By Phil Hauck, Board President, Envision
The Green Bay area’s population is bound to be significantly larger (400,000?) by 2035. This growth will be driven by climate migration from other parts of the U.S. due to: excessive heat, drought, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and fires; the very high cost of living elsewhere; and the recent trend of remote working.
How should that expansion progress? In order to thrive, Green Bay area businesses need to be more innovative than their competitors. What leadership practices will lead us to the best possible future?
That’s exactly why Envision Greater Green Bay exists – to ensure we successfully answer those two questions.
The solution is a structured (intentional!) approach to anticipating the most plausible scenarios and working toward the one most preferable. We are espousing Strategic Foresight techniques (also known universally as Foresight Analysis) as the structured approach to achieve that.
Our fear is that we will do it half-heartedly (because we’re “comfortable”) – and unsuccessfully.
It will take LEADERSHIP by our organizations: Businesses! Government! Schools! Non-Profits!
We need Green Bay’s organizational leaders to EXPOSE THEMSELVES to the techniques of strategic foresight and embed those techniques into the leadership of their organizations.
To that end, we’re providing workshops (led by our New York City-based futurist, Garry Golden) and follow-up REFRESHER WORKSHOPS and FORMAL NETWORKS of those organizations’ practitioners.
So far, more than 90 Leaders from more than 50 organizations have been introduced to the techniques and are implementing them in a variety of ways.
We’ve also organized our board members into “Signals Teams” that are using the techniques to look for signals and identify the drivers of plausible scenarios. They are organized into these Community of Choice areas: Economic Opportunity, Arts, Entertainment, nad Recreation, Health, Connectedness and Inclusivity, Upward Mobility, and Housing and Safety. There will be others.
As we develop compelling and plausible scenarios in these areas that would make us a COMMUNITY OF CHOICE – with all the economic and societal benefits that implies – we are involving others in the community who are currently engaged in moving these areas forward. Our purpose is to expand the dialogue about who or what we can become. That is critical if we are to thrive in the future as opposed to the alternative, which is to remain who and what we are now, and regress as circumstances overwhelm and bypass us.