What’s in it for me? Learn how to prepare for several possible futures.
What comes to mind when you hear the words the future?
Sci-fi spacecraft?
A utopian colony on Mars?
Or do you simply think of tomorrow, when you'll wake up and go to work?
Though we tend to talk of the future, there are in fact infinite possible futures.
Some are as fantastical as any sci-fi novel; others are as pedestrian as a day at work.
Some are in the distant future; others are a few hours away.
And some, like waking up tomorrow, are likely to occur, while others, that Martian colony perhaps, aren’t so probable.
So how do you tell which is which, and how do you prepare for the most likely ones?
That's where futuring comes in, a technique that allows you to prepare for multiple possible futures and prosper along the way.
In these blinks, you’ll learn why preparing for only one possible future isn’t enough; why changing trends in information and habits provide clues about the future; and how to write a compelling story about a possible future scenario.
In today’s world, different versions of the future are influenced by events, activists, leaders, and innovators.
Indeed, we hire, elect, and promote people to plan what will happen in the future for us.
Futuring offers a structured way to plan for multiple future scenarios.
By doing so, we’re choosing people to engage in futuring, the practice of researching and constructing plausible futures.
Futuring is vital for human advancement; in the bigger scheme of things, it can help us mitigate the possible repercussions of climate change.
And on a smaller scale, it can also allow corporations to future-proof themselves against different possible market turns.
But the practice of futuring isn’t restricted to big names in business, politics, and science.
All of us should be futuring regularly.
Whether it’s regarding your personal future or that of your business, futuring is guaranteed to help you get a better idea of where you might end up in the next five, ten, or even 20 years.
The key message here is: Futuring offers a structured way to plan for multiple future scenarios.
When you future, you try to broaden your understanding of what’s happening in the world, an industry, or some other specific area.
For instance, imagine you’re trying to plan a weekend excursion to the seaside.
You can’t be certain that your trip will fall on a sunny day.
But you can use weather apps and your knowledge of the region during this time of year to make a pretty accurate forecast.
Now, using futuring in preparation for a trip to the beach is simple enough.
But how do you future for more complex questions, like how to address challenges that don’t even exist yet?
For that, you need a structured approach that can be repeated and refined over time.
But there’s one big problem: nothing is certain.
You can’t be sure what’s going to happen, so why even try to predict it?
At the end of the day, uncertainty is here to stay.
But by gauging which scenarios are more plausible than others, you can whittle down the infinite number of possible futures to a smaller list more relevant to your current project, problem, or situation.
The following blinks explain the method to the madness that’s futuring.
The end goal is to equip you with the tools to outline multiple plausible futures.
This, in turn, will guide your strategic decisions, whether you’re developing an AI product, leading a country, or just deciding what to do with the next ten years of your life.
Before starting a futuring exercise, establish its scope.
Imagine that you’ve been asked to lead a futuring project and that your client is a company creating a new alternative-energy technology.
This company knows that the way people consume energy is constantly changing.
It’s also aware that, with climate change on the move, we need more long-term sustainable-energy sources to save the planet and our economy.
You’ve been tasked with devising a future-proof strategy that will ensure this new technology stands the test of time.
But where do you begin?
Futures are vast, and there’s no way to consider every single possibility.
So how can you zoom in?
The key message here is: Before starting a futuring exercise, establish its scope.
First, look into why this particular company initiated this futuring exercise.
Its reasons will tell you what kind of approach to take, and how to navigate different issues that might arise.
The best way to start is to ask a few questions.
Has it already been active in the alternative energy field with some other product or technology?
Maybe it’s already spent time futuring, but’s looking for different results or a new perspective.
What funding is available?
From the answers, you can try to glean some broad limitations for your exploratory efforts, and use your resources accordingly.
For example, if you’re on a low budget, it might not be the best time to use it up on 3D-printing flashy prototypes.
Next, you need to decide who this future is for.
Is it for the whole world, one country, or just a single community?
In the case of your client, the new technology will benefit the whole world.
So you’ll need to figure out how countries might generate and consume energy in ten years.
Start by looking at energy-consumption patterns from both the past and the present.
But take other peripheral factors into account too, such as changes in technology, work patterns, and travel habits.
