The Future Executive

Copyright © 1972 by Harlan Cleveland. From forthcoming book The Future Executive: A Guide for Tomorrow's Managers, to be published by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. changes of job and shifts of scenery on which you look back later, weaving through story retroactively some thread of logic that was not visible at time. If you try too carefully to plan your life, danger is that you will succeed succeed in narrowing your options, closing off avenues of adventure that cannot now be imagined, perhaps because they are not yet technologically possible. When a student asks me for career advice, I can only suggest that he or she opt for most exciting next step without worrying where it will lead, and then work hard on job in hand, not pine for one in bush. When your job no longer demands of you more than you have, go and do something else. Always take by preference job you don't know how to do. If you build into your life enough variety of experience, you will be training for leadership, in role I have called Public Executive. This book is addressed to those who are, or wish to become, executive leaders in realm of public responsibility which includes not only those who work in the government but also a great many executives in private business, nonprofit organizations, and professions. Others can listen in if they will, but it is self-conscious executives who most need to think about their role, because they seem to be inheriting earth though not because they are meek. It is not a comfortable moment to inherit earth, just when earth is revealed as polluted, overpopulated, and in mortal peril from Man's civilizing intervention in Nature. But it is just these cosmic dangers which are causing people to turn to those men and women who see their task in life as bringing people together in organizations to make something different happen. In this book I suggest that Public Executives will soon number one million in United States alone. Do we have a profession, those of us