Practical Wisdom for Leaders with Scott J. Allen, Ph.D.

Lead Like a Futurist: Navigating Change and Designing the Future with Cecily Sommers

• Scott J. Allen • Season 1 • Episode 272

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Cecily Sommers helps leaders anticipate and steward transformational change. Named one of the world’s "50 Leading Female Futurists" by Forbes, Cecily embeds foresight in leadership development programs, training clients to become their own best futurists. 

As the strategist that Google, Salesforce, Purina, and JP Morgan Chase turn to make sense of their future, Cecily guides organizations through critical questions such as "Which opportunities give us the most advantage?” and “How do we develop change-ready leaders?”

A two-time TEDx speaker and frequent keynote presenter at conferences, Cecily has been described as “catalytic and brilliant” for making complex issues simple and relatable. Dedicated to advancing change literacy in organizations, she created the “Lead Like a Futurist” program and is a certified Transformational Coach.

A Few Quotes From This Episode

  • “Leaders and futurists occupy the same position—if you’re leading, you’re already at the edge, looking into the foggy distance to see which direction to go.”
  • “The future is not figureoutable—it’s only followable. And what futurists do is study change, its forces, and its patterns.”
  • “We zoom out to see what matters and how things work so that, when we zoom back in, we know how to materialize what truly matters.”
  • “Sometimes leaders think they need more time, but often what they really need is more space—space to reflect, sense, and align with what’s unfolding.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode 

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

About  Scott J. Allen

My Approach to Hosting

  • The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.


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Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.

Scott Allen  0:00 

Okay, everybody, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. Today, I have Cecily Sommers. She helps leaders anticipate and steward transformational change. Named one of the world's 50 leading female futurists by Forbes, Cecily embeds foresight in leadership development programs, training clients to become their own best futurists. As the strategists that Google, Salesforce, Purina, and JP Morgan Chase turn to make sense of their future, Cecily guides organizations through critical questions such as which opportunities give us the most advantage, and how do we develop change-ready leaders? A two-time TEDx speaker and frequent keynote presenter at conferences, Cecily has been described as catalytic and brilliant for making complex issues simple and relatable. Dedicated to advancing change literacy in organizations, she created the Lead Like a Futurist program and is a certified transformational coach. Cecily, thank you for being with me today. I am really, really looking forward to this conversation. What's not in your bio that maybe listeners should know about you?

 

Cecily Sommers  1:09 

Oh, lurking behind that whole story is how I got to be a futurist, which people often ask, “What's a futurist, and how do you get the day one?” And, for me, what's lurking behind that story is that this is my third career. My very first one was I was a professional dancer in both ballet and modern dance companies. And then I became a chiropractor and was a doctor of chiropractic medicine as well as Chinese medicine and homeopathic medicine. And that's what got me into business because I was successful with that, and bought clinics, and taught anatomy, and science, and business for about 12 years at different institutions. And then I moved into just the consulting itself. Focused on brand strategy, asking two core questions that still inform my work all the time: Who are you? What are you here to do? And where are you going? And so, that is around purpose and trends. And, for me, the trend worked me into foresight, and then I did what I did. I developed a nonprofit, I wrote a book. I'm doing what I'm doing, which is really kind of my purpose. So, as well as the orientation charts wisdom, which is what you talk about. I love that. It's my favorite, favorite, favorite. So, I'm delighted to be with you.

 

Scott Allen  2:37 

Thank you so much. Well, I love the multi-dimensional perspective within which you are viewing this topic: Lead like a futurist. So, let's go there. I've had a few different episodes kind of on the future of work, the future of leadership, future of leader development. How are we thinking about what's to come? And have explored a number of different taught courses, explored a number of different resources on the topic. And I love this conversation. I really, really do. So, when you think about that phrase, ‘lead like a futurist,’ what are some things that you think about? What comes to mind for you that listeners should be aware of?