All these variables will help you build a fuller picture of what this future might hold.
Last, assemble a competent team for the job.
Try to find people with diverse professional and personal backgrounds.
The broader the range of opinion within your team, the more accurate your futuring will be.
Once you’ve found the right people with the knowledge, experience, and temperament for the project’s demands, you’re ready to move on to the next stage of the futuring process: sensing.
Sense signals from diverse sources to gain an informed view of evolving trends.
Day in and day out, you’re constantly bombarded by information.
News updates.
Fashion trends.
Price changes.
It can be overwhelming.
It can also help you forecast the future.
How?
Well, each piece of information is also a signal, which the authors define as anything that delivers some insight into the future.
Each signal, however large or small, gives you a hint of what might happen tomorrow.
But to read these signals effectively you have to be paying attention.
And that requires a special skill: sensing.
The key message here is: Sense signals from diverse sources to gain an informed view of evolving trends.
So what exactly is sensing?
First and foremost, it’s a skill.
And, just like any other skill, the more you practice it, the better you’ll get.
By being aware of what’s happening today and how it differs from the past, you can get a clearer idea of what could happen next.
In the context of futuring, the best sensors have a few things in common.
Here’s how to do it yourself: First, always actively look for signals, whether it’s observing fashion fads in the streets or a snippet of news from an airport TV.
Even if your supermarket starts getting grapefruits from a different supplier, be the first to notice.
In other words, skilled sensing is all about noticing small inconsistencies and changes in the background.
As a good sensor, it’s also important that you stay curious.
You should frequently revisit sources of dynamic, up-to-date information, be it the news, magazines, or social media.
Try to find other signals that contradict what you’ve found.
For instance, if you read one article about the dangers that wind turbines pose to birdlife, be sure to look for another to see if there's a general consensus.
Sensors also stay objective.
Rather than getting all your signals from a single source, it’s best to draw on a mélange of sources.
For example, rather than reading just one research journal on solar energy, it’s best to read several from different regions to cross-check the information.
Now that you have an overview of how to become an expert sensor, let’s move on to how to find specific signals relevant to your project.
Scan for signals relevant to your futuring project to pinpoint trends and the driving forces behind them.
Sensing is something you can do continuously.
All it requires is your curious attention.
Think of sensing as a way of keeping up with the world.
You might read the newspaper and notice that a soap shop is going out of business.
But to learn about the reasons for its closure, and the economic shifts that led consumers to go elsewhere for their soaps, you need a more targeted approach.
When conducting a futuring exercise, you have to sift through countless signals – and find those connected to the specific futures you’re exploring.
To do so, you need to harness the power of scanning.
The key message here is: Scan for signals relevant to your futuring project to pinpoint trends and the driving forces behind them.
Scanning is similar to sensing, but with these crucial differences: it’s targeted, and can help you predict changes specifically related to your futuring topics.
Unfortunately, most companies only focus on short-term futures.
They do some occasional research – a kind of shortsighted scanning – but only on an as-needed basis to stay up to date.
This often hurts them in the long run.
Scanning, like sensing, should be done regularly to avoid having to play catch-up later on.
Let’s take a look at scanning in the context of your imaginary alternative-energy client who wants to be at the forefront of the industry ten years from now.
So far, you’ve done your prep work and assembled a stellar team.
Now it’s time to start scanning for signals about topics like power storage, energy consumption, and cost.
Your sources could include databases, social media sites, empirical studies, or academic journals.
As you gather information, you’ll notice different trends.
A trend is basically a cluster of similar signals.
If certain signals start appearing more frequently than others, this could be a trend.
A trend’s time frame can span anywhere from one to ten years.
Let’s say you notice more and more news stories questioning the efficacy of solar panels; as these stories proliferate, you also notice that recent polls show a shift in support of wind power, even in regions that usually invest more in solar.
There you have it: both wind and solar power are trending but in different directions.
Once you’ve identified several trends, draw up a list detailing the implications of these changes for your project’s future.
With your list of trends in hand, it’s time to determine the driving forces behind them.
These are called drivers, and they’re triggered by changes in technology, politics, economics, and the environment.
But, to make sense of all this, you’ll need a few more tools.
Use the STEEP framework to identify and organize trends.
