The power of the future

If there were no future the present would be aimless.  We and our organizations would be driving toward nothing different than today.  Achievement and success would be empty words.  What we have and know would be all that we would ever have and know.

But we do have the future and it is what moves us.  It moves us as individuals and it moves us en masse.

The vision we have of what the future can hold is powerful and it is what makes us human.  We save money to educate our children. We hire people to develop new products.  We work hard for a future return.

The power of the future is the underlying key to successful strategic thinking and strategic action.  When an organization is captured by a vision of the future, it can move in fundamental and meaningful ways.  Change occurs when the lure of something much better and so appealing overcomes us.

There always are those who think command and control is the key to organizational effectiveness and that actions to bring meaningful change, growth and success can be dictated.  But think about how much better it is when the people in the organization and the other organizational stakeholders coalesce around a shared vision of how great it could be and then create the plan, make the commitments and take the steps together to get there.

Effective strategic planning is not an exercise in words and meetings and measurement.  It's finding a powerful shared vision of the future and then letting that vision pull the organization ahead to a new and better existence.