Once upon a time, business leaders were constantly juggling problems like aggressive competition, demanding customers, disgruntled employees, and unsatisfied shareholders. They relied on a combination of the usual practices and tools – planning, analysis, commanding, controlling, coordinating, directing, standardizing – to manage the daily turmoil.
Whose job is it in your organization to look at the far future? Whose job is it to look out 5-10 years and determine where your company will be, where the world will be, where your customers will be?
Some people might say, well, its the CEO’s job of course. It’s the CEO’s job to look at those futures – map out the companies strategy – and then steer the ship in that direction. Others may say it is the CTO’s job, especially if the company is technology focused, to take a look at the future of technology, and map our those strategies (in concert with the rest of the C-suite of course) and then take that direction.