Leading with the Future in Mind

A tour de force for the Future of Leadership ... We exist in a new reality, a global world where the individuated power of the mind/brain offers possibilities beyond our imagination. It is within this framework that thought leading emerges, and when married to our collaborative nature, makes the impossible an everyday occurrence. Leading with the Future in Mind, building on profound insights unleashed by recent findings in neuroscience, provides a new view that converges leadership, knowledge and learning for individual and organizational advancement. This book provides a research-based tour de force for the future of leadership. Moving from the leadership of the past, for the few at the top, using authority as the explanation, we now find leadership emerging from all levels of the organization, with knowledge as the explanation. The future will be owned by the organizations that understand and can master the relationships between knowledge and leadership. Being familiar with the role of a knowledge worker is not the same as understanding the role of a knowledge leader. As the key ingredient, collaboration is much more than "getting along"; it embraces and engages. Knowledge and leadership, a quality of organizations, have always been in relationship. However, the significant mental growth emerging throughout the 20th century-where individuals at all levels began to expand their capacity to learn-and the expansion of the capacity for social knowledge in the interconnected world of the 21st century has propelled humanity into a new age. Knowledge-and the responsibility for how that knowledge is used-sits squarely on the shoulders of leadership at all levels. The nature of the organization has moved beyond the factory and process metaphor, and is now understood as an intelligent complex adaptive system (ICAS). Leading with the Future in Mind covers the essentials of working, learning, and leading in an ICAS, covering knowledge and complexity, but also passion and spiritual energy. As social creatures living in an entangled world, our brains are linked together. We are in continuous interaction with those around us, and the brain is continuously changing in response. Wrapped in the mantle of collaborative leadership and engaging our full resources-physical, mental, emotional and spiritual-we open the door to possibilities. We are dreaming the future together.