Too often, we cope with our 24/7 info-overloaded world by erecting our own personal mental firewall. This enables us to immediately filter out any information, publication, or resource that isn't directly related to what is on our current to-do list. Unfortunately, this prevents us from gaining insights that will serve us well in the future. Here are three fundamental commitments you can make to enhance your future preparedness, in bite-sized pieces.

1. Scan - Environmental scanning (casting a wide net beyond the normal industry publications and resources to a broader range of material) is a hallmark of future planning. The goal is to identify interesting issues, trends, or opportunities, and to then explore their potential implications for your organization and/or role. While environmental scanning can be an individual activity, it is also a great opportunity to collaborate with colleagues. By forming a group of scanners, you can distribute the scanning activity among individuals, having one or two people scan a particular topic or publication. Individuals then report what they are finding to the larger group and the individual contributions are aggregated for a composite scanning report.

2. Explore - Effective leaders know that every industry has a handful of timeless and strategic questions that merit frequent revisiting and exploration to generate new ideas. These questions can be used as part of ongoing strategy development or simply to guide thinking about an individual meeting or conference. The questions themselves bring clarity and focus to your thinking while the possible answers bring expansiveness and potential innovation to your actions. Here are a few to start:

• What do our members or stakeholders (current and future) most value and how can we increase the relevance they associate with our efforts?
• How can we better design and disseminate communication pieces so they better engage people's attention and interest?
• What processes and systems could we implement to more efficiently and effectively do our work?
• How can we create a physical environment at our meetings that encourages conversation and connection and supports varied learning styles?
• How can we design conferences and individual workshops that more intentionally support participants learning from each other's experience?

3. Refresh - Trying to revamp all your meetings in one sitting is like trying to renovate every room in your house right before you sell it. A much better approach is to have a planned periodic review cycle in which at least one of your major meetings or conferences goes for scheduled "renovation." Just as rotating your home improvement efforts from room to room each year increases the likelihood your home is always in good shape, so does reviewing and renovating your meetings on an ongoing basis. Thoroughly examine all elements of the meeting to determine which are in good shape and can be continued and which need changing.

We are creatures of habit. We can increase our effectiveness if we change some habits to ones likely to yield positive results. While giving up all sweets is an admirable goal, eating only half of a dessert might be a habit you can keep. Increasing our preparedness for the future means incorporating habits that we can manage into our ongoing activity.

Jeffrey Cufaude is a former higher education administrator, meeting planner, and association executive. He currently writes, speaks, and facilitates on a variety of individual and organizational leadership issues. Learn more about his work at www.ideaarchitects.org. To submit topic ideas and feedback on the Leading Learning column, e-mail jeffrey@ideaarchitects.org. Convene's Leading Learning series is sponsored by AVW TELAV. Visit its Web site at www.avwtelav.com.