Embracing the Future: The Connection between Foresight and Excellence

Join us as we journey into an unexplored intersection of excellence and foresight. With a captivating narrative revolving around Aristotle and a persistent boy, we invite you to explore the ongoing process of achieving excellence and refinement. Excellence isn't a one-off accolade, it's a consistent march towards betterment. So, let's set the stage to shift your mindset towards continuous improvement.

The podcast highlights how foresight, the ability to anticipate future trends and plan strategically, complements excellence by enabling proactive planning, innovation, and decision-making. Equipped with the right tools and methodologies, futurists are always a step ahead, anticipating future trends and developments. How can you apply this to your business? In an ever-changing world, the commitment to impactful leadership and success requires a commitment to excellence and foresight, ultimately shaping a brighter and more sustainable future.

Chapters

• 0:14 Excellence and Foresight
• 13:23 Lessons Learned

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:14

Hello and welcome to the Excellence Foresight podcast. I'm your host, nancy Noimi. My mission To make excellence an everyday habit. Whether you're striving for organizational leadership in a digital and sustainable world, or pursuing personal excellence, you're right where you need to be. I believe that the best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today, is starting today to building a foundation for a successful future. In our first episode, we're diving into the heart of the name behind our podcast Excellence Foresight, and why bringing Foresight and Excellence concept together is important to make a difference in the way organizations work and get ready for their future. So let us start with this short story about Aristotle's unusual day, which I'm not sharing for his historical accuracy, but more for the meaning and the moral behind it.

Speaker 1: 1:15

Once on the day in Athens, aristotle decided to stroll through the market place. As he admired the various stalls, a young boy approached him holding a shimmering empty jar. Sir, can you fill this jar with wisdom? The boy asked Aristotle. Aristotle, amused, replied wisdom cannot be poured, but I can give you a start. He took a feather from a nearby stall and placed it in the jar. This, he said, represents the lightness of curiosity, and that's a keyword curiosity, we all say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, with a single question, with a single idea. The continuation of the story is that the boy smiled, clutching his jar with a single feather, and ventured into the world carrying with him the beginnings of wisdom. Aristotle, with a twinkle in his eye, continued his walk, knowing it made a small difference that day. While we all try to make differences in the workplace and in our professional life and in our families, this story reminds us of the weight and wonder of wisdom in the simplest of gestures.

Speaker 1: 2:23

You may have heard also sayings from Aristotle about excellence, like excellence is a habit. I'm not trying to compete with him today here, but what I've learned from my career is that excellence is about consistently rising above the ordinary and embracing continuous improvement. The pursuit of excellence is not just about the tools or resources at our disposal, but the vision, the foresight, the commitment we bring to our daily endeavors. In today's podcast, I would like to start by discussing organizational excellence through three key aspects which I'm going to try to answer here today. First, why should you relentlessly pursue excellence? Where do foresight and excellence cross paths, and why should you consider excellence with an eye on future trends? These questions, the three questions, are very important for today and for our next episode. So let's begin with. Why should you relentlessly pursue excellence?

Speaker 1: 3:23

Excellence refers to being exceptionally good or outstanding in a particular field, endeavor or aspect. Excellence is a gradual result of always striving to do better. If you think about excellence in education or in a professional career, for example, it's about consistently achieving a high level of performance, skill or accomplishment that usually surpasses the standards. We know this may sound difficult to maintain but, as the saying goes, the road to excellence is always under construction. This is work in progress. This is something we continuously build. In this context, one could think about personal excellence not just as a one-time achievement, but as a continuous pursuit of continuous improvement and improvement day by day, refinement and mastery.

Speaker 1: 4:13

Organizational excellence is not that different. It's not just about adopting an excellence model and trying to follow those criteria. It's about the practices and behaviors that ensure the long-term success of an organization, making it hyper-forming, resilient and adaptable things we all strive to have in our organizations. Organizational excellence involves the following elements setting high standards, having targets, goals, establishing processes and systems that support the execution of these goals, and also a workforce demonstrating a commitment to continuous learning and growth. The workforce is going to make this happen. However, if you feel the pursuit of excellence is overrated and complex, this is totally understandable.

Speaker 1: 5:01

Having worked with excellence models for more than 15 years, I understand the doubts in the minds of Fanny about what excellence is and our ability as individuals and organizations to excel. We all have this doubt at a point in our career and in the projects we're leading. My aim today is to unveil to you some of the practices that could make excellence a concept that's better understood and that drives continuous improvement in your organizations. I work with the Shingo model, and the Shingo model's principle seek perfection is very particularly important for me. It suggests that by pursuing excellence, we get closer to it little by little. Perfection is hard to achieve we all know that but the pursuit of excellence could be the best driver to improve and raise the bar of performance actively and continuously. And my first advice to you is to start with a mindset focusing on improving and making things in a different and better way. Challenge status quo. Challenge what you're doing to be able to kick off your journey towards excellence. Get out of your comfort zone. That's very important. It's very important to take the first steps.

Speaker 1: 6:11

So let us now observe the second question I put forward earlier in the beginning of the podcast. Where do excellence and foresight intersect, why we put excellence and foresight concepts together? Let us take our imagination a little bit further to envision a world where we're not just reacting but proactively crafting our organization's success. We're part of the story. We're bringing in the concept of foresight for excellence. We are really doing what is taken, what is needed for the future.

