Rehearsing The Future: Navigating Complexity With Mimi Brooks

Frank Diana
4 min readJan 23, 2025

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In an age of accelerating change and complexity, leadership requires more than traditional planning — it demands a mindset of rehearsal. This principle framed my recent conversation with Mimi Brooks, CEO of Logical Design Solutions, on her Bold Agendas podcast. Our discussion spanned the evolving role of ecosystems, the dual edges of innovation, and the critical importance of adaptability and resilience. Together, we unpacked strategies for thriving in an unpredictable world and explored the transformational shifts leaders must embrace to navigate 2025 and beyond.

The Need for Rehearsal Over Prediction

The pace of change across geopolitics, technology, society, and the environment has made traditional approaches to strategy insufficient. Instead of attempting to predict the future, I advocate for rehearsing the future -a dynamic, iterative approach that emphasizes exploration, continuous learning, and adaptability. This practice draws on scenario planning but goes further, integrating foresight, experimentation, and action into a living strategy that evolves as circumstances change.

Rehearsing the future begins with identifying signals and trends across key domains to map possible scenarios. These scenarios are not predictions but frameworks to understand risks, opportunities, and potential pathways. By testing strategies through experimentation and piloting, organizations can refine their responses and build resilience to navigate uncertainty. This approach enables leaders to pivot when needed, fostering a culture of learning that aligns strategy with an ever-shifting world.

At its core, rehearsing the future is about embracing uncertainty and preparing for a broad possibility space. This mindset shift allows leaders to move beyond rigid plans and view change as an opportunity rather than a threat. By actively rehearsing, organizations can thrive amid disruption, seizing opportunities and mitigating risks in ways that static planning simply cannot.

A Living Strategic Plan

Gone are the days of rigid three — to five-year plans. Leaders need living strategies that adapt in real time. This begins with a mindset shift — recognizing that the future will look different and that the status quo is not sustainable. Storytelling plays a critical role here. By vividly illustrating possible futures, leaders can connect with their teams on both a rational and emotional level, fostering a shared commitment to adaptability.

Ecosystems as the Future of Value Creation

A recurring theme in our discussion was the importance of ecosystems in addressing the grand challenges of our time. No single company or industry can tackle issues like climate change, aging populations, or the ethics of artificial intelligence alone. Ecosystems — networks of diverse stakeholders collaborating to create and capture value — are essential. However, adopting this model requires a fundamental shift away from traditional, competitive mindsets.

As Mimi and I discussed, ecosystems are also powerful learning platforms. By pooling diverse perspectives and resources, they enable exponential value creation, a stark contrast to the incremental gains of outdated approaches.

Navigating the Dual Edges of Innovation

Periods of great invention, like the one we are entering, bring both extraordinary opportunities and significant risks. Balancing these “dual edges” is one of society’s greatest challenges. Leaders must navigate the tension between leveraging new technologies for progress and mitigating their unintended consequences.

For example, artificial intelligence holds immense potential to transform industries and improve lives, but it also raises ethical questions about bias, privacy, and the future of work. The key is to embrace global collaboration and regulation while ensuring that innovation serves humanity’s best interests.

Building Organizational Resilience

Our conversation highlighted the critical need for organizations to embed adaptability and resilience into their DNA. This is not just about processes and structures but also about fostering a culture of lifelong learning. Employees must be empowered to unlearn outdated practices, relearn new skills, and continuously adapt to evolving challenges.

An insightful analogy here is the evolution of electricity as a general-purpose technology. Its full potential was only realized after leaders reimagined systems and processes to align with its capabilities. Similarly, emerging technologies like AI and quantum computing will require us to rethink everything from business models to organizational hierarchies.

A Call to Action

As we approach 2025, the stakes could not be higher. The expanding possibility space offers unparalleled opportunities to solve longstanding challenges, from climate change to inequality. At the same time, it presents existential risks that demand vigilance and foresight. Leaders must embrace the complexity of our era, think systemically, and act with purpose.

Our discussion reaffirmed my belief in the power of rehearsal as a tool for navigating uncertainty. By imagining what could be, we can prepare for what will be — and perhaps even shape it to our advantage.

Let’s make 2025 a year of bold action, driven by adaptability, resilience, and a shared commitment to thriving in a complex world. Our full discussion is captured in the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9S-TmTeCyE

Originally published at http://frankdiana.net on January 23, 2025.

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Frank Diana
Frank Diana

Written by Frank Diana

TCS Executive focused on the rapid evolution of society and business. Fascinated by the view of the world in the next decade and beyond https://frankdiana.net/

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