Bob Johansen, Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009). $26.95, 224 pages.

The message of Bob Johansen’s Leaders Make the Future is simple: Our world is characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (negative VUCA). In order for this state of affairs to give way to vision, understanding, clarity, and agility (positive VUCA), leaders need to develop ten skills:

1. Maker instinct: ability to exploit the inner drive to grow things
2. Clarity: ability to see a future others cannot yet see
3. Dilemma flipping: ability to turn dilemmas into opportunities
4. Immersive learning ability: ability to learn in a first-person way
5. Bio-empathy: ability to learn from nature’s patterns
6. Constructive depolarizing: ability to calm tense situations where differences dominate and communication has broken down
7. Quiet transparency: ability to be authentic without advertising yourself
8. Rapid prototyping: ability to succeed through early failures
9. Smart mob organizing: ability to create purposeful networks through media
10. Commons creating: ability to grow shared assets that can benefit others

Every reader has a definite point of view. Mine is that of the pastor of a growing Pentecostal church on California’s central coast. Although this is not a book on religious leadership, its message nevertheless resonated with me on several levels.

First, I feel the negative VUCA that Johansen writes about. Our culture is changing. Its composition, values, and mores are evolving—sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. And this evolution is hard to predict.

Second, I want to be characterized by positive VUCA. My task as a pastor is to lead people spiritually through troubled times. This requires vision, understanding, clarity, and agility—alongside of faith, hope, and love.

Third, I see the value of the skills Johansen describes. Let me focus on just three. Dilemma flipping is different than problem solving. A problem presupposes a solution that is either right or wrong. A dilemma presupposes a choice that can be made to one’s advantage or disadvantage. Pastors face some problems for which there are right and wrong answers—whether in theology or ethics. Many of the problems we face are really dilemmas, however, where we must make a choice to create the best possible outcome. Example: Given the limited amount of money churches have, should we invest in already-existing ministries or in developing new ministries? There is no obvious right or wrong answer to this question, only a choice that is better or worse based on context.

Quiet transparency is also an important pastoral skill. How does the real me preach to my congregation every Sunday without it becoming a venue for either self-promotion (or self-deflation)? No one wants to listen to me drone on and on about myself every Sunday. On the other hand, no one wants to listen to me if they don’t think it’s the real me preaching. Parishioners hate phonies and hypocrites.

Finally, smart mob organizing is a useful networking skill. Media such as personal blogs, social networking sites, podcasts, and websites allow contemporary pastors to communicate with their parishioners and lead them into action outside of the Sunday morning service. They should be taken advantage of—although they should never replace face-to-face communication.

I do not agree with every point Johansen makes or every illustration he uses. No reader ever totally agrees with an author. But I do think Leaders Make the Future is an interesting and thought-provoking read for people who lead other people, including pastors.