Book Report: The Visionary’s Handbook
Nine paradoxes that will shape the future of your business
by Cliff Notez

From the authors of The 500-Year Delta comes a book about contradiction, complexity and chaos. The Visionary’s Handbook by Watts Wacker and Jim Taylor is more than a best practices textbook, it’s a revolutionary doctrine on par with Mein Kampf (albeit much more positive and productive).

Wacker and Taylor outline paradoxes in common business attributes (including value, size, time, competition, action, leadership, leisure and reality) and explain why they are inevitably colliding with business as usual. By the end of the book, your head will spin from the depth and breadth of their theories, which are enhanced by real world case studies. Exercises appear frequently throughout the book, adding interest to the concepts and making it ideal for a class or workgroup.

The book is based on a relatively simple principle: in order to survive, (let alone thrive) both personally and professionally, one needs to live with one foot in the present and one in the future. If a person lives too much in one timeframe, one will miss the challenges and benefits of the other. To live in the present is to deny the future, and to live in the future is to disregard the present. A true visionary lives in both timeframes, and is prepared for any and all possible future outcomes.

To live in the future without compromising the present, Wacker and Taylor recommend creating a Fool’s Box within your organization, similar to a think-tank or R&D lab that is continually recreating possible futures for your company. The Fool’s Box may be one or more people that are tasked with anticipating and identifying future trends and help determine the path of the company. This may lead to questioning and even changing the company’s current mission and vision, which is contrary to common beliefs held by management today.

Perhaps the most unique and valuable tool the book provides is a matrix to be used to help one achieve professional and personal goals. To sum up this detailed, complex and somewhat confusing chart. The chart is divided into two axes called macroculture and microissue. Macroculture is defined as a collision of ideology and civilization and is divided into five eras, starting at the dawn of man. Microissue is defined as the questions that matter most to people living in each era. The chart is used to help determine where you or your company fit in macroculture and microculture matrix so you can start to answer key questions about your own future. The authors give minimal guidance and maximum encouragement to the reader to fill in the blanks on their own chart.

I highly recommend adding the book to your professional development library, especially if you are, or plan to be, in management. Too many managers and executives think in traditional terms and fear change. Change is good, and this book helps you understand why it’s critical to success. Order from Amazon.com via direct link or visit your local bookstore. To skip this book is to deny your future.