At this point, you’ve scanned for signals and sources related to your project and identified a number of trends.
And you know that behind each trend is a driving force – a driver.
This driver might be a change in society, technology, or the environment.
At this point, you need to start considering how to evaluate and visualize this information.
It’s helpful to sort each trend into one of the following categories, which collectively make up the STEEP framework: Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, or Political.
The key message here is: Use the STEEP framework to identify and organize trends.
So how exactly can the STEEP framework help you organize your trends?
Well, let's return to the example of solar and wind energy.
In our imaginary example, solar panels are becoming less popular and wind power is becoming more popular.
How can you capture this trend?
First, grab a note card or a Post-it.
At the top, write a category.
For this example, we'll select Technological.
Under "Technological," write what the trend is; in this case, it's the increasing adoption of wind power.
Now, below this, it's time to write out a detailed description of the trend.
For the STEEP framework to be effective, you need to do this for every trend you've identified.
Once that’s done, you should have a broad sense of which trends you're most focused on, and what blind spots or under-researched areas remain.
For example, for your imaginary alternative energy client, your futuring team might have been so committed to scanning for signals on current technologies like wind and solar power that you neglected to investigate economic shifts that could influence your product’s futures.
If you’ve got ten Post-its describing technological trends but only two describing economic ones, you should consider adjusting your focus accordingly.
If your STEEP chart doesn’t appear to reflect the full picture of the topic at hand, you can take this opportunity to go back and fill in the underrepresented areas.
Eventually, your team of scanners can keep track of these trends in a central location, such as a shared spreadsheet, and update it as they work.
As you repeat this cycle, it’s important to keep asking what’s missing and what information you could use to create a more detailed sketch of these futures.
Once you’ve amassed a well-rounded assortment of trends, you can sort them according to time frame and likelihood.
You’ll learn how in the next blink.
Map the probability and projected impact of trends onto future horizons.
Hopefully, you still have your STEEP chart of trends handy, because you’re going to need it for a bit longer.
So far, your STEEP chart lists the trends you’re tracking, their detailed descriptions, and which categories they fit into.
But to take your STEEP game to the next level, you need to consider each trend’s horizon and probability.
The key message here is: Map the probability and projected impact of trends onto future horizons.
In the context of the STEEP system, a horizon is the period of time when a trend will have the most impact.
Think of it as the life of a trend.
You’ve seen social and technological trends come and go, from Sony’s Walkman to MySpace.
It’s similar for political, environmental, and economic trends.
To measure a trend’s impact effectively, it’s best to assign it multiple future horizons.
You can decide how long each horizon lasts, be it one year or ten years.
It’s really up to you.
In this case, let’s take two sequential horizons of five years each.
And let’s return to your imaginary client, that alternative energy company.
The first horizon might involve following the trend of solar and wind power getting more efficient.
But during these first five years, they still cost too much to be widely adopted.
But moving to the next five-year horizon – between six and ten years from now – the trend may be shifting.
Costs may be sinking.
In this second horizon, people who’d otherwise rely on cheap coal or nuclear power may start switching over to more sustainable energy providers.
What’s the best way to figure out how to assign your trend its most impactful horizon?
That’s where the Three P’s come in.
If a trend’s impact is probable based on what you currently know about it, it’s fairly likely to happen.
If it’s plausible, it might happen.
And if it’s possible, well, that just means it’s not impossible.
In the case of your alternative energy company, your team’s scanning efforts have shown that costs of wind and solar power are going to sink due to incoming tax incentives.
This makes it probable that the trend is going to have a large impact soon, and this is why you should assign it to your upcoming horizon, which covers the next five years.
On the other hand, your team’s scanning within the field of efficient hydrogen fuel cells has led to much less conclusive results.
It’s possible that they might be ready to have a big impact on the market in the next few years, but this isn’t sufficient to place it in your first horizon.
Such possible impacts are best left to horizons a bit further down the line – be that five years or even ten.
Create a rough draft roadmap of trends to generate future threads.
With the help of your futuring team, you’ve just finished mapping the trends you’ve identified onto future horizons.
It’s now time to start playing out possible future sequences of events – and their repercussions.