 

Cecily Sommers  3:20 

The very first thing is that leaders and futurists occupy the same position. And that leaders, just by definition, means that you're the one at the front, which also means you're on the edge, looking into that foggy distance trying to discern which direction to go. And that this is the discipline and skill that futures hold. And so, I am really saying leaders deserve to learn a bit about foresight, and more importantly, that foresight principles and practices, or in turn, toward inner development are exactly what we need to cultivate wisdom. That act of humility, and discernment, and ethical reasoning. Being able to see forests for trees, and also to move kind of… I talk about the future is not figureoutable, but if you know how to follow it, and how to follow it, you can make your [Inaudible 4:27] So, that's what I believe, and my research and my experience has shown that this is true. When we look at what leaders need most today, it's those faculties. And so, I built Lead Like a Futurist as a program to reflect that deep experience and research, and that is what we need for these times. Yeah.

 

Scott Allen  4:49 

And I love that phrasing ‘how to follow it.’ So, let's go a little bit deeper into how to follow it. (Laughs) That sounds mysterious and awesome and cool.

 

Cecily Sommers  5:01 

Well, so my phrase that I use frequently, just to recap, is that the future is not figureoutable, it is only followable. And what futurists do is we study change, that's really the discipline. And we study change, its forces, and its patterns. And I'm going to start big here because this is what informs us that we're looking at the universal laws of the cosmos to tell us how change really works. And then, I also look at what are the forces that shape human society that always have and always will. So, history is a place where we look to see what cycles of change and how societies build and renew themselves, which follows the universal cosmic laws of order, disorder, reorder, birth, death, rebirth. And so, societies go through those cycles, which is something that we are really experiencing profoundly right now. And so, that's one of the things that we follow. The other things that we follow that we can kind of bookmark, and because each of these are big conversations, the other bookmark is what are the four forces that shape society? And how we began to see that the roots of all current trends and issues that we care about lie in these four forces. So, if we can study and track what's happening in the four forces of change, we can get inklings and early signals of change about what's coming. And we also do something beautiful, which is it helps to make sense of where we are right now so that we can calm down and we can begin to settle into, “Oh, this is what change looks like,” and now we can become better stewards of it. So, that kind of in a very largely dense nutshell is what foresight consists of in my practice, in my hands. Yeah.

 

Scott Allen  7:07 

Well, Cecily, okay. So, as you were speaking, I've stumbled upon these things. So, I'm traveling about a third of the time right now, and so I have a lot of nights in hotels. and so, I've never taken a sleeping aid, with the exception of Tylenol PM. But I have figured out my Ambien, and that is space videos. So, it sounds weird, and I promise I'm going to stay on target here and bring it home, but I can turn on… There's a whole genre of these. On YouTube. You can go to three hours of space documentaries to fall asleep to. So, I turn it on, and some person says, “IO is a geological wonder,” and I just start falling asleep. (Laughs) But I was watching one the other night, and I hadn't fallen asleep because it actually caught my attention, and it was about asteroids and comets. And how we are on planet Earth right now because of the impact of, basically, small grains compounding over billions of years. And how does water get here? Well, one theory is that it was comets or asteroids that brought water ice to the planet. And through all of this destruction comes this life or the supernova that created our solar system. This destruction creates life. And so, it's interesting, kind of your phrasing there in going to some of the cosmic because that literally is the process, the master process that we're embedded in. So, that came to mind. Your phrasing kind of brought me to maybe ‘The Fourth Turning Is Here,’ or some of Ray Dalio's work about principles for the changing world order where we are embedded in these cycles that have somewhat of a pattern to them. Would that be accurate? Are we kind of on the same…? I told you I'd try and bring it.

 

Cecily Sommers  9:04 

So, I just want to say, dude, we are so tracking. (Laughs) People won't be able to see this, but if they were, they would see that I have been nodding my head. Have a big smile. My eyes are shining because I feel like I've met my nerdy brother in this. It's exactly right, and it is… So, a key feature of strategic foresight is the ability to take that level of perspective. That's it. And so, I say sometimes that the core function of foresight is really to be a zoomologist. We need to know how to hack and access that level of perspective because that's where we get to see, basically, that everything is fractal in its nature. I'll put that juicy bit aside, to really say that effectively what we get from a high perspective is that we see that all the systems are working together and that they follow the same patterns. And that when we come in from way out in space and we get closer to Earth, now we're beginning to see those systems again from a higher perspective. And you can begin to see what's moving, where change wants to move through, and what its channels for movement are. All the things that we really care about. So that after we zoom out, we want to be able to zoom all the way in to right now. What are the pressures, the needs, the concerns that we are responsible for and are carrying in our everyday lives? But to do so informed by that perspective, because otherwise, it's crushing, and we don't know what matters anymore. So, one of the ways I talk about it is that we zoom out to see what matters and how things work so that when we zoom back in, we are not taking what matters and materializing it through our activities. And to keep moving there. And, yeah, I train in what I call two axes; the vertical axis, which is about this high-level perspective. And the horizontal axis, which is time, which is where we exist most of the time. In an idea that time is limited, it's binary, it's dualistic, and that we're always looking for more time, when, in fact, I have one of my phrases is, leaders don't need more time, we need more space. And you are already reflecting that and saying, “The effect it has on me…” Which I use for sleep, but the other effect it has is that I become more spacious. I become more calm, and I begin to understand things in perspective and in proportion. And now I can come back to this earth and my life and lead from that place well.

 

Scott Allen  12:00 

And I love that phrasing, because, again, that zooming out can ground us in some very, very different places than the 24-hour media news cycle grounds us in. And I think one is designed to agitate, one is designed to provoke anxiety, curiosity, wariness. And the other almost is there's a sense of calm and the sense of, “Okay, let's zoom out. Let's look at the larger patterns here.” And, to your point, and let me know if I'm not capturing this accurately, really pay close attention after we've zoomed out to what's really, truly important, and then zoom back in and focus on that because all of this other noise is designed to distract, provoke, and will, in many ways, take our eye off of what's most important. Is that accurate?

 

Cecily Sommers  13:02 

Well, yeah, if we allow it to. So, the thing that we're exercising most of the time is where is our attention? We don't have too much control in life of anything, but we can make that choice. And so, if I go back to my axes of being are these two dimensions; the vertical one being space, which is where tapping into those universal laws, infinite energies, and kind of knowing that also comes into play. The horizontal axis, which is time, also includes this is where our creativity, and our ability to manifest things, and where we get to be in a relationship and do beautiful, generous things that our purpose is being enacted in the time dimension. So, that is true. Also, depending on where you put your… So, attention is focus. What are you focusing on? And sometimes we need to snap out of it because there's a lot, and the easiest way to snap out of it is to… I talk about hinges into the vertical. And the beautiful thing about we don't need more time, the time dimension is where we feel like there's never enough. Just never enough. If you go into space, there's always more than enough. It's infinite. So, what we want to do is to use… There are four hacks for hinging into the vertical, which take no time at all. They're just like that. And that includes watching space videos or anything that inspires awe, A-W-E. In that state, which things that are awesome are around us in every moment. And so, we can hack into awe, again, by changing our attention. My daily practice every morning is to go to every window in my home, part the curtains, raise the blinds, and look up at the sky to see what's happening today. Then through another cycle, the sun is up again. The water has condensed on the leaves at[Inaudible 15:17] And as the day goes, it's going to evaporate into the air again. The cycle is a part of us, so awe brings us too in a flash. Another awe is awe; that's on empathy. The awe of connection, the awe of like, “Oh, I am so moved.” Once again, our lives are flooded with things that we can connect to and just go, “Wow, that's beautiful.” And when we do that, what we experience is as I am being returned to myself. And it's why we watch movies, it's why we have great conversations, it's why we look at our pets, our children, or the exchange we have in a store, whatever it may be. The third awe is ‘aha.’ “Aha. Wow. I've never seen it that way before.” And the reality is, neurological fact is indeed you haven't. When an insight comes, it means that your brain has just taken one new input and combined it with the other ones that already existed, and it's expanded. And we go, “Whoa, my perspective now includes a reality that wasn't available to me.” So, we seek novelty to get our ‘ahas.’ And then the last one that will change our state from the horizontal, and that kind of sense of tight shoulders, hunkered down, not-enoughness into a state of expansiveness is… (Laughs) Anything, anything, anything that makes us laugh is a shift in our state. A state change back into the vertical, that spaciousness where we, again, kind of, actually, interestingly, is we come back to the ground. The ground of ourselves, the ground of being, the ground of the present moment, the ground of mattering. So, I love both the noun and the verb of matter because we take what matters to us in this high perspective, and we turn it into, we materialize it. So, it is the act of mattering, the act of creativity, building what we care about and bringing it into the world. And we can only do that when we are connected to the vertical on a regular basis. However it is that you make that access and shift your attention, again, all day long. The need is there continuous, and so there are many practices to get there.

 

Scott Allen  18:01 

Now, the metacognition that takes, that's another level where it's, “Okay. I'm getting sucked in. I'm not staying in this space. I'm getting seduced or wooed into this space, which is going to be less expensive.” And that has to be interesting to work with people to help them shift to, at least, even noticing when I'm in a certain state versus a different one. Is that accurate?

 

Cecily Sommers  18:28 

Yes and no. Because, of course, we all know it. This is not foreign to us, which is why I use sounds sometimes like that because it's visceral. And A-W-E, the awe of wonder, it's what we do. We gasp and we go, “Ah.” We all know that, so it actually doesn't have to be taught. We need to be reminded to access it. And so, the practices that can do that are where the training lies. The more time we spend there, the more we have some comfort. We feel safe and trusting with the complexity and the noise and the fear and the anxiety that's there. I think, for leaders, this is especially important. What's on their plate is outsized, and it's bigger than they are. So, in a way, we need to have our perspective get bigger than the immediate concerns. And have respect for what complexity truly is, which is not anything that can be tamed or owned or controlled. That if we, again, study and then follow its patterns, we know that we can co-create with it. We can't figure it out, but we can be watching and responding to and partnering with all the changes that's coming to us. So, I'll finish this long thought with one last tee-up, which is why it's so important to do what I refer to as just a basic level of change literacy. It’s kind of my mission. Because what that does is develop what I call the other AI; anticipatory intelligence. So, once you understand, and then you start seeing differently. And it changes who you are when you can see change and understand how it's moving through the environment, also how it's moving through you. And, again, Lead Like a Futurist, our first domain, we have three domains, leading self, leading strategy, and leading culture. But being able to have some real recognition of how change moves through us because we are part of the universe. Same laws apply. That means that we begin to be much more present in our own evolution and development such that we are better able to meet the moment with what we've got. Again, it's about the only thing we can do. We can't come up with big solutions, there are no solutions. There's no concrete solves. And we're not going to make anything go away, we're not going to stop anything either.

 

Scott Allen  21:15 

Yeah. You're in the realm of co-creation, whether that be with your team, whether that be with the puzzle, and you're in the realm of experimentation.

 

Cecily Sommers  21:24 

Yep. Yep. You are seeing what's coming, again, not as a final plan, but as a kind of responsiveness. Your sensing, it gets much more acute. And you are also now sturdied in, this might be non-trade of the four forces of change, now you know what you're watching and kind of where you're scanning for signals of change that are going to affect … We're looking for signals of change within ourselves, within humans and those systems, but we're also looking for signals of change in the environment. What that means for society, for the markets, for your own organization, and so forth. Yeah.

 

Scott Allen  22:04 

Let's talk about that. Let's go to the four forces. I'm intrigued. 

 

Cecily Sommers  22:10 

Yes. Good. So, this is my big contribution to the field, is that the four forces of change that organize human society are very, very consistent. Now, all you have to do is look, again, it's kind of like the little grain of sand, is that whenever people come together, they do so for a particular reason. They do so to sustain life, and they have a better chance of doing that through cooperation. And so, the things that they're managing that sustains and grows their life are these four forces. I’m going to name them, and then we can discuss them. They are resources, natural resources such as water, ground, agriculture, plants, animals, space, water, etc. Then there's technology; what are the tools that we invent to harvest those resources and then to make things and invent things? The third force is demographics; who's a part of our group? What's the distribution of age, and gender, and labor, and skills, and all that? Because that keeps us strong as well. And then the fourth force is governance; how is this group governing itself through some construct of rules of cooperation? How are we going to do this together, y'all, and what are the incentives and what are the disincentives for that cooperation? And, formally, in modern society, we do that through rules of law and rules of market in formal governments. But as we know, governments can look very different depending on the philosophy, or the power, or whatever it is that's driving the government of a given people. But we see this on a microscale, this is what we do in our own families. We're managing our resources. What our tools are, who's there, and we got some rules, right? 