Speaker 1: 6:41

So let me start with explaining what is foresight. When I was searching, I found the foresight definition by Cambridge Dictionary easy to understand, and it is. Foresight is defined as the ability to judge correctly what is going to happen in the future and plan your action based on this knowledge. Now, so judge and act. Take the right judgment for the future. Foresight experts, or what we call futurists, uses foresight methodologies which encompass a diverse set of systematic approaches and tools designed to anticipate future developments and trends. These are many. These methodologies are often a little bit complex, such as scenario planning, trend analysis, horizon scanning and simulations, and they require the use of software. But how does these methodologies help organizations? Once they are used, they empower decision makers to make informed choices and adapt to changing landscapes and seize opportunities before they arise. It makes you ready for the future.

Speaker 1: 7:45

Having insights into what the future could bring is really important to plan today. In essence, foresight encourages a mindset, and I like to think about this as enabling mindset, a mindset that enables taking initiatives and being a driver of change, rather than merely reacting to circumstances. If we will go back now to the concept of excellence foresight, it is really about envisioning the future, identifying opportunities and challenges early on and preparing to thrive in changing times, making sure we have the right systems that help us do that. For me, this is really about soaring higher, reshaping practices and fostering a culture of curiosity and continuous learning to make sure that the foundation we're building now is convenient for the future, to help organizations become digital, sustainable and, of course, excellent. It's again about challenging the status quo. This is very important message that I want to bring to you today.

Speaker 1: 8:44

Let us now look at this from a different angle. Most of you know Peter Drucker. He said the best way to predict the future is to create it, and this is what we need to start doing now. This quote underlines the importance of proactive planning, innovation, decision making. It suggests that by actively working towards our goals and making strategic choices and driving change, we have a greater ability to control and define our future, rather than just being passively subject to external forces. The foresight and the tools we use help us to make sense of how our world is being disrupted and is disrupting and have the right course of action for now and the future. It is another picture for you to illustrate the intersection between excellence and foresight, which is very important for our topic here today.

Speaker 1: 9:33

Another double helix, the dynamic duo, and this helix that defines excellence through foresight are two things vision and action. Vision and action two elements that intertwine. Leaders should have a vision founded on solid information and a plan to get there and prepare their organizations to be more resilient. Not only that, but have sustainable and excellent people and process practices to meet their needs and the needs of the future. So the better way forward would be to integrate the needs of the future in our planning to create a better one. Right, we want to make sure that we have the best things in our business plans, our strategic plans, to make sure that we have a better future. This is where, in our pursuit of excellence, we should consider the needs of the future and plan wisely and thoroughly for success. This is something we need to do. Let us see now how this unfolds practically in eight specific organizational areas to be able to do that. One is strategic planning.

Speaker 1: 10:34

Future trends could be used to inform long-term plans and proactively address challenges. That's very obvious. Number two innovation. Knowing future needs a few for you in innovation. Knowing where we, what are the things that we need to put in place, will help innovation. Risk management, identifying risks and integrating those into the effective planning and the strategies we're putting for the future. Work at predicting demands is key for effective resource allocation. Talent, nurturing talent by anticipating future skills requirements is key to effective talent management and preparing the workforce for the future. A customer-centric approach adopting such approach and understanding customers' needs and their evolving needs help align products and services to better serve the customer. Number seven stakeholders' engagement. Engaging stakeholders, including the organizations, its people, its stakeholders, and discussions informed by future trends, is key to shape more meaningful collaborations, those of which are successful for this future.

Speaker 1: 11:38

Some term sustainability and integrating future trends leads to sustainable strategies that could speed up the transformation and adoption of sustainable practices as they continuously emerge Now. These eight areas are key To exemplify the synergy between excellence and foresight, I would like to turn to another example, which is Unilever, which is an example of a company excelling in sustainability, excellence and foresight. When it comes to sustainability, unilever commits to sustainable sourcing, climate action and plastic waste reduction as examples For excellence. The renowned brands, creative marketing, ethical governance reflect their commitment to excellence. Unilevers they have a sustainable living plan. Adaptability to consumer trends and innovation for sustainability showcase their foresight and their focus on foresight in their strategies.

Speaker 1: 12:32

So, in conclusion, and to address our third and last question, why should you consider excellence with MI on future trends? It's because excellence is an ongoing journey towards improvement and achieving it involves aligning with the future trends and being adaptable. Organization needs to be adaptable. They need to be able to do what's required to be successful in the future. It's not. Excellence is not just a destination. It's a continuous journey that never ends. By focusing on practices are relevant for the future, we strengthen our pursuit of excellence and enhance our chances to create a brighter and more sustainable future, and this is what many organizations are aiming for now. Excellence is about getting better every day, knowing your destination, planning effectively and adapting to the unexpected.

Speaker 1: 13:23

The COVID taught us this really important lesson. It is the key to thriving in a constantly evolving world. What Susan Churchill said to improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often. We should not be scared of change. As a leader, your pursuit of impactful leadership and organizational success is a continuous adventure. Our podcast, excellence Foresight, was created for this. In some of our Excellence Foresight future podcast episodes, we will host guests to share their unique insights and journey, to engage with us. Be part of the Excellence Foresight community. We look forward to having you join our community and stay tuned for our next episode, where art meets excellence, as we explore the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. Thank you for joining us and let's be the change we want to see in the world. Thank you, and I'll see you in the next one.