Leah Green

January 2010 - The Public Manager

Government-Wide Collaboration Boosts National Trade

The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked crisis agility—rapid organizational change on a scale never seen before in times of peace. Many organizations experienced the sudden shift to remote work and the ad hoc re-engineering of business processes. But now we need to ask ourselves these essential questions:

How can organizations get better at seeing around corners and having the foresight to anticipate major issues before they arise?
How do we engineer foresight as a practice?

Ferrazzi Greenlight’s Go Forward to Work initiative, in partnership with Harvard Business School, crowdsourced best practices about the future of work from more than 2,000 executives during the pandemic. Evidence of a framework for developing disciplined foresight emerged. This webinar will be led by Keith Ferrazzi and will outline the results of that research, which will be featured in his forthcoming book Competing in the New World of Work.

During this webinar, you will learn:

Why some companies were able to detect early warning signs of the pandemic more than others
How to create a foresight taskforce
Five factors to guide your taskforce’s thinking
How to create a “risk radar” to monitor and evaluate risks


Lead With Foresight in the New Hybrid Work World

Greenheck is a leading manufacturer of air-movement and control equipment, providing ventilation products to customers around the world. The company has grown significantly since its founding in 1947—with more than 3,200 employees currently, Greenheck’s workforce is expected to double by 2025. Seeing a need to fill the company’s leadership bench with emerging talent, Greenheck’s talent management team, along with Floyd Carlson, director of talent management and acquisition, established the LEAD program in 2015.The LEAD program was unique for its combination of mentoring and rotational training. According to ATD’s 2016 State of the Industry report, just 16.8 percent of organizations use rotational training programs. The LEAD program would select three high-potential recent college graduates per year and assign each one a mentor from within the organization, who would guide and support the graduate while they went on four six-month rotations in different departments of the company. The graduate’s program experience would give them exposure to several departments and executives and put them on the fast track for leadership positions, securing future leaders for Greenheck.