Visionary Leadership: Vision Beyond Yourself

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Which do I wish

Lasted longer

My

Impact

Or my

Self?

?

When visioning forward, it is important to define how far forward you are looking – otherwise your vision will be blurry as it is not obvious where to focus. This does not mean you should simply focus on one time horizon. Instead visioning requires deliberately lifting your sights from the day-to-day demands to look?further ahead.

So you can travel forward at faster speeds and with greater confidence.

I first learnt this principle when learning to ride?a motorcycle. Early on I went for a ride with friends for the day on the open roads. As we started out through the city streets and along the highway I was able to keep up. However things changed as the city and straight roads fell away and the roads curved ahead of us. I started to fall further behind, even though I was riding as fast as it felt reasonably safe to do.

Previously, before learning to ride, a friend had crashed with me on the back of his bike. This painful experience had made me acutely aware of the need to scan the road surface for potential slips on gravel and grease. What I had not realised was that this narrowing of my view ahead was significantly slowing?me down. As I struggled to keep up I discovered that by looking much further ahead through the corner, I was able to travel significantly faster?while still regularly glancing closer in front.

Like so many learnings in life, the same principle?also provides importance guidance in other seemingly unrelated areas.

Whether you are visioning forward for your organisation or life, looking further ahead than might seem natural can help smooth the corners enabling us to travel?through the twists and turns with greater confidence?and ease.

So how far ahead do I mean by further than might seem natural?

Five years? Ten Years? Fifty years? Surely not?!

You are right. Try 100 years.

Why 100 years?

Let me ask you this – what do we both have in common in 100 years’ time?

I suspect you may have answered that neither of us will be alive then. Which is both a sobering and a liberating thought.

As it raises yet another question. Perhaps the most important one of all…

Do you want your organisation or impact to last beyond your life?

If you do, this demonstrates the significance of visioning a century?ahead. Alternatively, if the timeframe?does not immediately appeal, it might well be worth reflecting further. For example if the focus of your visioning is your organisation, the obvious question then is why would you not want the organisation to endure? If the work you are doing does not feel vital enough to always be needed, how might you shape the direction so that it is? Or if your vision is to have achieved your organisation’s major aim within that timeframe – what next?

While it is not possible to predict?precisely what the world will be like in 100 years’ time, it is possible to vision forward beyond the constraints of your own life.

What timeless fundamental aspects of your work do you want to continue on?

By comparing how the equivalent of this work was undertaken 100 years past, what clues does this give you about possible evolutions into the future?

It is important to keep in mind that looking this far forward into the future is not the only time horizon to vision forward to. Just as looking further through the corner does not mean to stop looking at the road immediately ahead. So alongside this far-reaching time horizon also vision forward to more conventional time horizons – whether it is short-term visioning one to two years ahead or longer term five to ten years forward.

The power of visioning a century forward is as much about seeing what might change, as it is about more deeply understanding what should remain the same.

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Visionary Habit

Reflection: Review the series of questions above. Reflect more deeply on one that connects with you – whether it inspires further thought or somehow troubles you. Let your thinking and visioning wander in different directions and see where this takes you. What inspiring possibilities result?

Conversation: Guide a visionary conversation with others to imagine what your organisation or the world might be like in 100 years’ time. This can be challenging to do, so you might be met with resistance. Try using some of the questions above to help guide and open up the group’s thinking. For example you could get the group to reflect 100 years back before projecting a century forward – as it is often far easier to reflect on the known?rather than imagine the unknown.

Action: Past accomplishments can often inspire momentum forward. Research and visually capture some past accomplishments in your organisation or life. Explore beyond the boundaries of your own experiences. For example if your organisation is less than a century old, broaden your search?to include the wider industry. Discover inspiring milestones going a century back then use these to imagine and create visionary markers a century forward.

This is a chapter from our book Futurework – A Guidebook for The Future of Work

Inspire

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As a Futurist living on the edge of the world, I’ve presented on stages and screens across the globe from San?Francisco to South Auckland to Sydney.

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