The New Leadership Literacies

About the Author

Bob Johansen is a distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future in Silicon Valley. With a career spanning over 30 years, Johansen has provided forecasts for numerous high-profile corporations, including Procter & Gamble, Kellogg’s, Disney, Intuit, Walmart, Syngenta, and United Rentals. He is the author or coauthor of ten books, including Get There Early, Leaders Make the Future, and The Reciprocity Advantage. His extensive experience and insightful analysis make him a leading voice in futurism and leadership strategies.

Main Idea

The New Leadership Literacies: Thriving in a Future of Extreme Disruption and Distributed Everything by Bob Johansen explores the future of leadership in an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. Johansen emphasizes the need for new leadership literacies—combinations of disciplines, practices, and worldviews—that will enable leaders to thrive amid extreme disruptions and radically decentralized organizations. These literacies include forecasting the future, engaging with fear through gaming, leading shape-shifting organizations, maintaining presence when absent, and sustaining positive energy.

Table of Contents

1. The New Leadership Literacies
2. Twisting Toward Distributed Everything
3. The New Literacy of Looking Backward from the Future
4. The New Literacy of Voluntary Fear Engagement
5. The New Literacy of Leading Shape-Shifting Organizations
6. The New Literacy of Being There When You Are Not There
7. The New Literacy of Creating and Sustaining Positive Energy

The New Leadership Literacies

Bob Johansen introduces the concept of leadership literacies as essential for navigating a future defined by extreme disruption and distributed everything. He argues that traditional centralized leadership models will become obsolete in the face of radical decentralization, where authority is distributed, and rigid hierarchies give way to fluid structures. The core idea is that leaders need to cultivate a set of new literacies that go beyond mere skills and competencies to include comprehensive approaches to thinking, learning, and acting in a VUCA world.

Twisting Toward Distributed Everything

Johansen discusses the inevitable shift from centralized to distributed organizations. In this future, anything that can be distributed will be. This includes workforces, organizations, and supply chains. Leaders will need to navigate a landscape where control is decentralized, and traditional hierarchical structures are replaced by more dynamic and adaptive forms of organization.

"Centralized and decentralized organizations will give way to truly distributed organizations that have no center, grow from the edges and cannot be controlled." — Bob Johansen

This transformation requires a new mindset where leaders focus on enabling and supporting their teams rather than controlling them. The shift to distributed organizations will be characterized by:

• Decentralized decision-making processes
• Increased reliance on digital communication and collaboration tools
• Fluid and adaptive organizational structures

Leaders must become adept at managing these distributed systems, ensuring that their teams are aligned and motivated despite the lack of a central control point. This will involve developing trust, fostering open communication, and creating a strong sense of shared purpose among team members.

The New Literacy of Looking Backward from the Future

Johansen emphasizes the importance of foresight and hindsight in leadership. By looking backward from the future, leaders can better prepare for the changes to come. This literacy involves using foresight to anticipate future trends and disruptions and then working backward to determine the steps needed to navigate those changes effectively. It combines the practices of foresight, insight, and action in an ongoing cycle of learning.