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The Visionary's Handbook: Nine Paradoxes That Will Shape the Future of Your Business

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In "The Visionary's Handbook," Watts Wacker and Jim Taylor lay out a vision of the future where change is the only constant and decision-making is shrouded by various paradoxes that often contradict each other. The stated goal of this "handbook" is to help readers identify nine paradoxes that they deem critical to understanding the future and managing business activity.

The so-called Age of Uncertainty that Wacker and Taylor describe picks up where their popular 1998 book, "The 500-Year Delta: What Happens After What Comes Next?", left off. In that book they argued that The Age of Reason was rapidly coming to a close after 500 years, and that the shift would force businesses to increasingly rely on chaos-based logic rather than traditional reasoning and economics.

In "The 500-Year Delta," Wacker and Taylor called the current business model an Age of Possibility, and established that an overabundance of possibilities was leading to a crises for decision-makers, an embarrassment of options that leaves chaos and confusion in its wake.

The nine paradoxes presented here are a guide to cutting through this clutter, providing clarity in a sea of chaos and a mechanism for managing decisions based on a well-defined vision of the future. Wacker and Taylor open with the Paradox of the Visionary, which states: "The more you are right, the more wrong you will be." The idea being that as we experience higher levels of success, we are faced with greater and more frequent "collisions with chaos." Ultimately, the authors conclude that we are no longer in control of outcomes, and the more successful we become, the more poignant that becomes.

They caution, "All we can do is attempt to influence our own future or the future of our own business, absorb the paradoxes that our personal and professional life presents us with, and be prepared for whatever tomorrow does arrive." In order to do that, they insist throughout the book, organizations and individuals must constantly ask themselves two fundamental questions: "What am I?" and "What will I be?"

While this may echo James Stockdale's--Ross Perot's 1992 Presidential running mate--befuddled debate question ("Who am I, and why am I here?"), Wacker and Taylor relentlessly pursue those questions throughout the book and meticulously apply them to each paradox. Every chapter features "future exercises," where they ask readers to define themselves, their company and products and how they visualize them in the future, according to the paradox in question.

Readers may find each chapter's command to soul-search and to put it in writing to be somewhat annoying. Who really relishes the idea of writing "the resume of the person you want to be in X number of years" or composing an exhaustive list of "all the qualities ascribed to you, and all the stories you have reason to believe are told about you by your colleagues?"

However, the paradoxes themselves are thought provoking and cleverly grounded with solid historical and anecdotal examples. The Paradox of Time, for example, illustrates the concept that at the speed of light, nothing happens: "To succeed in the short term, you need to think long term, yet the greater your vision and the longer the time interval over which you predict results, the greater the risk you will be unable to take the steps necessary in the short term to achieve long-term ends." While this almost sounds like theoretical doubletalk, they do provide concrete analogies, in this case ranging from Kodak's difficult transition into digital imaging to Apple's rollout of the new G-4 chip.

A couple of other paradoxical gems are to be found in the Paradox of Competition ("Your biggest competitor is your own view of the future") and the Paradox of Leadership ("To lead from the front, you have to stay inside the story").

In the end, Wacker and Taylor have some interesting ideas and an unusual historical approach, but don't expect their technique to be taught at Harvard's School of Business anytime soon. They themselves admit upfront, "We don't know if we are right about the future--how can we until it happens?"

(This review originally appeared on Notara.)

I enjoyed the subject matter of this book though stylistically it did strike me as a little strange. If you haven't read the top 10 recent bestsellers (Innovator's Dilemna, Serious Play and books of that ilk) then this book will serve you well in getting you rapidly up to speed. Think of it as a exceutive summary of those. If you have read them, there is something to be gained in seeing all the 'paradoxes' placed side by side to consider. This would be excellent if you are in a scenario planning type exercise or want a better treatment on how you should 'model' the future. The authors attempt to engage the reader through a series of thought exercises about yourself (life, career etc) in order to give you some material to apply the paradigm shifts they detail. Though I wholeheartedly applaud them trying to use something other than the 'usual' case studies of Dell, Amazon etc etc, I don't think this 'personal' approach works. I just found it annoying but others who are looking to evaluate themselves might not. However those sections are easily skipped over and key points are succintly and well written for a quick and thought-provoking read for the business audience.

