by Thornton May
Futurist, Senior Advisor with GP, Executive Director & Dean - IT Leadership Academy

My academic colleagues tell me I am a “cognitive scientist operating as a future-focused ‘in-the-field’ anthropologist studying ‘tribal’ behaviors in modern organizations related to creating value.”

My friends in the media shorten this to the horsey-ducky simple:  “Thornton is an empirical futurist.”

What I do is collect data about how executives think and how organizations prepare for the future. This is not as esoteric, abstract or impractical an exercise as real CEOs with real quarterly targets might initially think.  Otherwise numerate industry observers are frequently surprised when I remind them that there are ONLY 500 companies in the Fortune 500; 100 organizations in the FTSE 100 and a mere 40 entities in the CAC Quarante. 

In a society increasingly investing heavily in the technologies of Big Data, quantitative analysis and the advanced practice of statistics, the top-of-the-house executive “mind” is a very findable, supremely finite and VERY manageable data set.

Welcome to my world: What global executives are thinking is very knowable.

One of the things we futurists do is assess the “info sphere” [e.g., what senior decision makers are reading and or watching on the many screens that comprise contemporary existence]. Futurists pay attention to what people pay attention to.  Jay Dial, professor of Strategy at the Ohio State University tells students entering his MBA class, “There is a new leadership book out today….Actually, there is a new leadership book out EVERY day.” With this as a caveat [i.e., just because something is published does not mean it is attended to] one might begin the analysis of the executive info sphere in the physical realm [say for example, an airport bookstore in Atlanta’s Hartsville International Airport]. The (sic) business section presents one with the following titles:

• Ram Charan, Global Tilt: Leading Your Business Through the Great Economic Power Shift
• Christopher Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy
• David Horsager, The Trust Edge
• Dick Morris, Screwed!
• Greg Smith, Why I Left Goldman Sachs: A Wall Street Story
• Hedrick Smith, Who Stole the American Dream?

Switching to the less-time consuming and thus perhaps more relevant mainstream business and trade press one might use data mining technology enabled textual analysis on the magazines targeting executives in this findable, finite and high-impact cohort. The “hot words” in the mainstream media targeting business leaders today include: “chaos,” “black swan,” [high-impact/low probability unexpected event], “confusion,” “uncertainty,” “angst” and “tipping point.” Even optimistic futurists seeking to render the data sympathetically are obligated to paint an info sphere spectrum ranging from deep concern to downright despair.

Keeping things in perspective: Many would characterize the recent Great Recession as an experience that does not bear repeating. As such it is vu jàdé -the inverse condition to déjà vu –which is to say the Great Recession is an experience we all had and do not want to have again. In all disciplines and in all vertical markets, surviving tribal elders are trying to ascertain what in fact happened and make sure that it does not happen again. Large sectors of the modern world are going through the less-than-pleasant exercise of after-the-fact transparency [e.g., who knew what when and why in the world did you do what you did?]

One of the consequences of this thankfully brief but hopefully perpetually remembered epoch in modern history is a general erosion of trust in leadership. Martin Wolf, the associate editor at The Financial Times speaking to Charlie Rose summed the whole tragic scenario up explaining that most people “no longer believe that they [the executives running these organizations] know what they are doing.” 

David Brooks expands this general lack of trust in the people running things to the public sector observing, “People have lost faith in the government – both parties…and the ability of government to handle problems.” 

The final bit of research – the thing that anthropologists and ethnographers are most famous for – long-form, in-the-field, knees-under-the-table interviews – provides a more nuanced description of the State of Leadership today:

“We are just now approaching the mother of all inflection points…this is going to be bigger than Gutenberg…”
New York Times columnist

“Everything that has been called the IT Revolution these last 20 years – I am sorry to tell you…that was just the warm up act…that was the forging, sharpening and distribution of the tools of collaboration. We find ourselves at the end of the beginning. What you are now about to see is the REAL IT revolution!”
Chief Executive Officer at a major High Tech company

“Your world [needs to be] synchronized.”
The logo on the side of UPS trucks

"Something fundamentally big is happening that will profoundly affect the life of every person and every business over the next five to 15 years."
CEO at a major telecommunications firm

“We're entering a no-man's land.  We don't know how all this will evolve."
CEO at a major service firm

The general consensus is we are living in a time in need of great leadership but not a time of great leadership.

In subsequent blogs I will be examining what high performance organizations are doing to change that.

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Thornton May
Futurist, Senior Advisor with GP,Executive Director & Dean - IT Leadership Academy
thorntonamay [at] aol.com TWITTER: @deanitla