Describe a specific situation in which a leader might be effective without anticipating future problems. Discuss what you think determines whether or not it is necessary for a leader to anticipate future problems.

In general, an organization, just like an organism, must consistently and accurately predict upcoming opportunity and imminent danger in order to thrive. A leader operating an organization must wear a variety of hats: chief executive, visionary, stakeholder/shareholder advocate and customer advocate. Most leaders can only operate in one or two roles successfully at once, and need a larger executive team to balance out chief executive bias. A given leader may be a consummate consumer advocate and awe-inspiring chief executive, but give away slack as a visionary and shareholder advocate. 

When a leader is one part of a super-organism that elsewhere employs a visionary who anticipates future problems for the organization, and a stakeholder advocate willing to go to battle on behalf of a core audience, it may be possible for that leader to remain effective without forecasting a roadmap beyond the financial quarter, at the scope of a single mature circulatory (or financial) unit.

But when a leader is made responsible for an early-stage venture, or for making the firm’s future hold firm, then just as in the natural world, there is no avoiding the responsibility of threat, catastrophe and succession planning. The aim is to ensure that the super-organism may live, even through catastrophic loss of time, treasure and talent. Metabolic activities (consumption, digestion and excretion) that rely on short-sighted foraging habits (insufficient customer development, overlong sales cycles) must be remodeled and refactored to operate within the bounds of a sometimes brutal ecosphere, lest the body mass and metabolic rate of the firm be too great or small or fragile to weather the next major storm. The leader must guarantee that the super-organism thrives and survives through thick and thin, by assuring that the vital capacity of visionary is operating near enough to the chief executive such that the resources of the chief executive are “on call” in the event of a looming catastrophe.

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