To thrive in turbulent times, organizations need to be future-fluent

Everywhere we turn, the institutions on which we rely are struggling to keep up with everything that's going on in the world.

What technological advances, globalization, and other features of the modern landscape have done is ratcheted up the complexity and instability of our environment to levels that threaten to overwhelm us.

Things have become so complicated, so fast-changing, and so seemingly unpredictable that many have simply decided to focus on the short-term instead. Even as power-brokers talk a good game about the importance of vision and strategy and thinking long-term, what we see in practice is mostly myopia and management to the next quarterly earnings call or election cycle.

The good news is that there are proven methods, developed over decades, for thinking systematically about how the future emerges and how to adapt accordingly. Using this body of knowledge effectively requires more than just a few quick fixes. Organizations must learn a new way of thinking and communicating about themselves and their context across time.