Articles

While it is tempting to retreat into a reactionary, fear-based operational model given our changing world, this is actually the least effective strategy. We must first discover where our natural strengths lie. Then, we can explore the strengths and weaknesses of each of the three leadership traits. Success in our complex world requires us to understand the art of embodying and leveraging all three traits.

In this video, Principal Frank Spencer (TFSX) interviews Suzette Brooks Masters – A social entrepreneur with a long track record of creating positive change in our society. Thought leader and strategist in the fields of social cohesion, democracy, and futures. Suzette uses her extensive philanthropic, non-profit, research, advocacy, program development, and legal experience to advise foundations, non-profit organizations, policymakers, and corporations on how to respond to the significant demographic shifts that have transformed America after decades of immigration and to…

Democracy’s tenuous viability is in part due to our exponentially changing landscape of technological access, economic precarity, and environmental collapse. What might be called a “polycrisis” of multiple, simultaneous, and convergent “wicked problems” has flung open the door of widespread fear, doubt, and anger about a landscape where many have been left out of the future altogether. (As well as a present that is devoid of visions for a more hopeful future that starts right now.)

When we want to implement change and transformation in our organizations, we are introducing a new vision or a new level of growth.

We have increasingly focused on the quantifiable world over the past 100 years as a means to growth and progress. Organizations have become obsessed with numbers and the warm, fuzzy feeling they give us when they neatly add up to demonstrate that the future looks bright. In reality, life has always been a mixture of what we might call “quantified and qualified metrics.” Today’s world is now forcing us to recognize the importance of qualitative measurements by virtue of its…

At TFSX, we have spent the past two decades establishing the idea and practice of the Inner Futurist, having created a dynamic philosophy of futures thinking as a cooperative evolutionary trait known as Holoptic Foresight that promotes the democratization of futures thinking, and that undergirds the concepts and implementation of our world-renowned framework known as Natural Foresight.

“I want to see the world. Follow a map to its edges and keep going. Forgo the plans, trust my instincts. Let curiosity be my guide. I want to change hemispheres. Sleep with unfamiliar stars and let the journey unfold before me.” — The Maptia Manifesto Travel with us back to 2008 Frank Spencer, an abundance-minded futurist, is working at a foresight firm in Washington, DC. For the last several years he’s worked as a foresight consultant who was always…

When contemplating the future, we instinctively think of the “top trends” lists that are always making headlines. For most, the word trend has become synonymous with the future. This common but erroneous interpretation causes many strategic foresight efforts to stall because trends are not the future. Trends are visible because they are occurring today. They represent the present. In fact, trends can be our worst enemy; they tend to keep us connected to what is immediate and surrounding us, but…

overcoming short attention spans in foresight integration Having worked in corporate America for 15 years before joining the foresight, innovation , and strategic design firm Kedge and co-founding The Futures School, I know firsthand the challenges of integrating futures thinking in all types of organizations. For-profit entities like The Walt Disney Company (where I was charged with spearheading the first division in the company’s history focused on the future) are built with a bias toward short termism, but they are…

Leadership qualities tend to be timeless. It’s why we look back through history at the esteemed individuals who led successful businesses, governments and social initiatives. The thinking goes that, if we can emulate these trailblazers, we will be successful leaders too.