Thought provoking yes, but not for its marketed reasons. While reading Wacker and Taylor's work, one's train of thought turns to how could they possibly churn out another 254 pages of mindless drivel (after "The 500 Year Delta"), spun around one or two interesting blips of thought? Wacker and Taylor's underlying advice to question "What am I?" and "What will I be?" offers little more than a sophomoric therapy session - hardly visionary. ...

It was great to get another fix of Watts - Matter on Fact is good but does not really allow a theme to really develop.

I though the book will be great. The discussion on Brand is tremendous - the best I have ever read. This should be required reading for anyone entering business let alone those who seek to specialise in Brand Marketing like I did once, a long time ago. The theme of Paradox is also well handled throughout. Will be great? Greatness is a property acquired over time...I need to muse on the stuff for a little while longer...

To pick holes seems a little churlish, but these are the observations I have:

· The overall concentration on business and the use of money to value things was not where I thought the book would be. Whilst the authors did a brilliant job of dismantling the present business model for Harvard, maybe the value of a Harvard Education is priceless? What could be applied to the failing inner city schools who can't seem to get kids to read or write let alone count money?

· Were they able to charge anything out to Kodak? (After all they benefited considerably from the wisdom therein).

· Jon Krakauer's 'Into Thin Air' is a good book, Anatoly Boukreev's 'The Climb' (same subject, professional guide's point of view) is better. I've been long fascinated by the indomitable nature of the human spirit - other suggestions are 'Touching the Void' by Joe Simpson and 'South' by Sir Ernest Shackleton.

· I found the main thrust a little bit US centric - I know there were bits and pieces from the rest of the world - but they did feel like bits and pieces.

· I also found the future exercises and exams a little distracting.

I'd also be fascinated to know how to write a book in a threesome, and what is fascinating the authors now? (where does a futurist who's done Paradox go next?) For me I'm thinking on applying complexity thinking to business (I thought that Howard Sherman's book was a bit disappointing - Stu Kauffmann / Chris Langton are still the standard bearers); and, what after money? I still see the pursuit of wealth as the biggest human preoccupation - shame on us. Is this general, or national/ regional? Zen Bhuddists and Taoists seem to get it. All the .com millionaires and VCs jetting off to Tibet definitely don't get it.

Thanks for a great book

If only that were true of The Visionary's Handbook: Nine Paradoxes That Will Shape the Future of Your Business, by Watts Wacker, Jim Taylor, and Howard Means. Talk about self-empowerment jargon. You can tell right off that this is supposedly a "big think" book, because it tells us we should "live today not in one tense, but in two," the present and the future. The way to do that, the authors write, is by compartmentalizing your future tense from your present tense. That might best involve outsourcing, since your "Fool Box" might otherwise unduly influence your "Future Box." Then list all of your "neotribes" to figure out which one bonds most closely to your corporate values.

Dig hard enough here and you may find one salient piece of visionary advice: "You have to tell yourself the story of what you are going to be and retell it again and again until you believe it absolutely and until there's not a thread of inauthenticity left in what you aspire to."

Sound advice, perhaps, but it still seems pretty thick.

Futurists are a necessity to connect with people who think outside the box of conventional wisdom. Inconvenient to read (those damn tasks), but fun and insightful. This handbook provides a tool to get outside the box.

Aren't these the same guys who were quoted in AdWeek or Ad Age or somewhere like that blithely confessing that all the predictions made in their first book were wrong? Maybe not, but I seem to recall. So, they said, just throw the first book out and buy their new book instead. Come on. Visionary, smisionary. More hypotheticals and made-up stuff. If you want to be provoked, Faith Popcorn is about as much of this kind of fluff as you need.