Institute For The Future

The Leadership Trilogy

For more than a decade, beginning just after 911, I’ve been wrestling with the question of leadership profiles that will be required to thrive in what the Army War College calls the VUCA World (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous). I ended up writing a trilogy of books, all published by BK, that shares the profile I’m convinced will work to help us get ready for the next future shock:

Ten skills (think competencies) introduced in Leaders Make the Future

Five literacies (think disciplines or practices) introduced in The New Leadership Literacies

One mindset (think worldview) introduced in Full-Spectrum Thinking

Full-spectrum thinking is a creative mix of skills, literacies, and mindset. It will unlock clarity while challenging certainty. The dangers of certitude are swelling, but the tools for full-spectrum thinking will get dramatically better just in time over the next decade. Many are certain, but few are clear. That’s about to change.

Full-Spectrum Thinking is the ability to seek clarity across gradients of possibility—while resisting the temptations of certainty. For example, medical doctors used to label people as “autistic.” Now, they say people are on the spectrum of autism disorders. 

The future will reward full-spectrum thinking, but punish categorical thinking. Categories coerce. People throw categories at others like capture nets over wild animals. Categories can kill. Categorizing fosters contempt. Full-spectrum thinking fosters understanding. 

Futures thinking will help you escape boxes in a post-categorical future. Foresight is an antidote to certainty. Think future-back: Now, Future, Next.

A cross-generational mix of people using a fresh mix of digital media will first enable—then require—full-spectrum thinking. Think big data analytics and visualization, gameful engagement, machine learning, neuroscience, and distributed-authority computing. Next-generation networks and digital natives will enhance our ability to see, understand, and even embody full spectrums of possibility. These tools will allow us to see new patterns with new clarity.

Expect broader spectrums of business and social value, hierarchy, human-machine symbiosis, diversity, and meaning. Full-spectrum thinking will help us see how we are connected, not just how we are different. Sloppy categorical thinking, so common today, will be inexcusable and embarrassing in the future. Full-spectrum thinking will unlock clarity while challenging certainty. The opposite of clarity is not confusion, it is certainty. 

Over the next decade, it will get harder and harder to make any money at all selling products alone. Gradually products will yield to a full spectrum of services, experiences, organizational and personal transformations—and the profit margins will go up as you move across that spectrum.

The new HR will be HCR: Human-Computing Resources. Ten year from now, we’ll all be cyborgs: human-centered beings who are digitally amplified. Professor Tom Malone uses the term “Superminds” and I like that. The key questions that will be answered over the next decade will be this: what can humans do best? What can computers do best? 

What we think of as “human resources” will be infused with digital capabilities with a goal of automating only what should be automated while augmenting everything that should be augmented. It is already too late for a “digital strategy.” Now, you need a strategy that includes digital.

Expect new spectrums of faith beyond traditional organized religion. Traditional religion is yielding to distributed-authority meaning making in ways that I find very exciting and mind opening. As Leonard Cohen said: “There’s a crack in everything. Look for the cracks. That’s where the light gets through.” 

The rituals and practices of spiritual life are clearly changing, but the spectrum of new experiences will be difficult to categorize. Human-machine symbiosis will add an additional dimension of meaning. How might machines and humans work together to develop new experiences of meaning making?

In a distributed-authority world, the power of faith will be increasingly distributed. Individuals will feel it, some organizations will grow because of it, and all societies will be influenced by it. In a world where anything that can be distributed will be distributed, many will long for certainty and there will always be someone to promise it. Expect power shifts, power struggles, and power plays focused around making meaning and meaning as a motivator. 

We will all be in a dangerous game of hope.