Three Forecasts that Will Change Business in the Next 10 Years: Futurist Bob Johansen on the Changing Business Landscape

Leadership futurist Bob Johansen's job is to look 10 years into the future, anticipate where society is headed, and help businesses prepare to meet future needs. As a keynote speaker at one of the Center for Values-Driven Leadership's recent Senior Executive Roundtables, Johansen walked the audience through three forecasts he says will change the landscape of business in the coming 10 years.
Watch the summary video here, then follow the links for more specific comments on each of the forecasts:

Leaders Come Clean: The Hard and Rewarding Work of Transparency in Business Leadership

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Dr. Kathryn Scanland is the president of Greystone Global LLC, a consulting firm focusing on strategic planning, leadership development and organizational design. This post is republished with permission from Tuesday Mornings.

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Coming clean, or transparency, is about being open.  It’s about being real and genuine.  The counterfeit of transparency is illusion: pretending, “seeming” rather than “being,” making things appear different than they really are. ~Stephen M.R. Covey

Not long ago I had a conversation with someone about trust. He believed that because he had not told a flat-out lie, the level of trust between us should not be affected by his hiding things or withholding and failing to disclose information. I disagreed. His lack of transparency caused me to be suspicious and uncertain what I could, or couldn’t, believe; hence, I wasn’t sure when I could really trust him.

You Won't Quit a Leader: Four Points on the Difference Between Being the Boss, and Being a Leader

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Tom Walter is a "serial entrepreneur" who has launched nearly 30 companies. He is the CEO of Tasty Catering, named one of Winning Workplaces best small companies in 2010. This post is republished with permission from Serial Entrepreneur.
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High performance companies aren’t run by managers. No one wants to be managed. To be managed is to be subservient. High performance organizations are run by Leaders!

The saying goes that people do not quit a job, they quit a boss. That may be true, especially if that “boss” is a manager, but rarely will anyone quit a leader.

The History of Management:

Management is a rather new business term.

Sustainability: Overcoming Hurdles to Innovation | Short Videos Featuring Sustainability Expert Stu Hart

On October 14, 2011, the Center for Values-Driven Leadership hosted Stu Hart, a business sustainability expert and author of Capitalism at the Crossroads. Hart is an advocate of moving beyond greening to a place where sustainability drives innovation and provides restorative technologies that extend current markets and open new ones. 


The following short videos (under three minutes each) feature Hart elaborating on some of his key messages. First, Hart sets the stage for understanding sustainability in its future context: beyond greening initiatives like reducing energy use or carbon footprints:



Shame on Me: How Shame Shapes Leaders and Sabotages Success


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Laura Zumdahl, Ph.D., is the Vice President of Nonprofit Services at Donors Forum and a nonprofit leadership advocate.
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Before this summer, I would never have thought of myself as someone shaped by shame. Guilt, yes, but shame? No, not me. I often joke that my feelings of guilt keep me involved in things long past when I should have exited, wake me up at night worrying about how what I said in a meeting was received by others, or drive me to spend hours trying to craft the perfect outfit, email, or dinner party.

But the past few months I learned a life-changing truth: my world is not shaped by feelings of guilt, but rather feelings of shame that influence my decisions, self-perception, and behavior on a daily basis. In short, shame is running my life—and probably yours too. 

On Creating Smaller Problems: Stu Hart on Problems that Begat Bigger Problems, and How Small Scale Solutions Can Change the Game


---------------------------------------------------------------------------Stuart L Hart is a leading authority on the implications of environment and poverty for business strategy. He is the founder of Enterprise for a Sustainable World,www.e4sw.org. This blog is shared with permission from Voice of the Planet.  ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My colleagues Amory and Hunter Lovins tell a wonderful parable: In the early 1950s, the Dayak people in Borneo experienced an outbreak of malaria. To combat this terrible problem, The World Health Organization sprayed large amounts of DDT to kill the mosquitoes carrying the disease. As expected, the mosquitoes died and the malaria declined. Problem solved.

But wait--there were unexpected side effects: The roofs on peoples' houses began to cave in. It seems that the DDT was killing the parasitic wasp that previously controlled the thatch-eating caterpillars. Even worse, these DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckoes, which were then eaten by cats. The cats died, allowing the rat population to explode, exposing the local people to even more vicious outbreaks of plague and typhus. To cope with these new problems, which were the result of the original solution, the WHO was obliged to parachute 14,000 live cats into Borneo...

The New Green Alchemy - Stu Hart on Disruptive Technology and Reverse Innovation

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Stuart L Hart is a leading authority on the implications of environment and poverty for business strategy. He is the founder of Enterprise for a Sustainable World, www.e4sw.org. This blog is shared with permission from Voice of the Planet
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We often hear that the reason the so-called clean technology revolution has so far only amounted to a genteel protest is because new clean technologies are simply too expensive

Only rich Germans and Californians can afford such luxuries. 

We must wait, so the story goes, for major "breakthroughs" to occur in renewable energy, biofuels, biomaterials, potable water, etc., before they can be cost competitive with conventional technologies and infrastructures.  To convince us of this point, we are given graphs showing costs declining and volumes increasing for these emerging clean technologies, but the take-off point is always about a decade away. 

Unfortunately, I can still remember seeing such graphs back in the late 1970s! 

Well, I'm here to tell you that this story is really a fantasy.