Bob Johansen - Full-Spectrum Thinking: How to Escape Boxes in a Post-Categorical Future

Praise for Full-Spectrum Thinking

This is a great read that energizes me. Leaders must engage with humility and courage to set clear directionbut look to their teams for the best execution across a spectrum of possibilities. Right or wrong is a fallacy that must be replaced by opportunities to dynamically decide, test, and adapt.

Jason Field, President and CEO, W. L. Gore & Associates

Full-Spectrum Thinking challenges us to be courageous as we knit together what humans do best with the power of computing for better outcomes at greater speed. We need to inspire human resources leaders to be the role models of try, fail fast and cheapand try again as we build tools, frameworks, and experiences that enable our companies and teams to excel in the digital world.

Vicki Lostetter, Chief Human Resources Officer, WestRock

Full-Spectrum Thinking is just the right book at just the right time, giving us new tools, new ways of sense-making, and new hope. This will be the book I hand out to everyone who works with me, as well as to friends and family.

Paul LeBlanc, President, Southern New Hampshire University

Design thinking will blend with futures thinking in the near future. The mindset of Full-Spectrum Thinking will be needed to leap beyond the narrow categories of thought that constrain much of todays innovation.

Tim Brown, Chair, IDEO

Bob Johansen and the Institute for the Future have helped United Rentals enhance our spectrum of products, services, and insights for jobs that require equipment and expertise you may not want to own or have in house. New spectrums of business value will be needed to create profitable businesses in the future.

Matt Flannery, CEO, United Rentals

Bob Johansen has once again defined what it means to be an original contributor. The insights and suggested responses contained in Full-Spectrum Thinking define a unique way to analyze and respond to our rapidly changing world. I will recommend this book to every board member and executive in my network.

James I. Cash, founder of The Cash Catalyst, LLC, and Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School

You must read this book. It comes from a mind trained to live ten years in the future and a heart eager to get us there safely.

Commissioner Kenneth G. Hodder, Territorial Commander, The Salvation Army

The future has no map, especially in this era of rapid change. Agile open-mindedness is essential to navigate it, and Bob Johansens Full-Spectrum Thinking lays out a clear path for how to get there. For starters, reject rigid categories that coerce, keep us in cages, and move us away from understanding the bigger picture. Seek clarity and context because the emerging future will be one with fluid roles and identities. Leaders will need to be very clear about where they want to go but very flexible about how they get there. This insightful book is for all those interested in enhancing their own agility in how they think about and face the future.

Mary Kay Magistad, creator and host of the Whose Century Is It? podcast and former China correspondent, NPR and PRI/BBCs The World

Classic departmental-based organizational thinking is the most prolific barrier to enterprise value maximization. Full-Spectrum Thinking empowers our holistic view of the consumer that is fundamental to personalized guest experience creation.

John Padgett, Chief Innovation Officer, Carnival Corporation

In his books, his workshops, and the countless friendships like ours that hes built over the past thirty years, Bob has helped a generation of leaders better anticipate future challenges and opportunities. Hes done it again with Full-Spectrum Thinking, which provides the framework to evaluate new opportunities, experiences, and people through a broader lens. Leaders concerned about future-proofing their organizations should read this book.

Scott Price, Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer, UPS

Bob Johansen continues to demonstrate thought leadership in preparing for a more positive future. His new Full-Spectrum Thinking extends our Army War College Strategic Thinking Framework. In doing so, it requires our leaders to resist the certainty lure of heuristics, actively challenge categorizing assumptions, and seek greater inclusiveness in generating better possibilities for the future.

Charles D. Allen, Professor of Leadership and Cultural Studies, US Army War College

A future-back mindset and full-spectrum thinking are needed urgently to create a vision and strategy that is not stuck in the tired categories of the past.

Mark W. Johnson, cofounder of Innosight

The process of naming nature, or communicating it through language at all, involves fragmenting what is essentially an undivided evolutionary continuum. Full-Spectrum Thinking is a critical plea for humans to think more fluidly, beyond the boxes and labels, to overcome the urge to reduce, simplify, and fragment nature.

James Prosek, artist, writer, and naturalist

Bob Johansen is proposing a fundamental shift in how we form our shared stories of identity, organizations, and world vision. He is applying the science of the story to the art of communication.

Kendall Haven, story consultant, author, and master storyteller

The wisdom of Full-Spectrum Thinking is enduring, but the new tools will make it scalable globally.

Robert A. McDonald, Eighth Secretary, Department of Veterans Affairs, and retired Chairman, President, and CEO, Procter & Gamble

Also authored or coauthored by Bob Johansen

Electronic Meetings

Teleconferencing and Beyond

Leading Business Teams

Groupware

GlobalWork

Upsizing the Individual in the Downsized Organization

Get There Early

Leaders Make the Future

The Reciprocity Advantage

The New Leadership Literacies