Radical Optimism or Why Every Leader is a Futurist

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As a leader, you are by definition a futurist. (This is something I’ve learned from Alicia Shao just recently). Let’s explore this for a second. 

Your role is to look ahead and anticipate the challenges and opportunities that your team will face in the future. You study and analyze trends, forecasts, and scenarios to understand how the future might unfold. You provide insights and recommendations on how to prepare for and shape the future. In times like these, when the world is changing rapidly and unpredictably, this role is more important than ever.

So, fellow futurists, how do we want the world to be? 

Most people would answer: Better. Humans are always seeking to improve things.

And, if you are looking back, on a large scale that’s what we did. Humankind made things better. We are healthier than ever, live longer than ever, have more knowledge than ever, and made significant progress on topics like equality and social justice. And I know, if you zoom in on most of these topics, you will find flaws, things we still need to improve, problems we still need to fix, and challenges we still need to tackle (especially the ones we’ve created!). And these are not minor problems. They are substantial, even existential. 

But we won’t fix them sitting in the corner, complaining or pretending they don’t exist. We need to be “radically optimistic” about the future. Because if we succeed in being radically optimistic, our peers and teams will be inspired by our example and we will create a climate of hope. Hope is a very strong catalyst for innovation and collaboration, which then will help us to solve the challenges ahead: the ones our teams are facing, the ones your company might be facing, and the ones humankind is facing. 

So I invite you to participate in a short exercise: Take a pen and paper and note 5–10 things that you are really optimistic about right now. Things you are convinced will have significantly improved 12 months, 3 years, a decade from now. Then reflect on how that makes you feel and come back to that feeling, that mental space when needed.

It will have an impact on your teams. I promise.

What Midjourney thinks "radically optimistic" leaders look like. Let's make sure to prove it wrong :-)