FutureReady Your Organization

Is your organization Future Ready or Future Vulnerable? 

Future readiness is a must.  Organizational leaders must rethink and re-do business or risk being left behind.

To kick start your readiness RSI provides private and public FutureReady Accelerator Roundtables with other business leaders, decision-makers, and stakeholders to envision and develop future-fit strategies and actions to better prepare for tomorrow.

What Is Future Readiness?

Future readiness refers to “organizational capabilities and orientations that enable companies to successfully respond to shocks and seize opportunities that emerge from constant disruption.” (Source: World Economic Forum, 2021)

Future readiness begins as a leadership and organizational mindset. It enables enterprises to demonstrate the requisite foresight, resilience and agility to succeed in an increasingly uncertain world. Research shows they possess three core characteristics:

1. Sustainable growth – comparing the company’s financial status to their competitors and evaluating their innovations and capacity for growth.  
2. Societal impact – measuring the extent to which they embed sustainable development goals into the business DNA.
3. Adaptive capacity – evaluating the company’s ability to show resilience in the face of adversity and agility in responding to changing factors.

Why Is Future Readiness Important?

Leaders across different industries must be prepared for the new future realities of converging issues, events, innovations, and opportunities. This means they must either rethink how they do business or face the risk of being left behind.

The global pandemic has had widespread health and economic impacts. However, as if this were not enough for organizations to contend with, this ‘black swan’ event was followed by a war in Ukraine, super-storms in the Philippines and India, and droughts in the United States and Africa, which exacerbated inflation, supply shortages, and human dislocation, including job losses and resignations of frontline workers and more.

Unfortunately, organizations often spend too much time reacting to issues; not proactively projecting capability into the future. Their processes and structures, developed and refined in a pre-pandemic era of standardization and predictability, are also being shaped by macro trends – ubiquitous connectivity, lower transaction costs, relentless automation, shifting demographics, and major geopolitical events. 

But to thrive in the future, shouldn’t organizations be adopting relevant innovative technologies and strategic foresight to advance their sectors, such as clean/environmental technology, health and life sciences, crop sciences, industrial biotechnology, information & communications technology, green energy, and more? Don’t they need to make sense of the convergence of social, technological, economic, environmental, and political changes that these trends and events are continually bringing whether global or local? 

According to McKinsey, “to better organize for a post pandemic world leaders should embrace… imperatives that collectively explain ‘who we are’ as an organization, ‘how we operate,’ and ‘how we grow.’ This also applies to leaders of business enterprises.

Future readiness is not optional – it’s a must.

What is FutureReady?

FutureReady Accelerator Roundtables help leaders of business organizations, investors, and joint ventures to envision and develop future-fit user-centric strategies and actions to be better prepared for tomorrow, starting today!

RSI facilitates outcome-focused groups and employs strategic foresight to research key trends and events, explore alternative future scenarios, and document key action insights to accelerate results. 

FutureReady roundtables are delivered either in-person or remotely, depending on participants’ availability and comfort. They are available in two formats:

• Public roundtables for leaders of different companies and stakeholders within specific sectors and industries.
• Private workshops and advisory services for specific organizations to advance their understanding of the future and how to enhance their readiness to thrive into the future.

Attendees of FutureReady roundtables can expect to:

• Learn the meaning and importance of being future ready in today’s environment.
• Understand how to engage in future readiness as a discipline.
• Identify the emerging trends overwriting the modern era of standardization and predictability
• Discover the key topic-related drivers of future readiness.
• Hear from guest speakers and subject-matter experts on trends affecting organizations’ future readiness with real-world insights, best practices, and case studies.
• Receive digital executive summaries from each session, complemented by actionable future-readiness strategies for their organizations and industries.
• Become part of a future-readiness community.

Each FutureReady roundtable will consist of a diverse group of invited stakeholders and leaders who are representative of different roles across the supply and management of a few key areas, including:

FutureReady: The Future of Work 

Due to the economic impact of COVID-19 and inflation, employees are struggling with job security and employers are facing challenges with recruiting and retaining the right talent. The issue is compounded by a demographic bubble, training needs for future jobs, and evolving digital technologies. Invited stakeholders will explore how such issues shape our ability to be ready for the future.    

FutureReady: The Future of Food 

By applying a futures and systems lens to the supply chain of food from farm to fork and repurposing of food waste, food retailers have the potential to provide healthier low-cost food to consumers and minimize food waste. As opposed to taking a siloed approach to procurement, investing in rural and urban farmers and food processing companies has the potential to reimagine how we grow, harvest, distribute and consume food. Invited participants will explore ways for food-related sectors to become future ready.

FutureReady: The Future of Buildings 

It’s time to rethink and repurpose the design, structure, and operations of buildings to satisfy consumer demand and enable owner supply. Can future buildings meet both commercial and residential needs? How can we reconcile owners’ bottom line expectations with tenants’ expectations for accessible, affordable, and environmentally healthy living and working space, resilient to climate change and supportive of the green energy transition? Invited participants will explore these issues in both a commercial and a multi-residential context, taking an urban view of the future, and what is required to meet future building needs.

Check out how our FutureREADY roundtables and related service offerings can support the future vision and strategic goals of your organization, community partners and collaborators.

To schedule a call with one of RSI’s FutureReady leaders, please contact:

Yasmin Glanville 

Communications@rethinksustainability.ca
416-970-6600 

Patrick Gossage 

pgossage@rethinksustainability.ca
416-347-1862