The indicators that teams lack a shared sense of the future are many. They appear from the outside to be disorganized, distracted and in disarray. From the inside they feel chaotic, overworked, unfocused, unengaged and uninspired.
Without a shared sense of the future teams lack a sense of direction and at the same time resist imposed direction. They cannot be easily bribed nor threatened into coherence.
When teams have a shared sense of the future they act with strong and flourishing cultures of trust, creativity, optimism, resilience and momentum. It's not a very complicated process. All it takes is dreaming out into the future in the realization of what we would love to make possible in translating this into actionable short-term actions, learning and projects. Perhaps it should be more complicated but it really isn't. And the only reason why teams do this is because they know how and they know the benefits.