Strategy and vision are mandatory skills for senior leaders. Our ability to plan for the future is a key leadership competency—and we’re told that failure to plan is a plan for failure. But the simple truth is that most leaders are absolutely terrible at predicting the future. We’re no more accurate than fortune tellers with a crystal ball (or anyone else for that matter).
Here’s what makes this worse for leaders: Too often teams become discouraged and disengaged by the “vision thing,” especially when the intention was to encourage and engage the team in a shared view of the future. Indeed, leaders may sow doubt and sap optimism when they actually intended the opposite.
When leaders believe in on their own crystal ball, they also reduce ideas and ignore options. These leaders commit resources to specific predicted outcomes when resources should be flexible.
Leaders and “Magical Thinking”
Why do so many leaders get it wrong? The answer is simple: They possess a human brain. Even leaders are subject to human fallacies, including:
- Planning fallacy—leadership plans adhere closely to the “best case” estimates and use only data collected from inside the organization.
- Narrative fallacy—leaders rely on the story of the past to predict a clear story for the future (forgetting that the past included lots of luck, complexities, and plenty of wrong turns).
- Sunk-cost fallacy—leaders embrace losses when they should let go. The thinking here is: “We’ve invested far too much in this unworkable new process to abandon it now.”
- False dichotomy fallacy—leadership focuses on the choice between A and B, excluding C through Z from consideration.
There are dozens more fallacies, heuristics, and biases that people—and leaders—incorporate into their thinking and planning. These heuristics are extremely useful, efficient cognitive shorthand tools, except when they aren’t. (For a full treatment of this topic, see Thinking, Fast and Slow.)
In addition, many leaders are prone to using strategic optimism. They often prophesize a highly positive future outcome in order to boost team energy and prepare for challenges. Later, they may gloss over any outcome that falls short of their prediction.
This strategy works fine—unless the leader develops a reputation for “pie in the sky” thinking, at which point team members start doubting and discounting the leader’s forecast, rolling their eyes behind the leader’s back.
So what is a leader to do? How can leaders keep faith with their teams when planning for the future? How can they help the team build resilience that is necessary to face the challenges of this VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) world, while at the same time avoiding that reputation for “magical thinking” that diminishes a leader’s credibility and drains staff enthusiasm?
Think “Planning” Not “Plan”
As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously taught us, “Life is a journey, not a destination.” (Clearly, he never flew long-haul economy class.) Successful leaders understand that this same principle applies to preparing next year’s business plan: the real untapped value is hidden in the process of planning rather than in the accuracy of predictions.
Consider these words from General Dwight D. Eisenhower, “I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Therefore, as a leader, it will be insightful—both for your own leadership development and for employee engagement—to shift your attention away from the plan output and toward the planning process.
The next time you lead a planning meeting, experiment with one or two of the following actions:
- Be humble. Ask a few team members (individually, in advance) what sort of planning or optimism biases they may have noticed in your leadership so far. Invite them to call your attention to these if they arise during the meeting. This is win-win: you gain self-awareness and they gain permission.
- Follow a nimble agenda. Resist the temptation to “screw down the lid” on a tight agenda. Keep it flexible—or at least make space for participants to wander off-script.
- Hear voices. Recent research from Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups shows yet again that the most effective teams ensure that all members are heard. Try polling some opinions and seek some ideas via “secret ballot” rather than always relying on group consensus. This reduces Groupthink results.
- Include outsider points of view. Invite a customer or even a competitor to participate (or at least a colleague from another department). Try a new perspective—literally move people around the room or even change rooms midway through the meeting. Participants are always surprised how much a physical shift shifts the mind.
- Pivot your thinking. Change your mind about something during the meeting and announce to everyone that you’ve changed your mind. Happily welcome plasticity in others.
- Celebrate Surprises. Above all, welcome the unexpected idea with enthusiasm. Many teams (rightly or wrongly) have come to believe that the boss does not like to be surprised. You know who you are.
As Donald Rumsfeld was quoted, “There are known knowns….There are known unknowns…But there are also unknown knowns; the one we don’t know we don’t know.”
Leaders Are Human
This secret is safe with me: Leaders are humans—with human brains and human thought processes. A leader’s thinking about the future is efficient and smart, but also unlikely to always pan out. In fact, leaders often underestimate the degree of change, the impact of unseen factors, and the role played by luck in future events.
So, as a mindful leader, you should consider that your vision of the future is likely incorrect. More importantly, it stresses your team and strains your credibility when you emphatically push your solo predictions. Instead, you should nurture new resilience and engagement in your team by expanding your planning process to generate new ideas and hear unheard voices. Shift your attention toward capturing the collateral benefits of the planning process itself.
In other words, put away that crystal ball you thought was a job requirement. Will a nudge in this direction change your leadership? Only the future will tell.
