Not every leader acknowledges the big difference between managing and leading. And for small business owners looking to grow their business, making the transition from running it to leading it, can be all the difference. The first step is knowing what exactly leadership requires – now and in the future.
Jared Lindzon – Mining asteroids, an activity that could produce the world’s first trillionaire by 2030. 3D-printed cruises ships and hospitals. But no more taxi drivers, firefighters and (gulp) journalists. Indeed, the future of the world according to Thomas Frey is not quite what you might expect.
Frey is executive director and “senior futurist” at the DaVinci Institute, a 17-year-old think tank where he gathers a group of high-profile intellectuals for deep conversations about tomorrow. And we mean high profile: regular contributors to these “mastermind groups” include nearly every sitting governor of Colorado (the think tank’s home state), CEOs like Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, the commissioner of the U.S. patent office, university presidents and science fiction authors like David Brin.
Strategists have increased the scope and complexity of their roles beyond planning.
Many companies have an executive to guide their strategies. The discipline’s professionalization, which began in earnest in the 1980s as it evolved from the chief executive’s domain into a core corporate function, prompted the creation of heads of strategy, strategic-planning directors, and, more recently, chief strategy officers (CSOs). Who better than a professional strategist to help meet the big new uncertainties of the 21st century?