Customer Reviews

Great Leaders See the Future First: Taking Your Organization to the Top - In Five Revolutionary Steps

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This is the most thought-provoking book on leadership I have read in some time, and it makes a nice connection to the need to lead differently in the face of powerful, irresistible forces that are becoming stronger. The book offers many diagnostics to give you a sense of where and how you might become more effective. Having diagnosed where you need to improve, you will probably have to rely on other books to get you the details you need to make large improvements.

Ms. Corbin's focus is on "great leaders -- those special individuals who have ethical character, care about their followers, and have the courage to lead them into a positive future." She also says that the purpose of the book is "becoming a great leader under a new set of global rules."

Ms. Corbin heads a think tank called the Center for the 21st Century, and she draws on a lot of forecasts to describe important issues for the new century in terms of trends: more freedom, faster transportation, progressive world peace, advancing technology, increasing capitalism, growing world business trade, and more understanding of diversity. These trends will coalesce into four Dyna (her word) forces on the organization of the future: globalization; marketization (market forces determining resource allocations rather than governments); informatization (knowledge from data); and democratization.

The author reports having been very accurate with her forecasts over the last 15 years, so we should probably take her seriously. I have no ability to forecast the future in a similar way, and believe it cannot be forecast so accurately; but I leave it up to you to decide about her forecasts.

Basically, she is calling for a convergence of forces in a way that will make organizations uncomfortable places for many to work. She sees leadership as being the answer. "Leaders determine whether an organization succeeds or fails." This will require a new model of leader who is more of a strategist, innovator, seer, speeder-upper, and user of new technologies in a more free form environment with mostly project workers involved.

I thought that the book was more of a visionary statement of the ideal, rather than a guide that leaders will specifically follow. For example, it seems to me that a leader could succeed either by creating an environment where these things occur or by actually being the doer who makes them happen. I suspect that the former role will be more prevalent and easier to do. There was not a lot of guidance on the details of what to do. The direction was at about the 40,000 foot level above sea level. That is a good place to see the big picture, but it is hard to connect the dots if you are a leader.

My own work on irresitible forces suggests that the world she portrays is a little too simplified to be helpful for any given organization, yet these are certainly forces that everyone should consider and use to their advantage.

On leadership, my own research shows that the most successful current leaders focus on 2 or 3 roles that are more important to their organization's success than any others, and do those superbly. Perhaps in time, people will be able to do more, but I would be surprised to see widespread expansion of capabilities of leaders occurring very rapidly. I agree with the author that there is more hope in creating free-flowing organizational structures and encouraging everyone in the organization to take on more of their own leadership.

Use your irresistible forces to create chaos for your competitors' organizations by shifting the rules!

As a former educator who now has experience in the corporate and entrepreneurial educational industry arenas, I find Ms. Corbin's book a must read for anyone who wants to ensure a successful future. All you have to do is go back and read one of her previous books and you will know that she is a master at seeing trends for the future and giving expert strategies for becoming proactive participants in the process of effective and successful change.

While the entire book, GREAT LEADERS SEE THE FUTURE FIRST: Taking Your Organization to the Top in Five Revolutinary Steps, is informational, intriguing and interesting, I am most impressed with what Ms. Corbin calls the New Millennium Convergent Leader versus the Old Millennium Unilateral Leader. Not only does she offer a concise definition of the two, she also offers a step by step guide to becoming a convergent leader. While many futurists predict the future, most leave you wondering what you must do to progress and function effectively once change is upon you. Ms. Corbin gives us a step by step workbook that explains to anyone in any field how to be proactive and take individual responsibility for success.

I plan to give this book to all that I care about and have already begun to analyze the way I operate and think in relation to what Ms. Corbin shares with us.

Carolyn Corbin's book, Great Leaders See The Future First, has been an inspiration to me in my non-profit work. In my field sometimes it seems we are just keeping up with the immediate needs, but the book inspires me to push the board to spend time and energy on looking ahead to keep our organization on the cutting edge. I'm going to recommend the book to my national association of nonprofit professionals. They will all benefit!

Great Leaders See the Future First is an insightful way to look at life and work in the new millennium. So uplifting and focused! I have worked at for-profit and non-profit organizations, a state agency, a family owned small business, a large corporation and as an independent. The concepts in this book apply to all forms of work and all workers to come. It's a book for leaders and for anyone who wants to lead their own work destiny.

If knowledge workers will be the valued workers of the future, then I'm just an arrogant-enough baby boomer to vision myself a knowledge worker, and I am motivated to incorporate these concepts into my lifelong learning and to share them with everyone I can. As this book shows, there are specific steps one can take to prepare for the world of work in the 21st Century.

I have read and reread sections in the book and have recognized both excellent and less than stellar leadership experiences I have had in the past. I even recognized myself! I was just like that nameless order taker who was given the chaotic "opportunity" to learn sales skills. Leaders should make this book a priority to read. As the work environment changes with "warp speed" your followers may fly past you any day. The time to take responsibility for the skills one brings to the job and the level of performance one achieves is certainly now!

I can't begin to say how exciting the book, Great Leaders See The Future First, has been for me. It has proven invaluable to me as I have been preparing to facilitate our district's Leadership Academy for Teachers who are possible leaders for the future in the McKinney Independent School District. This book has a way of pulling some of the most current thinking on leadership together in a manner that is certainly applicable and visionary.

Many teachers ran out to purchase it after hearing about the content of the book and its application to educational leadership.

"In an insightful and understandable way, Carolyn Corbin's Great Leaders See The Future First provides practical information on what the future will be and what to do about it."

Having read Mrs. Corbin's previous books, and knowing her rate of accuracy in predicting future business trends, I bought Great Leaders See The Future First, wondering what changes she forsees in the field of management.

While this book emphasizes new technology and global changes (both social and economic), incorporating the whole person in the workplace receives much attention in this book and really excites me.

All of the book is a must read for CEO's, executives, leaders, managers, supervisors but the chapters on Whole Person Model and Ignite Innovation say much about what we must incorporate in our leadership mission today if we are to be successful.

Anybody can see some distance into the future. But spotting trends before anyone else is really something. Futurist and business consultant Carolyn Corbin is hardly the first to recognize that fact. She is one of the few, however, to provide a workable, step-by-step process for turning yourself into an in-house business futurist.

Corbin sensibly expends most of the powder on her first and second steps: Orchestrate a 360-degree Worldview and Order the Chaos. With practical tips on gathering intelligence and understanding the causes of disorganization, these sections encapsulate the futuristic essence. The other three steps-Blend Multiple Organizational Models, Engage the Whole Person, and Ignite Innovation-are less about grasping the future than grasping the reins of the future organization.

In fact, Corbin's focus is not so much on developing the ability to forecast as on developing confidence in your ability to lead an organization toward the future you envision. It's a valid approach, since seeing the future is not avery useful unless you can also lead your company into it.

(Mark Henricks wrote this review for the July 1, 2000 issue of American Way magazine.)

In a clear and tangible way, Great Leaders See the Future First lays out the changes coming to the workforce in the 21st Century, how to rise to the occasion/opportunity, and how to prepare for and implement courageous action. This book is a call for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see from a visionary who has both. Coming from a highly competitive, cutting edge, only the strategically creative get to stand "field." I feel better equipped to make my contribution to the 21st century having read this book.

"The sequitur to C.Corbin's Great Leaders See The Future First is the observation that great followers first see the future in the vision of their leaders. Her on-target book is an encompassing resource for today's autonomous and knowledgeable workforce who must evaluate and align with the strengths of formal leadership as well as, personally step up to the next level of leadership in their family and civic lives."