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LEADERS MAKE THE FUTURE: TEN NEW LEADERSHIP SKILLS FOR AN UNCERTAIN WORLD By Bob Johansen San Francisco, ca: Berrett- Koehler (2012, 2nd edition) hardcover, 248 pages
Leaders Make the Future speaks to this present time when the Western world is experiencing great uncertainty and perplexity accompaning the global economic downturn, high unemployment, industrial production sullied by ongoing pollution of the environment, and the consequent problems of global climate change. these challenges are accompanied by a wave of political and social unrest typified by the arab Spring that leaves humanity with the sense that something more than a traditional approach by today's leaders will be needed to make the world a better place. the idea that leaders can take action now, and develop a skill set that will guide their organizations and communities to create a better future and make the world a better place, is indeed an idea whose time has come.
In his second edition of Leaders Make the Future, author and futurist Bob Johansen, from the Institute for the Future, shares his forty years' experience of forecasting the future. For him, forecasting is about provocation, not prediction (p. 8). he consults with top executives across a number of industries and leverages socio-economic technology and demographic trends to analyze and identify the future-shaping forces of this world to forecast the future. From these insights he seeks to provoke thought leaders of business, governments, nonprofit organizations, and communities to develop the skills needed to address the challenges of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in our world (VUca).
the author sees four overarching messages from his forecast of the future:
1. Our VUca World will get worse in the future.
2. the VUca World will have both danger and opportunity.
3. In the VUca World, leaders must learn new skills in order to make a better future.
4. the VUca World will need more than traditional approaches to leadership development and executive training.
Johansen posits that leaders will need ten specific skills to not only...