We need to help all of our people develop a future-focused mindset, so that they can deal with all of the change, uncertainty and complexity of the world. We know that no-one can predict the future with accuracy and remove all uncertainty, but we can improve our skills in forecasting, foresight and becoming more adaptable. We can learn to ’think like a futurist’. This session will develop your strategic imagination and future-focused mindset, with a toolkit of skills and techniques that will enable you to anticipate change and identify disruption.
These transferable skills can be taken back to your office, and applied immediately, so that you and your team can reduce change fatigue, be more confident about the future, and handle disruption with ease. You’ll be equipped to imagine what might come next, allowing you to build better strategies, plan more effectively, and face the future confidently.
Overview of key content:
The world is changing quickly – driven increasingly by disruptive and exponential change. We will look at what happens if we fail to identify disruption, and why our brains are not good at doing this.
We need to ensure we are not merely optimising our existing businesses, but actively looking at business model innovation. As Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses’”.
It’s not enough to simply try and predict change. Rather, we need to build adaptive, future-focused skills into ourselves and our teams in order to be best prepared for both threats and opportunities in the rest of the 2020s and the next decade.
We will look at a few of the tools that futurists use to be more forward thinking, including future backward scenarios, unlearning, ridiculous ideas, genuine curiosity and business model innovation.
We need to develop three key attitudes towards the future if we are going to do more than merely survive, but rather thrive:
We need to learn how to rethink and unlearn as a basis for innovation and adaptability.
We must build a culture of experimentation into our organisational DNA.
We must face the future with urgent optimism – believing that the best is possible, change is exciting and opportunities await those who are ready for them.
