Geci Karuri-Sebina Clip 1 for the Long-Term Strategic Planning Conference

to some basic level of future literacy by asking them certain questions in the example that you gave. How can executives foster future literacy among their staff in addition to asking questions? But that seems to be a pretty high level of skill, or is it? And what are the other ways you can foster future literacy, you know, among those non-managerial, first-level managers and managerial, non-managerial staff.

Yeah. So one of the most, I mean, maybe the most obvious answers to that, and it's something we've done recently, and I've been quite proud to see in a big UN agency, and, you know, if you want to talk bureaucracy, you know, talk about the United Nations system. I mean, these are big bureaucracies. But I've seen them begin to devolve the kind of leadership training and capacity building we normally give to C-suite people. I've seen them recently actually include that at the all-staff sessions. So normally, the leadership goes away on a retreat, and they have all of the excellence training by Frances and co. And then for the other staff, there's nothing.

True, right?

That's true. Right. So here we were in this agency, and they said, no, we've decided, partly because of our own emerging understanding of this thing, that in fact, when we have the organization-wide, you regional meeting. And that is where, you know, because they have these at office level, so it means it's everybody, even down to the person who is the secretary or the finance person, or so it's the admin as well as the professional staff altogether, that they all get some element of capacity building around using the future. So that, you know, on a simple level, we'll say things like, you know, does everybody here actually understand the vision of this organization if we say this is where we are going? Because if everybody, I mean, we kind of, you know, we'll say even down to the tea lady doesn't get it, it means that there are people in your space who don't get what we're actually trying to do here. And also who we are trying to be and how we are trying to do things. But imagine the possibilities if everybody was on board with where we are going. And so just that idea of devolving this idea that we all need capacity or training as leaders, because everybody's a leader in some right in the organization. And I've been very encouraged to see that beginning to happen because it's not common at all.