A story about how we think about ‘the future’

A little story about two ways to approach thinking about futures.

A quick note. I have a particular aversion to the term ‘the future’ because it infers there is a single future, a linear future that is going to emerge no matter what we do today. We forsake our agency, we assume a single pathway to the future and then wonder why nothing changes. This is the easy way to think about futures.

There is always more than one future — and accepting that is the biggest challenge we have in anticipating and preparing for the futures that are emerging today. Accepting multiple futures means hard work though, a whole new way to think about what’s coming and what it means for you and your organisation.

This is a story about why we need to forget about ‘the future’ and all the things we do today that lull us into the false sense of security it provides.