45. The Law of Foresight

The Laws of Business Success

Under the Laws of Leadership

Leaders have the ability to predict and anticipate the future.

You should give a lot of thought to the future because that is where you are going to be spending the rest of your life. Your ability to accurately anticipate the future largely determines the success or failure of yourself and your organization.

Foresight is the ability to analyze the current situation and to accurately predict what is likely to happen as a result. The best leaders are those who continually look down the road and prepare carefully for possible reversals well in advance of them taking place.

Leaders know that potential successes have often been turned into disasters because of the failure of the leader to anticipate a setback in some area. Even if there is only a small probability that a serious problem or reversal could occur, you should seriously consider it and plan against it.

Leaders also have the ability to anticipate opportunities before anyone else sees them. They can then move quickly to assemble the resources necessary to take advantage of the situation when the opportunity presents itself.

How you can apply this law immediately:

1. Look into the future and imagine the most exciting opportunities that could occur for you in the next few years. How could you begin preparing today to take advantage of them?

2. Identify the greatest difficulties or reversals that could take place in the next one, two, or three years. What could you do today to make sure they don’t happen?

Source: Brian Tracy, The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc, (San Francisco, 2000).