For example, what would happen if the solar panels and wind turbines turned out to be less efficient and affordable than planned?
As you'll remember from the last blink, you believe that it's possible that hydrogen fuel cells will have a major influence on the market.
But you don't know when that will happen.
Well, if solar and wind energy aren't as efficient and affordable as you thought they'd be, then the influence of hydrogen cells may be delayed even more.
If you'd placed hydrogen energy within your first five-year horizon, you might now need to move it to your ten-year horizon.
Think of it like a game of chess: perhaps you’ve devised a strategy for a swift checkmate, but once your opponent makes an unexpected move, you have to adjust your plan accordingly.
The key message here is: Create a rough draft roadmap of trends to generate future threads.
When you predict possible situations that might affect the impact of a trend, you’re generating threads.
By identifying threads, you can put together a roadmap for each of your trends and document possible futures that each of them might encounter.
But threads don’t have to be negative.
For example, if your client’s solar and wind impact exceeded expectations, the government might make even more of an effort to incentivize them over fossil fuels.
This positive thread might lead you to abandon your plans for hydrogen and put all your eggs in the solar-and-wind basket for your next horizon.
In the context of alternative energy, the future is wide open – and as a successful futurist, you need to identify as many threads as possible.
For instance, it could be that all goes well and you’re able to develop efficient and cost-effective energy based entirely on hydrogen fuel cells.
If this is the case, a resulting thread would be that power could be produced at a local level, as this new technology doesn’t require central power plants.
This would be fantastic for your client, but you shouldn’t stop your roadmap there.
You might also identify threads on how your client’s energy revolution could transform the economy.
After all, if independent communities could trade energy with each other, this would mark a departure from the way energy has previously been produced and consumed.
Detailed stories from recognized themes make each scenario more compelling.
After getting threads down on paper, you can move on to fleshing them out into easy-to-imagine hypothetical stories.
By doing so, you’ll create compelling narratives that you can share with your client’s potential investors, customers, or even communities that might be affected by one of your client’s futuring projects.
The key message here is: Detailed stories from recognized themes make each scenario more compelling.
The ultimate goal of creating stories is to make each hypothetical future believable to people who haven’t been involved in your futuring process.
They haven’t seen your sources or spreadsheets, so you need to connect the dots for them in a narrative that holds water – and address their individual concerns.
For example, it could be that you need to prepare a story for an audience of investors.
They’ll be curious to know what trends in alternative energy you’ve identified, and why they’ll result in your client’s company having a bigger market share in the future.
Stories can also help convince skeptical members of the community to adopt your client’s product.
For example, if your client’s rolling into town with an alternative-energy source that’s cheaper than the status quo, this might sound too good to be true.
It’s your job to craft a story that will address concerns, and to explain the positive impact on the future of the community.
Once you’ve identified your audience and the future scenario you want to tackle, it’s time to start story-crafting.
Let’s imagine that, in addition to hydrogen cells, you’re proposing an alternative to gas: algae-based fuel.
You already know the end of this story, of course.
According to your futuring exercises, sustainable, algae-based fuel will become cost-effective in the near future.
But your audience members need to know how your client plans to get there.
After all, it’s likely a few possible obstacles stand in the way, whether that means funding, logistics, or natural resources.
If your client’s making fuel from algae, your audience might want to know where the algae is going to come from, and what impact this will have on the affected ecosystems.
The more of your audience’s potential questions you can answer, the more vibrant your story will be.
The futuring process never officially ends; as long as there are new futures, there’s futuring to be done.
By taking this approach, you’ll be more prepared for several futures, not just the one that arrives.
Final summary
The key message in these blinks: By creating plausible, in-depth future scenarios based on current signals and trends, you can better prepare yourself or your company for social, environmental, economic, or technological changes.
Instead of entrusting other people and organizations to determine futures for you, you can open constructive dialogue around different possibilities and use this futuring process to inform strategic decisions.
Actionable advice: Leave room for unusual ideas.
It’s easy to get caught up in trends and dismiss the outliers while you future.
But the truth is that sometimes these anomalies can have profound impacts on future generations.
So when scanning and sense-making, make sure there’s room for outliers, and that your objectives don’t automatically dismiss signals or trends that don’t immediately fit in with your trajectory.
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