 

Scott Allen  24:16

Yes.

 

Cecily Sommers  24:17

And those rules are typically based on how we believe something works. What's the definition of a good parent, or what it means to raise a child, or education? We make up our rules kind of in response to what our beliefs are. So, our beliefs run the show in a big way, but that may be something we move to next.

 

Scott Allen  24:38 

Okay. So, let's talk about each of these four a little bit. Talk a little bit about… Let's say it's an organization, and you're working with the organization, and you're talking about these four forces. Give me a little bit of a hypothetical case study.

 

Cecily Sommers  24:52 

Yeah. Well, one of the things that I always start with is, what problem are you trying to solve? So, what's important to you about where you're headed, and exciting opportunity, a hunching you have about what's changing or of your threat? Because then we can scope our research. Otherwise, it's just a lot of stuff with no meaning. So, if we have the future of energy, which is work that I've done, for instance, we are definitely going to look at what's happening in the resource force field to see what's changing around the different sources of energy and where they come naturally. So, of course, we've been in this conversation a long time, and we also know that some of the consequences of that occur. Again, these are the forces that beget the trends such as climate change, that's all related to the force field of what's happening in resources. So, if we're interested in climate change, we're going to pay a lot of time there, our attention there. We're also going to look at the technology because what humans do exceptionally well is, when we hit limits of resources, is we invent things. And so, what new tools or technologies are going to happen in response to the fact that there are limited resources, or that there are geopolitical issues around energy? So, we'll be studying what's happening in the technology force field, and what's likely to move. In demographics, if it's energy, we're going to be looking at demand. We're also going to be looking at social factors in demographics. People care about having alternative sources of energy, some do not. What are the belief systems there and the culture that’s shaping them? And also, how is it that our economy is evolving so that people can work and do all those things? What effect might that have for energy and its usage, or so forth? And then, finally, we will look at governance to see who's coming to power. What is the balance of that around the globe geopolitically, but also where their regulation and policies are going to affect future of energy for a utility company so that they can determine are we going to invest in a gas plant, in a nuclear power plant? These things take a lot of money and time to build, to bring online, to meet that demand. And, often, 10 years time. We’ve got to get that right now. So, that's the way that it might be done. And that applies, again, no matter what you're interested in. I did that around projects for the future of leadership, the future of pet ownership, the future of finance, the future of healthcare. And we can take that same thing, I'll go through each one of those force fields to see what will be the implications for us in two years time. And you can choose the horizon you're looking and to see, “Oh, okay.” Now we know how to think more broadly, maybe develop some scenarios to try on and consider how are we going to not only think this through, which is really what foresight does best is it helps you think things through, but also what bets are we going to take? Where are we going to make some smart investments in scaling our labor, perhaps, in investing in new technologies, maybe in pursuing partnerships that we need to meet that future? All kinds of things that we need to consider as we look at the stakeholders and what life will be like in the time horizon you've chosen. Five years, what will life be like? Let's solve for that given our business, our purpose and the people we serve. 

 

Scott Allen  28:39 

So, when it comes to leading like a futurist, I'm really interested, who's come across your radar and you say, “Huh, I’m intrigued. This person's thinking in pretty cool ways.” They may not be perfect, and they may not be a picture perfect case study, but are there some individuals that have come onto your radar that make you pause to say, “Oh, I like how they're thinking”?

