Bob Johansen

In a rapidly changing world, sticking with old ways of thinking and seeing isn't just foolish--it's dangerous. Leading futurist Bob Johansen shows how new technologies will help leaders break free of limiting assumptions and see new possibilities. The future will get even more perplexing over the next decade, and we are not ready. The problem is that we're restricted by rigid structures that do not serve our larger goals--we think they inform us, but in fact, they tend to limit us. Simplistic stories of what's going on will be alluring but dangerous. Just in time, new technology and media tools will make it much easier to think beyond the categories, buckets, slots, and boxes that people use today to prepare for threats and imagine new opportunities. Full-spectrum thinking is the ability to seek clarity and understanding across gradients of possibility. Utilizing successful examples of spectrum-thinking, such as gender fluidity and the autism spectrum, noted futurist Bob Johansen reveals how a spectrum unifies us rather than divides us by seeing each individual as inhabiting various points on the same landscape. By recognizing technology as an integral part of creating this spectrum, Johansen demonstrates that we can apply full-spectrum thinking to achieve breakthroughs in business, leadership, innovation, politics, community relations, and many other domains.

How to Escape Boxes in a Post-categorical Future

Full-spectrum Thinking

Johansen shares techniques that the Institute of the Future has been refining for nearly 40 years. He lays out a three-step Foresight to Insight to Action Cycle that helps readers turn their creative vision to use and leave their competition in the dust.

Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present

Get There Early

Joseph Press

Christine Bullen

A thoughtful, practical read about the future of the flexible office. -Adam Grant Office shock is an abrupt, unsettling change in where, when, how, and even why we work. In this visionary book, three prominent futurists argue that the office is both a place and a process-offices and officing-with a new range of choices, including what they call the emerging officeverse. To see the possibilities with fresh eyes, we must use future-back thinking to ask, What is the purpose of your officing? What are the outcomes-especially regarding climate-you want to achieve? With whom do you want to office? How will you augment your intelligence? Where and when will you office? How will you create an agile office? Traditional offices were often unfair, uncomfortable, uncreative, and unproductive. This book explores how to seize this great opportunity to transform office work.

Creating Better Futures for Working and Living

Office Shock

Karl Ronn

A New Way to Partner for Innovation and Growth

Reciprocity Advantage

Our future will be radically decentralized, digitized and disrupted. Leaders will need more than just skills to survive. Veteran futurist Bob Johansen offers five literacies--combinations of discipline, practices, and perspective--for thriving in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.

Thriving in a Future of Extreme Disruption and Distributed Everything

The New Leadership Literacies

We are in a time of accelerating disruptive change. In a VUCA world - one characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity - traditional leadership skills won't be enough, noted futurist Bob Johansen argues. Drawing on the latest forecasts from the Institute for the Future - the first futures think tank ever to outlive its forecasts - this powerful book explores the external forces that are shaking the foundations of leadership and unveils ten critical new leadership skills. How adroit are you at dilemma flipping - turning problems that can't be solved into opportunities? Can you develop bio - empathy - the ability to learn from and apply the principles of nature in your leadership? Are you able to practice immersive learning - dive into very different - from - you physical and online worlds and learn from them? Johansen provides role models, tools, and advice to help you develop these and seven other future leadership skills. In addition, Johansen deals with two new forces that are shaping the future. The first is the ''digital natives'' - people fifteen years and younger who have grown up in a digital world. The second is cloud - based supercomputing, which will enable extraordinarily rich new forms of connection, collaboration, and commerce. In this thoroughly updated and expanded second edition, Johansen is joined by the prestigious Center for Creative Leadership. CCL's contributions help readers understand the new leadership skills by linking them to existing skills, and they provide analytics and exercises so readers can more fully develop these new skills.

Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World (Second Edition, Revised and Expanded) (16pt Large Print Edition)

Leaders Make the Future

A powerful new kind of competitive advantage is now possible thanks to technological and social disruptions that are already occurring. These disruptions revolutionize how companies can partner to create new growth. The Reciprocity Advantage shares a model for creating that growth: define your right-of-way (the underutilized resources you already own that you can share with others), partner to do what you can’t do alone, experiment to learn, and scale the new business at low risk. Reciprocity and advantage are words that are not normally seen together, but reciprocity—giving now to get later—will become a normal part of winning in the future. The Reciprocity Advantage shows you how to leverage new forces like digital natives and cloud-served supercomputing now into massively scalable, profitable, incremental growth for your business. Provocative and pragmatic, leading ten-year forecaster Bob Johansen and experienced business developer Karl Ronn describe how to lean in to disruptions to create new growth for your business. They include actual cases showing early successes for a range of companies and nonprofits like IBM, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and TED. They then provide key exercises to define your promising new ideas and nurture them into healthy new businesses. Their recommendations are based on practical experience in managing the problems of new business creation and many years of helping others see the future more clearly. Distilled from hands-on work, this book gets you started today on creating your own reciprocity advantage.

The Reciprocity Advantage

Over the next decade, today's connected world will be explosively more connected. Anything that can be distributed will be distributed: workforces, organizations, supply webs, and more. The tired practices of centralized organizations will become brittle in a future where authority is radically decentralized. Rigid hierarchies will give way to liquid structures. Most leaders—and most organizations—aren't ready for this future. Are you? It's too late to catch up, but it's a great time to leapfrog. Noted futurist Bob Johansen goes beyond skills and competencies to propose five new leadership literacies—combinations of disciplines, practices, and worldviews—that will be needed to thrive in a VUCA world of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. This book shows how to (1) forecast likely futures so you can “look back” and make sure you're prepared now for the changes to come, (2) use low-risk gaming spaces to work through your concerns about the future and hone your leadership skills, (3) lead shape-shifting organizations where you can't just tell people what to do, (4) be a dynamic presence even when you're not there in person, and (5) keep your personal energy high and transmit that energy throughout your organization. This visionary book provides a vivid description of the ideal talent profile for future leaders. It is written for current, rising star, and aspiring leaders; talent scouts searching for leaders; and executive coaches seeking a fresh view of how leaders will need to prepare. To get ready for this future, we will all need new leadership literacies.

Leading futurist Bob Johansen shows how a new way of thinking, enhanced by new technologies, will help leaders break free of limiting labels and see new gradients of possibility in a chaotic world. The future will get even more perplexing over the next decade, and we are not ready. The dilemma is that we're restricted by rigid categorical thinking that freezes people and organizations in neatly defined boxes that often are inaccurate or obsolete. Categories lead us toward certainty but away from clarity, and categorical thinking moves us away from understanding the bigger picture. Sticking with this old way of thinking and seeing isn't just foolish, it's dangerous. Full-spectrum thinking is the ability to seek patterns and clarity outside, across, beyond, or maybe even without any boxes or categories while resisting false certainty and simplistic binary choices. It reveals our commonalities that are hidden in plain view. Bob Johansen lays out the core concepts of full-spectrum thinking and reveals the role that digital media—including gameful engagement, big-data analytics, visualization, blockchain, and machine learning—will play in facilitating and enhancing it. He offers examples of broader spectrums and new applications in a wide range of areas that will become possible first, then mandatory. This visionary book provides powerful ways to make sense of new opportunities and see the world as it really is.

Bob Johansen

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