Course Description: 

A Live and Exclusive UST Webinar Recorded as a One-Time Special Episode of the Association Transformation Podcast.

Employing strategic foresight empowers the imagination. It helps leaders shape priorities, explore new markets, identify opportunities, and develop their teams. In today’s increasingly competitive and uncertain environment, it’s a vital leadership capability. The challenge? It’s utterly exhausting.

Leaders are expected to predict the future, inspire the present, reassure their boards, and still keep the wheels turning. “Vision,” “ambition,” and “foresight” can feel like code for “we’re not sure yet.” Innovation fatigue is real, and the pressure to stay permanently “ahead of the curve” can overshadow an important truth: delivering business-as-usual brilliantly is what builds trust, credibility, and member value.

This upbeat, one-hour session — delivered in an engaging, podcast-style conversation — cuts through the noise. We reclaim strategic foresight as a practical, human, and usable leadership skill, not another draining buzzword. Perfectly timed for the moment when ambitious resolutions collide with real-world capacity, the session helps leaders balance operational excellence with long-term thinking in ways that actually work.

Participants can expect relatable honesty, lively discussion, and practical takeaways they can immediately apply. We’ll explore how to integrate long-term thinking into day-to-day leadership, manage board expectations without theatrics, and celebrate the nobility of the “day job” while still keeping an intelligent eye on what’s ahead.

If you want foresight that helps rather than hurts, inspires rather than intimidates, and strengthens leadership without costing sanity — this session is for you.

Learning Objectives:

Develop a realistic foresight practice that fits real-world capacity. Simple, sustainable methods for scanning the horizon and identifying signals of change — without launching another initiative, overwhelming staff, or hiring a futurist. Learn how to build strategic awareness into work you’re already doing.

Apply language to defend operational excellence while advancing strategic priorities. Practical scripts and frameworks for managing board expectations around “innovation” and “vision” without overpromising, underdelivering, or apologizing for the essential work that keeps your organization credible and solvent.

Evaluate when “strategic enough” is strategically appropriate: Tools for distinguishing between foresight that genuinely serves your organization and performative future-gazing that drains time, energy, and resources. Understand when “good enough” is actually strategic brilliance.

Integrate long-term thinking: Specific tactics for weaving foresight into board agendas, team conversations, and decision-making processes without creating parallel workstreams or exhausting your leadership team with separate “strategy work.”