If you don’t have a Future Creative Group (FCG) for your firm please consider doing so. Not for a boring plod through recent results. Even less for an occasional moan about failed targets. Just a two monthly (or more frequent) guidance Group on what the business should be looking at for the future – near and far. The pace of change is too fast and too novel for a Board to adjudicate every possible development. Boards are, rightly, preoccupied with the business as it stands. A different Group looking to the future will give Directors a chance to contemplate the changes that are coming and start making adjustments for them.
The most creative eight (max) people in the business will form the Group. They will be selected from within the company – one by each of the eight most senior managers in the firm. The Group will elect its own chairperson from among the Group. The Group’s minutes go to the Board. Each member of the Group will be paid US$1,000 per two-monthly meeting that they attend. The Group will also be allocated 1% of the initial equity of the business(es) they recommend if they become commercial entities. There will be no charge for this equity.
After being formed, the Group will select and deselect its own future members, in confidence. Members will retire from the Group after one year’s membership but will be eligible to rejoin the Group if four or more of the remaining members of the Group agree on their reselection. This will be subject to the total membership of the Group not exceeding eight. The CEO of the company shall have the right to bar individuals from the Group.
The brief for the Group will be as follows: To consider, examine, discuss and recommend – with an outline plan – an area or areas of development the company should explore for its future sustainability. The Board will allocate a sum of money – commensurate with the size and style of the overall business – for the Group to spend on research. The Board will have the final say on whether any of the Group’s ideas shall proceed to commercialisation.
Businesses must today look ahead in a fast and methodical way. The Future Creative Group is the best way to do so. As is right, the Board will retain the decision on whether to invest or not in any ideas the Group promotes.
Most work Boards do at present is looking in the rear-view mirror and criticizing what has been done. Shareholders in the existing business should encourage Boards to consider making this simple but effective way to get a glimpse of the future.
If you don’t get it quickly you won’t get it at all.
Good morning
John Bittleston
What do you think? Please tell us at [email protected].
4 June 2026
