The future of futures, is impacting the business now.

Futures capability needs to leap over the happiness-inducing workshops of design thinking and show business impact today.

Don't get me wrong; I love a good design thinking workshop, but the future's challenge is complex and requires a different approach.

I've been working in and around futures for over 20 years, with a wide range of experiences. From pitching the metaverse as a recruitment tool to a British Admiral in 2007. Building installations on the future of death, helping launch Black Mirror or designing prototypes for a travel marketplace built on cryptocurrency. The challenge has always been how do you drive change in an organisation for a time and place that people cant see or feel…. yet. But recently, something (or someone) hit me.

I realised that many futures methods only get you as far as, "That's great, Mike... now what do we do?"

This was a fair question from a supportive exec, after putting in a lot of hard work to create a vision of the future. The "Now What" is actually quite simple in theory. What changes will this inform across our organisation? How will we make those changes, and how will we know if they worked?

I wanted to see if this realisation rang true for others. So, I conducted a quick survey on LinkedIn last month to test this idea. I was fortunate to receive valuable insights from various people working at consultancies and corporations. It seemed like they were facing similar challenges—proving the tangible value of futures work in the organization and having an impact in the right places. Getting buy-in for initiatives that I call "cumulative investment" for the long term.

So simple in theory but complex in execution. Here are a few things I've learned to get beyond the "Now What":

1. Why Are We Here?: It's crucial for any futures project, person, or team to gain buy-in and alignment from a number key influencers in the organization. This helps determine the role futures will play, whether it's a one-time thing or an ongoing effort. Even if it's exploratory, it's important to get buy-in from key decision-makers. Thats the formal, politically correct response. Now in reality, it's all about the people.You have a great opportunity to understand influential people's perspectives and to make them feel apart of the solution. By simply by asking them, "What is their future narrative, and how much control do they feel they have in making it happen?" It is a great way to be empathetic and really understand their concerns, excitement, openness to change, and risk tolerance. I have found it also leads too much richer perspectives on the future of the organisation. (you also tend to be remembered)
2. Drive a Sense of Urgency: This can be tough due to the short-term and reactive nature of modern business. Many executives fear taking their eyes off today's challenges. However, the future is already here; it just hasn't scaled yet. It's not just about cool technology or heavily funded startups. It's also about lagging indicators within organisations or the "slow boiling frog" syndrome, which often goes unnoticed for a long time which is a great base to work from.To drive urgency, I've borrowed from the Speculative Design field to create future provocative narratives. Their aim is to bring the future much closer to home, as many future stories tend to be generic and target entire industries. To really have an impact you need the small nuances to make influential people feel the urgency for the organisation. By understanding their fears, sense of autonomy, and appetite for risk, you can craft a more compelling narrative that touches individuals.Creating a provocative narrative is a creative act with a number of ingredients to have an impact. An alchemy of the risks the organisation has or has not identified. The fears and motivations of the individuals. Being explicit about the lagging indicators. As well as be contrarian about the hype around technology or the latest startup. This can be a potent way to bring futures it closer to home to drive change.
3. Corporate Strategy Is Only the Start: It is crucial to assist the corporate strategy team in shaping their view of the future. However, this approach also hits a "now what" moment. To drive tangible action in a large organisation, you need to persuade departments that execute, as they hold budgets to drive the organisation forward. The tough part is trying to align your insights from future provocations with their short-term needs. As one head of a business unit once said to me, "I understand what you're trying to do, but I have to hit my numbers, and I don't have the capacity for anything that won't help me achieve that." This takes a lot of work in turning alignment into tangible initiatives within current budget cycles and address metrics for today and tomorrow.
4. Build a Practice: Over the years, I've grappled with the idea of being an expert. In futures, there can be experts in different fields, which is helpful. But in futures teams, crucial roles are played by individuals not tied to a specific specialization, as it could skew their perspective. To explain this to an HR department, I've used the metaphor of an investigative journalist. Their job is to hunt for a story, uncover details from various sources, make connections, and communicate it effectively. However, to provide depth and nuance to all futures work and connect with the group you're trying to persuade, you need a lot of experts or "sources." Futures should be a practice rather than just a team or department. By working across innovation, design, and futures, I've found a largely untapped resource of people in organizations who want to drive change. They bring diverse and nuanced perspectives and, when they feel heard and valued, take ownership of the future. Using a future provocative story as a catalyst sparks their motivation and imagination, turning them into advocates in their respective areas of the organization. This is crucial in embedding futures thinking into today and drive change for tomorrow.
5. It's All About Preparation: By creating a practice you develop broader perspectives from experts across the organization, you can start to see the blind spots. We're in a unique convergence of events right now, with questions arising about blind spots not only related to pandemics but also concerning global supply chains, geopolitics, and various global and regional issues. So, what can we do in those blind spots to prepare for the future? I call them the new "building blocks." Cumulative investment and development over time will lay the foundation to prepare the organization for the future. This often starts with developing new capabilities or systems. A trojan horse can often be a new proposition to the organisation that can not be delivered within their current as is system. The challenge is to persuade departments to invest in these building blocks and incorporate them into current business plans.
6. Sow the seeds now: Everyone desires something big, bold, and futuristic, but sometimes you need to start small. I will give a real example. Consider the data available now from the average car. The reality is that there are no regulations around who owns that data the driver or the car owner. Due to no regulation, this data is being sold in aggregate on marketplaces. This means that any corporation or startup with strong computational power and a great algorithm could develop new services using that data. I brought this insight including a few startup examples using that data to an internal specialist team of a company I was working with. Learning about that teams challenges with car data in the everyday. I found a number of challenges they needed fixing today. My team created a simple application to scrape live car data from the web shared by drivers. We developed a small desktop tool to better profile customers. We used an everyday challenge this team had to seed the development of a future capability of working with live dynamic car data. We had sold to the organisation the importance of this key building block to prepare for a future that didnt look bright. In reality in a meeting I was told, "It's not very futuristic, is it?" Often organisations expect big shiny expensive technology answers to their challenges. The reality is you can't just leap to the future; it's about building the foundations today. As Bill Gates once said, "Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years." We wanted to show them how to address their current challenges easily today, not just talk about what could happen tomorrow. By demonstrating how we could build a capability over time that was crucial for the company's survival in the future. We showcased a tangible example we were seeding to address today's challenges as well as be prepared for tomorrow.

With all the complexity of how to address the ‘Now What’ in increasing futures work impact in an organisation. It comes back to those original questions. How do you inform changes across the organisation? How will they make those changes, and measure their impact. To answer these questions in the post 'Now What' era. I developed the 3Ps framework and process to deliver this inside organisations.

Provocation: what is a provocative narrative about the future ? Catalyst for Change

Perspective: what is the organisational perspective on this future ? Collective Mission for Change

Preparation: what is the plan to prepare for this future and monitor progress ? How to Change

Want to try it out? - FREE FUTURES WORKSHOP

We are offering a limited amount of 1.5 hour Free Workshops to give people a taste of how this process could work for them in the coming weeks before Xmas. Please DM me if you are interested.