Vision of an ideal future canvas
Define your ideal future that builds on your strengths to overcome the challenges of the future
Scenarios can help define visions for alternative futures and are most helpful when they define futures that are exteme. This helps draw out potential issues. However, these extreme future are often not useful for defining the future that we want - our preferred future.
This preferred future should be the result of our actions that we're taking today. It should be built upon our strengths and enhanced by the insights we've gathered from our scenarios. It should also be inspiring and help create the culture we want in our organisation that will help bring this future to life.
Consider if you want to widen the participant group. This tool can be used by a wider audience than the core scenario team. This workshop is also largely done individually, so consider have adequate space and equipment for people to write on their own.
Gather participants and faciliate discussions to gather the strengths and insights, and which of those are to be carried into the Preferred Future.
Participants will then write a letter to themselves as a person living in their preferred future. The contents of the letter can be determined by each participant. They may even wish to record a video. The letter should make the future real and explain how it happened. It's really up to the participants.
Share these letters among the participants. Ensure there is enough time to review. If you have a lot of participants, consider splitting the workshop, or even having some aspects done asynchronously.
Review the letters in small groups. There will be some similarities between each future. Analyse these similarities to identify the "cornerstones" that have enabled these futures to emerge. Gather, categories and link the cornerstones from all groups into a single list.
Ask the group to then analyse the cornerstones for how they link together and contribute to achieving your organisation's BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal).
Finally, gather from the participants a single headline that can describe what life is like when the preferred future and BHAG has been achieved.
Gather workshop participants and split into smaller groups if necessary. Ask each group to brainstorm the top 5 strengths from the past and present. Also ask them to provide the top 5 insights they have gained from the insights generated by the scenarios.
Ask the participants then to list the top 5 characteristics of their preferred future.
Gather these from each group and consolidate.
Ask participants to then write a fictional letter from the future. This letter should be addressed to them, from someone who live in their preferred future. The contents and style of the letters can be left to the participants to determine individually. The letter should explain how the future came about and the major milestones that happened.
Give participants enough time to be creative.
Ask participants to share their stories. If you have enough time, share all stories across the entire group.
Analyse the stories and identify the key milestones, events or things that are common across many of the stories. Begin to categorise these and provide linkages between them where possible. Put these into the Preferred Future Cornerstones.
As a group, analyse the cornerstones and identify the most impactful or important ones which directly affect the achievement of your BHAG. These cornerstones should show some degree of causal linkage between the state of things now and the preferred future and BHAG goal achievement.
As a group, write a headline from the future. This headline should be something that would be true in the preferred future, or captures the achievements of the BHAG. It should be inspiring!
The Scenario Analysis Canvas was inspired by the following approaches/books:
