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The futurist Joel Barker defines a leader as “someone you choose to follow to a place you would not go to by yourself.”

There are two key components to this definition; the first is choice. It is always the follower’s decision born of trust, confidence and respect. The boss who forces followers is commonly referred to as a “tyrant.” The second component deals with the place to which you are going. There is something about that place that requires the leader to go there first. It has a feeling of uncertainty, risk and maybe danger. That place is the future.

Barker then defines what a leader does: “More than anything else, leaders build bridges, bridges that help us move from where we are to where we need to be. Bridges that are made of hope and ideas and opportunity, bridges that are wide enough and strong enough so that all who wish to cross into the future may do so safely.”

I first came across Barker’s futurist concepts in the early 1990s when I was appointed department coordinator for the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s Applied Business and Accounting Department. We were a small unit, and I was the only full-time faculty member. The university was going through budget challenges, and as I looked into the future, I didn’t like what I saw. It is my fervent hope that from our story, you as a leader can gain some ideas and insights to better your organization’s future and build a strong and safe bridge to it.

The first step I took was to find a diverse group of advisers to help me scan the environment. I provided pizza, and they helped define the trends that were shaping the 1990s. Time was becoming the new currency of value, and anything that could save or give back time to our customers provided our greatest opportunity for future success. From that insight, we started developing courses for online Web-based delivery 24/7.

A student now can earn a business or accounting certificate or degree without stepping into a classroom. Last year, we graduated our first overseas student, who lives in New Zealand. That insight from an advisory board member and our commitment to act upon it allows us to compete with any online business degree program in the world.

Ten years later, the advisory board identified a new trend. Whereas in the 1990s everyone was a competitor, in the new millennium everyone was a potential partner. We forged win-win relationships with the UAF School of Management and the University of Alaska Southeast online business bachelor degree program. Thanks to an idea of a student on our advisory board, we are pursuing another partnership that could prove exciting.

Consciously listening to customers, suppliers, employees and competitors is a critical strategy for building strong bridges to the future. Another offhanded remark from a potential student took us to offering Saturday/Sunday classes and two-week courses just after New Year’s Day before the spring semester starts in addition to traditional day and evening courses. What could you do in your business to make it easier for your customers to buy from you?

My team and I also are constantly asking ourselves, “What is impossible today, but if it were possible would fundamentally change our business?” We begin to prepare ourselves because what is impossible today likely will be common tomorrow.

There are three kinds of businesses in Fairbanks. There are those that make it happen. There are those that watch it happen. And then there are those businesses that haven’t a clue what happened. As leader, make it happen by gathering and paying attention to a diverse advisory board who helps you scan the horizon and build a bridge to take your business into the future.

It helps — a lot — if a few of your advisers are a little offbeat.

Charlie Dexter is a professor of applied business at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Tanana Valley Campus. He can be reached at 455-2837 or ffcnd@uaf.edu. This column is provided as a public service of the TVC Applied Business Department. Copies of this column can be found at www.CharlieDexter.com.