OS 002 - Forecasting the future and making it happen

This session of Orchestrating Success is about forecasting the future and then making it happen. Orchestrating Success: Converting Your Passion to Profit. Don’t misunderstand this as being all about profit, all about money, all about the green back. It is an important commodity that helps us. It’s sort of like the gas. You get a car, which is sort of like building your business. You learn to drive it sometimes. Now you need to put gas in the car. It’s the fuel that runs your organization, the enterprise that you have been charged with leading. Effective leaders live in the future. We forecast what is going to happen. I remember somebody talking about a famous hockey player one time. They noted that he skated where the puck was going to go. He was there ahead of time. Think about visionary leaders. They are paying attention, looking at the future. That is part of it. Let’s envision the future in this podcast. Looking ahead: envision the future. When Napoleon Hill interviewed Andrew Carnegie, Carnegie introduced him to the most successful business leaders of his time: Ford, Woolworth, Wanamaker, Edison, five presidents, amazing people with amazing success. What Napoleon Hill found out is that every one of them saw the future and could see it in present tense. Definiteness of purpose is what he called that. We as leaders are charged with a vision. The vision is what takes us to where we want to go. Does it? No. The vision is the target. We take us where we want to go. There is a whole lot that needs to happen between the visioning and the arrival point. I’m watching the Olympics, and the track and field is this week. I really love it. I used to run in high school, and I still do; well, we call it running. It is equipping our bodies to do what our brains think we want to do. I have run several half-marathons and lots and lots of shorter races, and I don’t just get up one day and decide to run a road race. However, I meet lots of people, visionary leaders, who want to start a charity, a church, a business. They have an idea and are going to make it happen. Wait a minute, did you train for this marathon? Did you learn to fly the plane before you take off? Flying the plane might not be too hard; it’s the landing part that is tricky. Starting a business, a lot of people do that. Mark Twain used to say, “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing I have ever done. As a matter of fact, I have done it hundreds of times.” Sometimes serial entrepreneurs keep starting businesses because they don’t succeed. We read about the ones who start successful businesses, sell them, and then move on. We don’t read as much about the ones who start and don’t make it. Therefore, let’s equip ourselves for success before we start. Let’s envision the future. Then let’s create a pathway to get there. Envisioning the future, that is an art in itself. Let’s talk about leadership. There are many styles of leadership. Autocratic, charismatic leaders, we read about those. Those people are up there saying, “Do this, do this.” They are called the boss. They give all the orders. They manage. They create anxiety, which we call energy. They create all the stress for themselves. They are always in charge, and they are always giving orders. If that is the way you want to live, that’s okay; however, you might want to take a day off, you might want to go somewhere. We are going to talk in the upcoming sessions about building a system that is going to be the underlying foundation for your enterprise. It’s going to make money in several ways: make money while you are sleeping, make money with your team, your projects, your events, your products, and your personal activities. Before we get there, we have to look at the future. Now,