Insights Unlocked
Imagining the future: Why leaders need more than vision to succeed with Lisa Kay Solomon
02 Jun 2025
Episode web page: https://bit.ly/4dDbMuy In this thought-provoking episode of Insights Unlocked, Jason Giles sits down with Lisa Kay Solomon—designer in residence at Stanford’s d.school, bestselling author, and strategic foresight expert—to explore how leaders can better prepare for an uncertain and rapidly evolving future. Lisa shares insights from her 20+ years in scenario planning and design, reflecting on the transformative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and how it highlighted the critical need for imagination, empathy, and long-term thinking in leadership. She discusses the value of futures thinking in education and business, emphasizing how anticipatory leadership, scenario planning, and rapid prototyping can help organizations build resilience and stay ahead of disruption. Whether you're leading a team, crafting customer experiences, or shaping strategic decisions, this episode will inspire you to stretch your thinking, foster creativity, and embrace your role as a designer of the future. What you’ll learn in this episode: Why the pandemic marked a turning point in how leaders perceive uncertainty How imagination is an underdeveloped but essential leadership skill Practical tools like futures wheels and scenario planning to anticipate change The role of design and prototyping in shaping strategic foresight How to nurture a culture that values long-term thinking and experimentation Why attention is the new currency in the battle for meaningful innovation Resources & Links: Lisa Kay Solomon on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisakaysolomon/ Jason Giles on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaygiles/ Leading like a Futurist course on LinkedIn Learning https://www.linkedin.com/learning/leading-like-a-futurist/you-are-a-futurist Harvard Business Review: 5 Pandemic-Era Lessons on Leading Through Change https://hbr.org/2025/03/5-pandemic-era-lessons-on-leading-through-drastic-change?ab=HP-hero-latest-1 Stanford d.school profile: https://dschool.stanford.edu/directory/lisa-kay-solomon Learn more about Insights Unlocked: https://www.usertesting.com/podcast
Full Episode
Welcome back to the Insights Unlocked podcast. In this episode, we're joined by Lisa K. Solomon, futurist, educator and designer in residence at Stanford's D School. Lisa and host Jason Giles dive into how leaders can build resilience through imagination, scenario planning and long term thinking. It's a fascinating look at why anticipating change matters more than ever in today's world.
Enjoy the show. Welcome to Insights Unlocked, an original podcast from User Testing, where we bring you candid conversations and stories with the thinkers, doers, and builders behind some of the most successful digital products and experiences in the world, from concept to execution.
Welcome to the Insights Unlocked podcast. I'm Aaron D'Ocampo, Brand Content Production Manager at UserTesting. Joining us today as host is Jason Giles, UserTesting's Vice President of Design. Welcome, Jason. Hello, everyone. Good to see you, Aaron.
And our guest today is Lisa K. Solomon. Lisa is a visionary strategist, best-selling author, and designer in residence at Stanford's d.school, where she teaches futures thinking and helps leaders navigate the uncertainty with imagination and foresight. Known for her expertise in strategic design and leadership, Lisa co-authored Moments of Impact and Design a Better Business.
And her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review. Welcome to the show, Lisa. Aaron, thanks so much. Jason, excited to be here with you.
It is such a pleasure to meet you. I'm really excited about our conversation today. So to kick it off, you have been helping leaders navigate uncertainty, design better futures. As you look back on the past few years, what would be one of the shifts that you've seen on how leaders approach change and kind of what does that tell us about where we might be heading?
Love that softball opening, Jason. You know, listen, I think we just the easiest place to start is, of course, COVID. I think, you know, looking back, we've just really had the five year anniversary of COVID global pandemic that pretty much shut down the world overnight. And that, I think, alerted leaders everywhere to just how vulnerable we are to abrupt disruption.
And it's not like leaders weren't dealing with uncertainty and complexity and ambiguity for years before. But I think that acute, non-negotiable, everything has changed for everybody alerted everyone. all leaders across all industries and all sectors that this can happen. This sort of unimaginable future is only unimaginable if you don't allow yourself to imagine it.
And I hope we get into the importance of imagination as a leadership skill because It's rare that we find an MBA program where many leaders come from that actually has a class on imagination or even ambiguity or uncertainty. So I think the biggest surprise really marking five years ago, but of course, that wasn't the only uncertainty that has come our way.
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