 

Cecily Sommers  29:06 

Oh, that's such a good question. I do, and now I'm going to go for one that's kind of far and few, but I'm going to recall, and actually, I wrote about him in my book, ‘Think Like a Futurist,’ because he really taught me something. And this is Clyde Prestowitz, who is an economic advisor to governments. And I had him speak at a conference I produced long ago, and he had to leave early to go to Israel at the time because Israel had said, “Help us. Make sure that we're meeting the demographic demands of our region, and that we can continue to be vibrant economically.” And one of the things that he did in this work is to look at similarly-sized countries to say, “Who's done it well before?” And it included, I think, Taiwan, Estonia, Ireland, Singapore. And what he found across this is that it didn't matter what your system of government or economy was, what mattered was social cohesion. And sometimes that came through that there was a group that was homogenous ethnically, sometimes it can be designed for. And that's what he was saying, is that good policy is just simply a word for good planning. How do we design for this future? And that's the core idea, and so I loved that. And then Clyde, at the time, this was probably in 2005 or 6, shared the paper with me, and it was so exciting to see such good thinking for such complex issues brought down to simple principles. That's what we all need in our lives. And it gets harder because, of course, there are urgencies of the world, whether it's just your business that's facing it, or whether it's your country facing it. That's Israel's predicament right now, so the future they're planning for is different than he did back in 2005 or 6. And, at some point, that scenario, probably… Where we are right now might have been itching at the edge to be noticed so that you can think it through. But, anyway, we adapt and change, but we apply good thinking. Think like a futurist is the engine behind Lead Like a Futurist. It’s to just have really sober, clear, good thinking.

 

Scott Allen  31:47 

Well, and there's that… And I love the word that you use, there's the designed. ‘Designed for the future,’ I think, was your phrasing. And that requires some intentionality, some insight, some foresight. That requires, if I'm going to design a space, some level of knowledge or understanding. And, again, with a lot of these complex adaptive challenges, there aren't answers so it's our best guess. What experiments do we want to run to see if we can move the needle? But that word design is critical.

 

Cecily Sommers  32:19 

It is. And this is really good thinking, and it is so simple. However, it's also a lot of work, and frequently what organizations have to do since nobody has enough time. So, they outsource this work to people like Clyde and me, and the work is really great. But what I noticed over time is that no matter how smart the work, and it is, and the people who've been involved on the project are changed by it. But what I know through nearly 25 years of working with organizations is that rarely do they have organizational capacity to enact it. I have really not committed myself to building capacity where it's needed, which is within the leaders in the human capacity of an organization. Nobody has to do these big, big projects all by self, but we can, again, be able to train people in the basic level of change literacy and also in being -- I'm going to just shorthand it for us -- kind of being more spacious on the way to [Inaudible 33:32] in their work. Vaccity that they're surrounded by, to still stand on the ground. Be clear about the direction you're choosing for now, and to be able to make good, deep, ethical decisions when needed.

 

Scott Allen  33:50 

Well, it's a wonderful mission. It's a wonderful mission. And I have to imagine you are exactly correct that none of these individuals went to school to lead like a futurist. That's not a degree. You can't probably even take very many courses in the topic. Of course, there's courses in strategy, but this topic of foresight and really looking at these four forces, I'm so intrigued by the methodology that you have kind of exposed us to. If people want to learn more about your work, where can they go, Cecily?

 

Cecily Sommers  34:27 

They can go to leadlikeafuturist.com, and the Lead Like a Futurist program is something that we also offer online, people come from all over the world to take it. And so, we're running that this next year in 2025. @leadlikeafuturist if you want to be on the waitlist or be contacted, just let me know. You can also find me on LinkedIn, my name is unique enough Cecily Sommers. You can find me all over the web on socials just under that handle, or reach out to me directly if you have an inquiry. 

 

Scott Allen  34:59 

Well, that's wonderful. Well, I am going to put a bunch of resources into the show notes. And, Cecily, I can't thank you enough for being with me today. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for the good work that you're doing. Thanks for thinking at galactic levels. (Laughs) from ground to galaxy. I just love the conversation. And I loved the four awes, that was so cool as well. That was a lot of fun to hear you explain that. I just love the thinking and appreciate your work. Thank you so much.

 

Cecily Sommers  35:28 

It’s such a pleasure, Scott. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, my galactic brother.

 

(Laughter)

 

Scott Allen  35:33 

Okay. Be well. Take care. 

 

 

[End Of Recording]