Who will break the ice?

Hello, and welcome to Future Solving, my newsletter for leaders and managers navigating what it means to lead in the era of AI.

Today, we're going to talk about one of the greatest problems facing organizations today: lack of visionary leadership.

What if I told you about a group of icebreakers at the edge of a frozen glacial sea in the ocean, each looking for a quick win, a fast-follow - reading reports from research firms on paths other icebreakers have already taken and where they might be able to achieve the same results without taking on any risk - what would you think?

How about if I told you about hundreds more industrial-grade icebreakers anchored for years at a nearby harbor, making incremental improvements on their ship, but never venturing out to sea?

Whose job is it to venture out to sea and break the ice?

Most organizations have a Research and Development function. Is it their job? On the one hand, yes, and on the other hand, no. This is a systems thinking problem, in that the performance of the whole is not a sum of its parts, rather the sum of the interaction between the parts.

In other words, if you have the best R&D organization in the world, but no one will integrate their work into their lines of business or operations, the sum is still zero.

Also, R&D or Innovation organizations are often seen as the spark for innovation, when in fact they are downstream. Visionary leadership precedes the greatest innovation, leading to steady investment against the inevitable pitfalls and the leadership sponsorship needed to carry the innovation throughout the organization until its transformative value is realized.

Then whose job is it? It's yours. Whoever and wherever you are, at whatever altitude and with however many resources you have at your disposal- it's your job to chart a course for the future of your work, team, department, organization, or market, then climb into the captain's seat, pull up your anchor, leave the harbor, and break the ice.

So how do you start?

The first step is recognizing that most of us are rewarded for what can be measured in quarters and fiscal years. And that means we're incented to pursue quick wins or fast-follows.

It's like we're looking through a quarter-focused microscope at the urgent + important, and we never have bandwidth to step back and think about the nonurgent but important, which effectively puts in a perpetual cycle of ship maintenance at the harbor.

To break this cycle, set aside time for yourself to think about the future of your workstream, team, department, organization, or market. What should it be? Not what will it be, or where is it headed - what should it be?

And what would have to be true to create that future?

Write down the theories of what would have to be true.

Then ask again: what would have to be true for each of these theories to be true?

Write down the hypotheses.

Now meet with colleagues and team members and share your vision and your decision tree made up of an initial set of theories and hypotheses (you can find a framework for this exercise here).

In the reality of most organizations, you will likely still need to hit certain operational targets within the quarter and fiscal year, but now those can be aligned with a broader vision as opposed to independent destinations. And if you share this vision with leadership, odds are likely that you can get additional funding for proving/disproving some of your other hypotheses.

If you're the leader of an organization or department and you set this kind of vision- share it with your team and let me know how it goes. I'd be willing to bet that they will express deep gratitude because most teams have their arms full of metrics and goals but are starved for vision.

*

I’d love to hear examples you've seen of breaking the ice or not breaking the ice at your workplace or past workplaces, or if you're seeing this in the market as well.

Thanks for reading,

Brian

Brian Evergreen?is the author of Autonomous Transformation (a Next Big Idea Club "Must-Read" shortlisted for the Thinkers50 2023 Breakthrough Idea Award), an executive advisor, Senior Fellow at The Conference Board, and the host of the Future Solving Podcast (eighth episode with Tiffani Bova, 2x WSJ Bestselling Author and honored 2x by Thinkers50, can be replayed?here).