Want To See The Future In 2026? Create A Futures Team

One of the biggest challenges CEOs face today is more volatility and ambiguity about the future.  Currently trajectories are disrupted by what seem to unexpected forces. Yet, creating organizational continuity requires that leaders more ably project the future states. Because we now face situations where geopolitics and global supply chains or non-adjacent industries can impact our companies, being accurate in those projections require understanding how external forces outside of our industry can shape our company.

In an era defined by accelerated technology change, tougher stakeholder expectations, global risks and cultural shifts, leaders often find themselves without the space to think, let alone to imagine. And yet, imagining is vital to future orientation. The leaders I advise often speak of the pressure to monitor everything, to have answers at hand and to anticipate the next disruption. But the truth is that no individual, no matter how capable, can hold the whole picture alone.

Even the most capable executive cannot monitor every emerging technology, policy shift or social trend. How can leaders cultivate the foresight needed to see what’s coming next?

The U.S. military offers two unexpected models. When General Martin Dempsey became 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation’s highest ranking military office, he knew he needed a broad view of the world, one that encompassed the economic, political and cultural. Yet, as he puts it “I knew my schedule was not my own and that it would be filled up back-to-back.”  So, he created a new role: his personal learning campaign manager. 

The colonel who took this role read widely outside Dempsey’s normal focus and connected him with thinkers he would otherwise never meet.  For example, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve never meets with the Chair of the Joint Chiefs. Yet, when you think about it, economic prosperity is key to peacekeeping. The result? Sharp, highly informed decision making, foresight on U.S. geopolitics and increased efficiency for Dempsey.

Key to this is delegation to a person or group to help expand one’s perspectives, provoke one’s thinking and the introduction of new analogies. 

Another model involves Commanders’ Initiative Groups (CIGs), small, intentionally composed groups. Several special operations leaders leverage these teams to read signals and distill the significant from the trivial, explore emerging contexts and discern what may come next. Within elite units, CIGs serve as trusted partners in curiosity: clarifying problems, surfacing blind spots and helping leaders envision alternative futures.

Corporate versions of these groups exist too. A future-forward leader I work with in a multibillion-dollar, multigenerational family business saw that their company had the top position in their industry, but the industry was undergoing continuous change. He shared how he once gathered a team of 12 different functions across the company and asked a provocative question: If a competitor existed six years from now with all our strengths but none of our constraints, how would they outperform us?  The team was given eight weeks to research, imagine and develop the competitor and present their findings.  

A portion of the group had a bit of tenure with the company while the rest had come in more recently from the outside. The need for the range of history with the company was to address the refrain that “We’ve tried that before and it didn’t work, or we can’t change that because it’s tradition.” So you need people in the room that have history to know how to overcome those, and also people with a fresh perspective, who can think about things differently.

At the end of the assignment, they developed 10 insights.  Six years later, almost all of those predictions came true.

Another corporate example is Novartis, a global pharmaceutical company. The CEO and CHRO wanted to transform the culture to better serve the 100 million plus patients and do so in a way that is future forward. To help them project, they created a Cultural Leadership Advisory composed of 10 internal presidents, and 10 external thought-leaders and futurists (including me) to help reimagine the company’s cultural DNA. My experience being on this team gave a front row seat to how an intentional team of internal leaders with external boundary-spanning provocateurs can accelerate an organization’s adaptation to new and future environments.

Each of these futures teams’ roles is not execution but imagination: to connect dots others may overlook and to help the CEO think across boundaries. It’s more than analyzing trends. They helped their leaders become wiser.

So how should a CEO or board think about the composition of such a team? Three principles stand out.

1. Futures work begins with character, not credentials.

The most effective Futures Teams are not merely technically skilled; they possess the relational wisdom to create intentional safe spaces for honest exploration. As Retired Command Sergeant Major Larry Hobbs and retired Colonel Heather Maki who both led SIGs in Special Operations, their advice was to look for creative thinkers who can see possibilities where others see constraint, and critical thinkers who understand how systems behave over time. The members can be both the most optimistic people in a team meeting, but don’t overlook those who are the internal challengers or provocateurs. But above all, they embody the virtues that make collective imagination possible: humility, curiosity and a willingness to share their ideas.

These individuals help leaders flourish because they care and are mission owners of the company. They can surface truths without eroding trust. They can challenge assumptions while affirming the leader’s deeper purpose. In this sense, their value is not just analytical but moral: they help leaders stay anchored to what matters, even when facing an uncertain horizon.

“Ultimately, the impact of such a team is the ability to help the organization and its decision makers anticipate opportunities and risks so that it can proactively and be agile and resilient when changes happen, so the organization offers the most value that it should,” said Hobbs.

2. Facilitation of diverse perspectives sharpens foresight.

Just as our friendships shape who we become, who sits in a futures team shape what a leader can see. The ideal Futures Team blends internal members, those who understand the organization’s context, culture and constraints, with external voices who stretch imagination and bring unfamiliar lenses. Internal members are senior enough to understand the system, but not so senior that information becomes filtered. External members offer perspective, pattern recognition and independence of thought.

The goal is not to assemble the “smartest people,” but the people who, together, broaden the leader’s field of vision. They should span functions, ages, experiences and thinking preferences. They should be capable of role-shifting from clarifier to integrator to ideator to implementer depending on the task at hand. And, most importantly, they must be given the time and space to do the work, even if this is not their primary job.

3. Culture contextualization and conditions make the team effective.

A Futures Team cannot thrive without the right cultural conditions. Leaders must clarify through signals that imagination is essential. The team must feel free to explore wild ideas as well as disciplined analysis. Their work should be iterative from drafts to hypotheses to prototypes of thought, not final answers. And the standards should remain high including executive-level clarity, trustworthiness and integrity in every communication.

Ultimately, a Futures Team is not a think tank. It is a community of learning. It expands a leader’s intelligence by expanding their relationships, as leaders become their best selves through the company they keep. These teams remind us that good leadership is not about predicting the future, but about cultivating the wisdom, humility, and imagination to meet it well.

A dedicated Futures Team creates several organizational advantages:

• Extended intelligence: They multiply a leader’s cognitive reach, surfacing blind spots and linking insights across disciplines.

• Future readiness: Regular scenario planning helps executives anticipate disruption instead of reacting to it.

• Trust and alignment: Including internal members builds ownership and grounds ideas in real context, improving organization culture.

• Creativity and openness: Because futures teams operate outside normal hierarchies, they encourage candid discussion and non-linear thinking, qualities often missing from corporate meetings.

In building such teams, organizations are not just preparing for what comes next. From a long-term talent perspective, it’s a form of development for those serving on the Futures Teams towards into more effective leaders for the organization. And in the short and long run, Futures Teams are shaping the kind of leaders—and the kind of cultures—capable of creating a more thoughtful, more humane and continuous future.