think, a blueprint for how our world will change in response to the next 10 years of rapid technological disruption.

Lawyers. Accountants. Software Engineers. That what Mom and Dad encouraged us to become. They were wrong. Gone is the age of "left-brain" dominance. The future belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind: designers, inventors, teachers, storytellers - creative and emphatic "right-brain" thinkers whose abilities mark the fault line between who gets ahead and who doesn't.

From one of our leading technology thinkers and writers, a guide through the 12 technological imperatives that will shape the next 30 years and transform our lives. Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives - from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture.

What is strategic thinking exactly? Are we born with it, or can we nurture it? As a distinct and important capability in leaders, strategic thinking is a remarkably poorly defined, little understood concept, confined to management courses and board meetings. But in The Art of Strategic Thinking, world-renowned expert Michael Watkins shows leaders how they can benefit from it, as long as they have the tools to nurture it.

There has been a lot written about leadership for the present day, but the world is changing quickly. What worked in the past won't work in the future. We need to know how to prepare leaders who can successfully navigate and guide us through the next decade and beyond. How is leadership changing, and why? How ready are leaders today for these changes? What should leaders do now?

Many corporations have slick, flashy mission statements that ultimately do little to motivate employees and less to impress customers, investors, and partners. But there is a way to share your excitement for the future of your company in a clear, compelling, and powerful way, and entrepreneur and business growth expert Cameron Herold can show you how.

Every day, legacy business models and traditional best practices are transforming around us, driven by technologies like AI, blockchain, 5G, and quantum computing that are radically altering our future vision. As a leader and innovator, you’re facing an accelerating pace of change that makes it more difficult than ever to navigate the murky future ahead. You need to cut through the noise and hype, but without a playbook to guide you, it’s difficult to know where to start.

You can unlock your limitless potential with one or two small shifts. Discover what successful "underdogs" throughout time have already discovered, and advance to the next level to increased wealth, prosperity, happiness, and joy.

In my Strategic Coach® workshops, I’ll draw a circle on the white board, and in the center, I’ll write, “Self-Managing Company”. I’ll say to the group, “You don’t know exactly what I’m going to say about this, but right off the bat, how many of you want one of these”? Every hand in the room goes up. Every ambitious entrepreneur in the world wants to have their own self-managing company. This 60-minute audiobook will provide you and your Unique Ability® Team with the eight crucial entrepreneurial mindsets necessary to make this.

The much-anticipated and inspiring memoir by Indra Nooyi, the trailblazing former CEO of PepsiCo, offering clear-eyed insight and a call to action for how our society can really blend work and family - and advance women - in the 21st century. For more than a dozen years as one of the world's most admired CEOs, Indra Nooyi redefined what it means to be an exceptional leader. The first woman, person of colour and immigrant to run a Fortune 50 company, Nooyi transformed PepsiCo with a unique vision, a vigorous pursuit of excellence and a deep sense of purpose.

How did Ford Motors use Lean development to pull off one of the most impressive corporate turnarounds in history? Largely by avoiding the mistakes that so many companies make when in a death spiral. They looked beyond manufacturing efficiency to change the very fundamentals of how they developed vehicles. In Designing the Future, Lean product development expert James Morgan and world-renowned Lean guru Jeffrey K. Liker reveal why so many companies have achieved only moderate success with Lean in operations, with a limited impact on their overall business.

The need for skills that defy disruption has never been so urgent, as traditional workplace models give way to confronting new rules of engagement. If you’re looking for job security, growth, and acceleration in a radical, new workforce, then Future Fit is the place to start. Award-winning author Andrea Clarke shares her experience, expertise and tactical advice on how to become truly future fit.

Our future is written by hopes, fears, dreams, expectations, and decisions made about life. In the same way, organizations have futures written by history, circumstances, culture, aspirations, successes, and failures. These already-written futures determine and shape the level of performance that's possible for individuals and organizations. Authors Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan crack the code on rewriting the future for people and organizations, elevating performance to unprecedented levels.

Building on years of deep reporting, Pulitzer Prize-winner Eliza Griswold paints an intimate portrait of pastors and church members' desperate wrestling to find a way to remain together despite their dividing truths. Through generational rifts, an increasingly politicised religious landscape, a pandemic and a rise in foundation-shaking activism, Circle of Hope tells a propulsive, layered story of what we do to stay true to our beliefs. It is a soaring, searing examination of what it means for a community to love, to grow, and crucially to disagree.

When we think about the future, it can be difficult to feel that we have any control. We aren't confident that we can take actions and make decisions that help determine what happens next. We want to feel prepared, hopeful and equipped and to face the future with optimism. Or, better yet, change the future. But how do we map out our lives when it feels impossible to predict what the world will be like next week, let alone next year? Jane McGonigal, a renowned future forecaster, reveals that 'unimaginable' events aren't unimaginable before they happen.