I have dog-eared dozens of pages for future reference. This book offers recommendations that are useful today and will continue to be tomorrow.
April Rinne
Some books chase what’s hot. This one was built for the past, present, and future.
Think Like a Futurist made its debut in 2012 with durable lessons for our times and beyond. It's been translated into multiple languages and named one of the Tribune Review's "Top 25: What Corporate America Is Reading." More than a decade later, leaders still reach for it.
Because Change Literacy — the ability to read change clearly without getting swept up in trends — has always been the foundation of smart strategy. This book is where it went on the record.
Know What Changes, What Doesn't, and What's Next.
Cecily calls it the Futurist's Serenity Prayer. The wisdom to discern what changes from what doesn't is the core of strategic clarity — and the reason this book continues to hold.
The Four Forces — Resources, Technology, Demographics, and Governance — are the constant, predictable drivers behind every disruption, every market shift, every moment of apparent surprise. Learn to read them, and the future stops feeling like a threat and starts feeling like a map.
The Four Forces are Cecily's original contribution to the field of strategic foresight. They remain the foundation of everything that followed.
From the Field: General Mills
The final section of the book takes you inside a real transformation at scale: the design and launch of The Idea Greenhouse within General Mills' Consumer Insights division. Thirty pages from the trenches cover what it actually takes to move change through an organization, how to make it stick, and the principles Cecily continues to teach today.
Including the 5% Rule — the promise that futurist thinking does not require an organizational overhaul, only a small, protected slice of time and resources. Five percent allocated to foresight keeps short- and long-term work aligned and holds space for the course corrections that are always coming.
The First Moveable Piece is the antidote to waiting for perfect conditions. Find what is already in motion and start there.
Both frameworks were born in this engagement and remain in active use today.
This is where Change Literacy went on the record.
IT STILL IS
Global keynote speaker, business futurist, and strategic advisor guiding executive teams in their most consequential work. One of Forbes’ Top 50 Female Futurists.
© 2026 Wherefore Co.