Create the Future | Book Review

“Leaders create the future by the choices they make.” (p. 13)

Subtitled Powerful Decision-Making Tools for Your Company and Yourself, we may think of Rick Williams’ Create the Future (CTF) as a finely detailed instruction handbook akin to Jill Dyché’s treatment in The New IT. Either as a stand-alone how-to manual or for use by an outside facilitator, CTF’s intent is much like an Academy Leadership Focus & Alignment Workshop (FAW).

Both processes are individually very good. A combination of Create the Future and Focus and Alignment Workshops creates a fantastic strategic planning exercise.

This review suggests the FAW may be improved by creating additional options, further evaluation of barriers to success, and employing the choosing the future decision-making process – CTF parts four, five and six, respectively. Similarly, the CTF model may be improved with stronger internal values alignment and use of a Personal Leadership Philosophy. Examples of improvements to each model follow.

Focus and Alignment Workshop (FAW) Improvements

Numerous organizations, including Project Management Institute (PMI) local chapters, increasingly focus on change management challenges. Williams introduces four distinct categories of change (p. 129):

1. Little change – mostly maintain current operations.
2. Modest changes/initiatives – easily achievable initiatives and changes.
3. Stretch initiatives – achievable initiatives/changes challenging the organization.
4. Moonshot initiatives – initiatives beyond what is clearly achievable with important benefits if successful.

In a rapidly changing technical environment, we’re likely addressing the latter two change initiatives. Jim Collins’ terms for moonshot initiatives is Big Hairy Audacious Goals, or BHAGs. There’s a good chance a team of leaders may screen change initiatives eliminating those in the first two categories.

Let’s suppose our team has selected a stretch or moonshot initiative. Williams offers a three-step process (pp. 149-150) we may think of as a Before Action Review. By asking these questions in advance:

What must go right?
What might go wrong?
What will happen? 

Improved strategy and risk reduction are more likely. The process is similar to the premortem project management strategy.

Williams offers a decision tree CTF example (p. 188) for a commercial organization:

Success: Sell the company.
Goal: Grow the company to a size where it can be sold.
Future Choices: Identify growth initiatives.
Barriers/Assumptions: Evaluate execution risks of the growth initiatives.
Decision: Select the preferred growth initiative with an acceptable level of risk. 

We may think of this as an update, with a broader set of options, to the typical large company annual strategic planning exercise.

Lastly, Williams offers a method for profiling the “meaning” of leader team decisions (p. 195):

• What have we learned? Do we need to know more?
• Success, risk, and values.
• Team recommendations – Key assumptions and future choices.
• CTF Team Report – Decision book and decision package. 

It’s similar to Crucial Conversations (3rd edition) dialogue skill 9, Move to Action, whereby we separate dialogue from actual decision making. A good team decides in advance how to decide. Williams goes further capturing the entire exercise in a CTF Team Report.

Create the Future (CTF) Improvements

A FAW may improve a CTF process, especially Part One, Prepare the Company and Yourself; and Part Three, Imagine Success.

Much of a FAW focuses on examination of organizational culture and values. Or put another way, a FAW emphasizes securing agreement on culture and values first, before attempting strategy. Many leaders include a future vision statement or answer the question “Where are you taking us?” at the beginning of a leadership philosophy.

Imagine a group of business leaders attempting a BHAG, or moonshot initiative without exploring whether or not their individual leadership principles are aligned first. This is probably why many incoming CEOs make fundamental staffing decisions immediately upon hire. Alignment first.

On the second day of a FAW, developing Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, is an iterative exercise, repeatedly employing a vision “roll back” process, ensuring alignment with the organization’s vision and values. For example, a key part of the Core Values Alignment workshop is creating normative behavioral statements, which answer the question “What does this value look like in action?” Once this is answered, we can better answer the question “What does success look like?”

Summary

Both processes are individually very good. A combination of Create the Future and Focus and Alignment Workshops creates a fantastic strategic planning exercise.  

“Successful Leaders are both decisive and vulnerable. They are open
to hearing other points of view and are prepared to make decisions.” (p. 75)

Thank you, Rick Williams, for the signed copy of your book.