Does the future really matter?
Three truths about your company’s future and how to get there.
By 2026, almost 90% of Fortune 500 companies from 1955 have disappeared and 70% to 80% since 1990 have vanished due to the relentless market churning of mergers, acquisitions, bankruptcies, and drops in performance.
Did these firms anticipate what was coming? Did they see the changes ahead? What actions did they take? The answers vary, but for many, the future arrived faster and hit harder than expected.
Truth #1 – Your company has a future whether you see it or not.
Competition, regulatory shifts, demographic trends, product and service expansion, international growth, and more will continue to challenge your business. There is no escape.
Truth #2 – Your business’s future can be discovered, shaped, and brought to life today.
A future vision is an offensive strategy for strengthening business performance today. Taking time to define a unique vision creates a guidepost for a journey that is essential to survival.
Truth #3 – Only forward-thinking leaders will recognize and act on the need to build a compelling future. In other words, do not wait for someone else to push you—or beat you—to the next level of success.
Future performance does not happen on its own. Businesses need leaders who embrace the challenge of discovering the future and progressively bringing it to life.
So, what is required? Here are a few ways to discover and engage in the future:
Build a leadership mindset that is dissatisfied with the present and willing to question what has worked so far.
Use a team-based “Blue Sky” and “What if?” approach to explore future scenarios, possibilities, and bold new directions.
Express the vision as a present-tense statement of the desired future state. This becomes the North Star for the journey ahead.
Build a “Future Team” to map long-term pathways, approaches, tactics, organizational changes, and work requirements.
Create a master plan for the journey and manage it as a major business objective.
So, what are the biggest challenges? Consider these:
Challenge One – Seeing the existing paradigms that created your success. When a business is successful, its “rules for success” become deeply embedded, and challenging them can feel like heresy. For example, U.S. car manufacturers once dismissed smaller, fuel-efficient Japanese models that began entering the U.S. market in the late 1970s. Today, Japanese cars hold a 37% share of the U.S. market.
When asked about making lunch meat without salt, one U.S. manufacturer responded, “That’s not possible!” The idea challenged their assumptions about how lunch meat should be made.
Why the resistance to questioning the prevailing success “Rules”?
Recognizing your paradigms is the first major step toward questioning whether they still apply.
Challenge Two – Learning to ask questions such as “What else could be possible?” This is the real work behind the overused phrase “out-of-the-box thinking.” The old rules form the limiting box and questioning them opens new paths for possibility thinking. This is creativity in context—and a powerful way to uncover exciting future possibilities.
-What if we could harness the power of the sun?
-What will consumers want to eat in 25 years?
-How will education change with AI?
-In what ways could people engage in health efforts in the future?
In Awaken the Giant Within, Anthony Robbins writes that “questions are the answer.” This mindset is one key to unlocking a business’s future state.
Challenge Three – Turning creative answers to big questions into an actionable future-state roadmap. This is not the hardest part; it is the practical “blocking and tackling” work that helps the organization begin its change journey.
Innovation, operational excellence, dynamic cultures, and exceptional leadership all fall under one umbrella: the future. Whether you make cars, serve cappuccinos, design AI apps, or paint houses, the implication is the same—build a future or risk obsolescence.
In summary, businesses and organizations achieve future success by treating the future as a required focus, creating a bold vision through questions about the present, and diligently following a roadmap to get there.
Can you “See” these?
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