A CEO’s Most Important Superpower

You need the right intelligence about the future so that today, you blaze the right trails.Whether you're the chief executive of a nonprofit, association, or business; a board member or board chair; or director of a business unit or program, one of the most important superpowers you need to cultivate is the ability to peer into the future and extrapolate the impact for your organization. 

Let’s face it. Your vision and ability to navigate are what will enable your organization to achieve success. You need the right intelligence about the future so that today, you blaze the right trails.

An inevitability of this superpower is bringing to the surface threats to your organization and even uncertainties about the future. You’ll be more skillful if you know where the quicksand and steep drop offs are.

Here are other important ways you and your organization benefit from foresight. You become:

• More agile,
• More resilient,
• Better prepared with contingency plans and the protocols to switch on a dime,
• More decisive, 
• Able to rebound more quickly,
• More strategic,
• Open to a new flow of ideas and thus more innovative,
• Better able to allocate resources,
• More competitive, 
• Better able to avoid cross currents and move with the prevailing winds,
• More alert to opportunities.

It’s challenging to think about issues beyond the here and now. However, know that the rewards are great, and the threats perilous. Strengthening your own foresight superpowers has never been more important. Stagnation or waiting to see what will happen simply is not an option.