I love reviewing the predictions that people made a hundred years ago about how things would be today. Take cities. They’re filled with private planes and sky taxies, and sometimes, dirigibles moored to towers atop giant skyscrapers in the predictions. And there’s almost always one thing missing, something we take for granted today: elevators.
Skyscrapers without elevators simply wouldn’t work, but the forecasters of the early 20th Century mostly missed them. That’s not a knock on them, predicting the future is almost impossible. As either Yogi Berra or Max Planck or someone said, “Predictions are hard, especially about the future.”
Some comments by Army Chief of Staff Martin Dempsey got me thinking about this. You should read the full article, “Army Chief Discusses Future of Training,” on the Defense.gov site. What impressed me was the mix that General Dempsey addressed.
There are basics. Dempsey described the basics for the Army as “shoot, move, and communicate.” What are the basics in your organization, the things that comprise the core of everything you do?
Consider what is likely to be different. Dempsey said “the development of adaptive leaders who are comfortable operating in ambiguity and complexity will increasingly be our competitive advantage.” That sounds like business, too. We can’t peer into a predictable future, but we can train leaders to be both savvy and adaptive.
I don’t know what the future holds and more than General Dempsey does or any more than you do. But we can make some assumptions.
We can assume that human nature will not change. That’s why important communication and other inter-personal skills will always be a key part of our training and development. We can assume that technology will continue to change, presenting new opportunities and new challenges. At the end of the day, though, we ought to be able to make this promise, that General Dempsey did.
“What I promise, however — and this, too, is confirmed by our history is that it is always the leaders on point who are able to take what we give them, adapt to the environment in which they are placed and accomplish the mission.”
