Future Vision

There has never been a stronger need for adaptive leadership that crosses boundaries.

We live in an increasingly complex, interdisciplinary world. Unprecedented financial pressures on public, private and voluntary sectors have combined with ever-higher expectations of outcomes, making effective leadership of organisations all the more pivotal.

The Programme

Every year, 20 Leaders and Chief Executives from different sectors – public, private and voluntary – come together to work on their system leadership challenges as a way of learning and developing together. The programme, a collaboration between the Birmingham Leadership Centre and the Leadership Centre, combines input from nationally and internationally renowned experts in systemic aspects of leadership with opportunities for conversations with practitioners who are making change happen on the ground.

Participants also have access to one-to-one professional mentoring between residential blocks to help them explore their own leadership profile and identify their own personal development needs. During the main residential blocks, participants work alongside each other, collectively pooling their experience to co-develop solutions to individual problems.

The programme is designed to create learning in four domains, helping leaders develop the specific capabilities associated with systems leadership:

  • Personal development
  • Relational capability
  • Socio-political understanding
  • Systemic thinking

Each year’s Future Vision programme is different. We seek out the best leaders in their fields, and they each define which leadership challenges they wish to focus on, which in turn informs which experts we invite to contribute to that year’s programme. Each year’s programme content is thus tailored to the needs of its participants.

The highly acclaimed Future Vision Programme is a collaboration between the Leadership Centre and the University of Birmingham’s Leadership Institute, delivering better outcomes across all sectors.

What previous participants have said about the programme

"‘I’ve found that it’s a great forum to unburden myself in. I’m surrounded by leaders facing very similar sets of problems to me – but as none of them work in my sector, it’s a very non-competitive atmosphere where you can be totally frank in a way that you can’t always be with your immediate colleague"