Anticipatory leaders are incessantly curious about the future. They constantly discern how emerging social trends, technical and scientific innovations, political forces, legislation, environmental impacts and economic conditions might affect organizational possibilities and their insights are manifested in agile organizational strategies that create competitive advantage.  They are visionaries. 

Anticipatory leaders understand the complex system of forces that drive current events. They are like seismologists: comprehending the deep structure of their own organization and the external economic, political and competitive systems in which their companies exist.  They know the fundamental dynamics shaping the events and trends of their organization's life.  They are system thinkers.

Anticipatory leaders orchestrate the organizational learning process.  They design human systems that learn to use these forces to their advantage. They disseminate and deploy relevant external information throughout the entirety of their organizations. They possess the interpersonal competence to motivate, mobilize, and communicate. They are educators.

Many leaders are so busy running the race, they don't see the enemy behind the next hill.¹ 

Leaders who are naturally curious about a broad range of developments that might affect their organizations in one, five, ten, fifteen, or even more than 100 years from the present are Forward Focused Thinkers. This orientation is relatively unique at the individual level, and it is even less common for whole organizations. Organizational leaders frequently “outsource” forward focused thinking to an internal strategic planning function or to consultants.  Art of the Future convenes structured conversations among executives, managers and line workers to demonstrate that everyone is already thinking about the future, usually with a lot of creativity.  These conversations inject the practice of seeing past the present into an organization's blood stream and make Forward Focused Thinking part of the organizational DNA.  Paying attention to the Forward Focused Thinking that is always going on in an organization sets the stage for the organizational agility that is so needed as a response to inevitable change. 

Art of the Future works with executives and managers to convene Forward Focused conversations both by facilitating them and by teaching Anticipatory Leaders how to design and manage them.  

1. Differentiation:  The organization has many different people and units acting as sensors to interpret and affect the environment.  The more complex an organizations context, the greater the differentiation required.   Like the coast of Norway, a differentiated organization is full of nooks and crannies.
   

2. Homogenization:  Like a symphony orchestra with a vast repertoire, even though the organization may do many, many different things, all of its members know how to do several of the same things very well.  The oboist and the drummer both know how to keep time.  The violinist and the French horn player both practice the same scales.  The basics are so well replicated by everyone, that no one even notices.   Like a plain circle, homogenization has an undifferentiated, featureless surface.

3. Integration:  Robust human systems are unified around a common purpose. The acts of many people are coordinated by a passionate intention to achieve an well-understood mission.   They may be operating independently in their own unique style but they are moving the organization in the same direction.

4. Individuation: Commonality of purpose doesn’t suppress individuality in a robust system.  Great organizations embrace the uniqueness of great men and women. There is plenty of room for the individualized "i"!