How clear is your vision of the future?

When you imagine the future – what do you see? Is it a vision which is better than your reality of today, or worse?

As somebody who is studying alternative futures at university level and has a keen interest in how groups of people collectively see their future, this is a key question on our minds, that Dr Stuart Candy addresses in his 2014 TED talk.

Your future is very much dependant on the quality of your vision of the future.

If that is indeed true, what then replaced South Africa’s vision of the future after the closing ceremony of the 2010 FIFA World Cup? What vision of the future are we working towards as a collective nation now? Does anybody know?

As a business, how vivid is the story of your vision of where your organisation is going?

If it’s not possible to achieve what the mind can’t conceive – it brings into question how much time is spent fine-tuning and really crafting a crystal clear image of where you are going. In most case, our fear is that not a lot of senior level attention is spent worrying too much about this aspect of leadership, which is a huge mistake.

Without a clear, plausible and inspiration vision of a preferable future – you are not going anywhere.

We become the stories that we tell ourselves.  A better future depends on better stories.  Maybe it's time to stop and really think carefully about the current story and consciously change it if it is not good enough?

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ asked Alice.
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where -‘ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
‘- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,’ Alice added as an explanation.
‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

A vision of the future of an organisation is a powerful strategic asset that can be mined and used as a congruent platform on which prototypes generated by multiple individual perspectives can be tested.   In a VUCA world - this is a vital component for any future-fit organisation and requires a thorough design process to create.