Anticipatory Leadership – what is it and how to achieve it?

Over the past few years, I have had hundreds of conversations with top and middle managers, who strive to navigate the uncertainties and changes in their business world. Three patterns across all these conversations are:

One, they need to transform their organiation in order to adapt to the changing ecosystem around them, in society and technology, externally and internally. At the same time, there is a need for increased change-readiness.

Two, there is a lack of certainty about how to move ahead. The familiar, by-the-book answers are increasingly insufficient, or they need a twist to fit the context or solve the problem.

And three, more and more of these leaders were using phrases like ‘I think,’ ‘I feel’ and ‘I sense,’ hinting at an emerging style that: (a) Is not solely based on transactional behaviour; (b) Is oriented towards seemingly emotional and intuition-based capabilities.

To them, their world is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA), and feels brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible (BANI). Several of these leaders turn to the domain of Futures Thinking to explore and evaluate the trends that affect them, and to imagine plausible and preferable futures for their organization.  

The leaders who master this discipline of Futures Thinking have a few specific traits and capabilities, which are described in the term Anticipatory Leadership.

Anticipatory Leadership is … 

Anticipatory Leadership is a forward-looking, futures-thinking approach to navigate uncertainty, anticipate emerging trends and signals, and effectively explore and evaluate alternative futures and scenarios, in order to drive the transformation.

It is also a mindset, methodology and paradigm that uses the future to make decisions about today.

The leadership that is needed for embracing and applying Futures Thinking is different from traditional transactional and executional leadership, in several ways. You need to master Futures Literacy and be able to reveal, reframe and rethink your own — and your colleagues’ — assumptions and myths. You need to be able to imagine how trends and signals unfold, and express your personal level of desirability of those signals. You should be able to spot the internal signals and engage with the internal Trend Receivers. Standing in the Future and Futurecasting requires imagination and storytelling. Finally, you need to express the consequences of the scenarios, in terms of changes to the structures, cultures and governance needed in these alternative futures.

Clearly, that calls for fresh, new skills that go beyond those common to traditional leadership:

Possibilism: They believe in human agency, not determinism

Plasticity: They believe in adaptation, not rigidity

Playfulness: They approach challenges with joy, creativity and spontaneity

Awareness of your ecosystem is vital 

As a futures thinking and futures-practicing leader, you need to be aware of your ecosystem and organizational context. Four traits stand out in this area:

Sensing is the ability to receive information from the surrounding ecosystem, and engage with intuition as a medium to pick up on unconventional signs and signals

Empathy allows one to engage with others, relate to them and their situation, and perceive their point of view

Organizational consciousness is tapping into the collective awareness, value system and shared cultural understanding of the group and ecosystem, and foreseeing emerging behavioral and cultural movements

Sense-making is to give meaning to experiences, interpret the input and see patterns that may have only vague contours

Sensing and sensemaking are two of the key capabilities associated with Anticipatory Leadership.

Sensing refers to the automatic reception of sensory experiences, like sound, sight and emotions, without immediately interpreting or analyzing them. Sensing is about receiving information and input, as a medium. We can add spirituality and soulfulness to this list, as sensing not only relates to the information from our five senses, but also takes into account the realms of nature, life and the universe. The term ‘Deep Listening’ is used to describe this approach.

Sensemaking refers to the process of understanding and finding meaning in those sensory perceptions, informed by historical information and experiences you have amassed. Sensemaking about making sense of what you have sensed.

Developing your Anticipatory Leadership capabilities 

Futures Literacy, Futures Thinking and Anticipatory Leadership capabilities can be trained and developed.

Educate yourself. Read. Listen. Watch.

Take courses to learn from experts and meet like-minded futurists. I recommend coursework offered by Copenhagen Institute for Futures Thinking and the online Futures Thinking Specialization course on Coursera, created by Institute For The Future and Jane McGonigal.

Pay attention to trends and signals in the news, social media, newsletters, online forums and other outlets. Every time you stumble upon a signal, a prediction, an anomaly or a list of ‘10 trends to focus on,’ ask yourself: (1) What is the bias of the author? (2) What is the likelihood of this trend affecting me, in my organization? (3) What is the likeability of the effect it will have, in my organization? (4) If this trend is not desirable for me, who would it appeal to?

Practice action-learning by applying the Using the Future methodology.

Team up with others. Surround yourself with other Futurists. Futures Thinking is a team sport, as you will benefit immensely from other people’s points of view, opinions and expressions of what’s desirable to them.

Futures Thinking is the creative and investigative process of exploring and evaluating what affects us, to describe scenarios for the futures. By using the future, we are better able to make informed decisions today about our transformations, organizational designs, and change management. Anticipatory Leadership is a fundamental approach and leadership framework to enable this.

=———–

Written by Erik Korsvik Østergaard.
Have you read?
Most Productive Countries in the World.
Most peaceful countries in the world.
Most influential financial centers in the world.
Most Powerful Currencies In The World.
The world’s largest cities by population.