III. Takeaway: It’s Your Future
As Verne Wheelwright says in the title of his personal foresight book, It’s Your Future (2012), you owe it to yourself to make the best career you can. You have more control over that future, more choices, more tools, more information, than any humans in history, and you can use your passion for strategic foresight to continually reevaluate and improve your path. You, your family, and your team are your own first and best client.
If you are reading this Guide, you clearly have significantly more than average ability to envision the kind of foresight career you would like to make for yourself. You likely also have enough self-knowledge (see Chapter 2 for more on that) to know what is realistically within your reach. So take some time to create the most achievable vision for your future, a month from now, a year from now, five years from now, that you can, and share it with your most honest and critical colleagues. Then run that vision through every one of the Eight Skills. Execute it, and review the results every month, every week, every day.
We urge you to use your gifts and become known and relied on as a foresight leader in your specialty. The more seriously you take your future in professional foresight, the better you’ll get at creating what you want, and deserve, and at helping others do the same. Your foresight colleagues and communities can help tremendously, but foresight leaders are also continually self-motivating, passionate, and know the value of the work. So get out there and do it!
