Keeping your Future, grounded to Reality

About once a week I get a call from a client or a media group asking if I can tell them what the future will be like. The conversation usually goes something like this – Me: can I ask what you’re trying to discover? Journalist: Oh you know, something really catchy, about how the world is changing and how we’re all struggling to keep up, that sort of thing’; Me: Is your audience interested in knowing how to check whether their assessment of the future is grounded in reality, or what they can do to make it reality?’; Journalist ‘Um, I guess but I was really after a few interesting facts…’. With the client calls the request can often be couched in a need for a ‘prediction’ of the future. The challenge is over the difference between a theoretical future and a strategic future.

With a Theoretical future, you get the big, exciting, techno frenzy world where everything is really cool, or disastrously bad. Journalists are ringing for a view of the future, they’re ringing to get you to do the creative thinking they couldn’t be bothered doing. With clients though, it’s more down to a misunderstanding between the difference of the theoretical future v Strategic Future approach.

The Strategic Future is about keeping your assessment in contact with the actions you are going to take tomorrow, to make the future you envisage more (or less) likely. It requires a different tool kit and a need for the Project team to be open to an answer they weren’t expecting.

A case study of sorts involves one client I worked with across a four year period. From the outset they told us what answer they were looking for. From the outset I kept saying ‘let’s see what the research uncovers’. In the end we identified three core opportunities for them. One was well outside what they expected and it was the single biggest opportunity that existed – it STILL exists a couple of years later, as an untapped one. The second was an opportunity that was the OPPOSITE of what their other internal research (from HQ overseas) had advised. In looking at much of the same data but adding one extra filter, we exposed the mythology. What was proposed was a theoretical future idea but in order for that to be a plausible one, almost all competitors would need to have vacated the market. The final one, and one they acted on, led to them NOT pursuing an idea that was well underway. It saved them any, many millions of dollars chasing a pipe-dream.

Strategic Futures is about taking action toward the world you want to create. It doesn’t offer a guarantee, yet through testing your views of the future, you can make a much wiser decision. Theoretical futures are often entertaining and eye opening. They just don;t lead to much change in behaviour. That’s why I don’t do them – I prefer working with people who want to make it happen, not just dream about what might happen. Journalists, please keep that in miond next time you call 🙂

The Future of Sex Part One

Oct 17, 2011

In this chat with Vicki Kerrigan on radio ABC Darwin we discuss the future of sex. This is the first of potentially three conversations where we look at the increasing reach of technology way beyond current online match making sites, the social pressures driving the use of technology as well as the use of technology…

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Soft House Prices or Unrealistic Vendors?

Oct 16, 2011

There’s been a bit of discussion in recent months about a softening housing market around Australia but I wonder how much of it is more indicative of unrealistic expectations on behalf of sellers? In futures work we think in terms of Assumptions and Expectations and aim to test our understanding and so I offer this…

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We’ve Been hit by an email Virus and apologise to everyone impacted

Oct 12, 2011

Unfortunately it looks like my main email address has been hijacked and has been used to send out a series of spam emails. I’d like to apologise to anyone who has received some junk email purporting to come from ‘desiredfutures’ with a series of html links asking you to go and have a look. You…

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The Future of Plastic Bottles

Oct 10, 2011

Given the amount of plastic swimming in our oceans and rivers and the volume littering our land, the NT Government is aiming to introduce compulsory returns legislation on soft-drink bottles (as happens in South Australia), something that has apparently raised the ire of bottler, Coca Cola. Although they’ve recently backed away from their initial statement…

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Is Alcohol or Cannabis more Harmful?

Oct 7, 2011

Deciphering the hype from reality with regard to drug use can be a challenge for most of us. Professor David Nutt in the UK has given me permission to post a link to the paper he has co-authored with Ruth Weissenborn that looks at the reality of a comparison of harm caused by two common…

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The Future of Clothing Part Two

Oct 4, 2011

Vicki Kerrigan and I finished off our discussion about the Future of Clothing on ABC Darwin yesterday. We discussed invisibility style cloaks, singlets that monitor your heart rate and stress levels, runners that capture electricity to power your wearable electronics and a few philosophical questions regarding our ability to deal with stress.   The file…

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The coming age of Robotics in In-Home Healthcare

Sep 12, 2011

I’ll be talking with Vicki Kerrigan again this afternoon, this time discussing robotics as in-home carers. I’m due on at about 4.45pm Darwin time which is around 5.15pm on the eastern seaboard. You can listen to the audio stream via the link below   http://www.abc.net.au/darwin/programs/webcam_radio.htm?ref=listenlive  If all things go well, I’ll record the session and…

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Australia 2030 – a view from Siemens

Aug 30, 2011

I recently attended a session with South East Business Networks where the CEO of Siemens Australasia provided some great ideas as to where Australian Manufacturing was headed and could go, and indeed perhaps needed to go. What I found most useful from Allan Goller’s perspective was the encouragement for businesses to just get on with…

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The Future of clothing

Aug 26, 2011

In this very brief chat with Vicki Kerrigan on ABC Darwin, we kick off the discussion of the future of clothing – not the ‘style’ elements but the functional elements like capturing perspiration to convert for water. You can listen to the audio via the   link available here – cue it up about a…

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Futurist Marcus Barber on Scenarios for Water Industry at World Water Week

Aug 19, 2011

Marcus Barber will present the case study of his work with Central Highlands Water and their use of Scenarios for Strategy setting at World Water Week in Stockholm this Thursday. You can follow the twitter feed via #watermanagement, #rightfuture or #wwweek This case study looks at the flaws in a reliance on forecasting as the…

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