One of the key elements of the Executive Leadership Program is the idea that "the best way to predict the future is to invent it". And for those of us who have lived most of our lives in a world where strategic planning was based almost exclusively on extrapolating the past into the future, this idea seems both farfetched and maybe even silly.
I would submit however, that it is really not that strange or foreign to things most of us have done in our own lives.
Thinking of my personal life, it occurs to me that if I had extrapolated my life based on the life my parents had, I would be a very different person today. My parents were both children of Italian immigrants who were raised during the Great Depression and were forced to go to work at an early age to make a living. The difference is that they had great dreams for the future for themselves and for me. They invented a future in their imagination/dreams that included living in a better home, in a nicer city, in a warmer climate, and creating an environment where I would have a better life than them through education and hard work.
Creating that vision and "inventing that future" was the first step for them, and then creating the "conversation" between them and me led to those dreams becoming mine - and as they say "the rest is history".
What is important to recognize here is that without a dream or a vision of what the world could be like for you, your company, and your industry, we are all sailing a relatively rudderless ship; making short term corrections in our path that, more often than not, leads to a less than desirable future. As opposed to having a great vision, that is far enough out that we can plan for the things we need to do to make that vision happen - and then execute on those things.
So, the point here is that what appears to be silly or farfetched as an idea, has been the key to success for many of us who came from humble beginnings and have used this idea to have the lives we and our parents only dreamed about fifty or sixty years ago.
Pretty cool - huh?
