Making Futures Work

Stage 0. Preparing for Futures Work

Stage 0 is the initial stage of doing futures or any other kind of strategy work. It involves the data gathering you’ll need to do to prepare for doing futures work. Before beginning any futures project, I’ve found that it’s important to understand the team, client, or organization and the problem space you are going to be exploring. This includes making sure everyone is clear about the principles, stages, and outputs of the process and how it ultimately delivers value. This will allow you to avoid confusion or anxiety down the road as you begin generating a wealth of content and possibilities.

In this stage, we’ll cover the following:

• Chapter 3, “Understanding Your Audience”

  • Use situational awareness methods to understand your audience, team, or organization: the projects, the people, the environment you’ll be futuring in

  • Determine how you might want to design your project to fit that environment

  • Decide how much you will have to prepare your client or team for the process and journey

• Chapter 4, “The Futures Mindset”

  • Begin preparing them for futures work by showing them examples, explaining what you do and explaining the process

  • Make sure they’re ready, aligned, and excited for the work ahead

• Chapter 5, “Framing the Problem”

  • Determine the detailed parameters of the project: focal issue, time horizon, geographic boundaries, demographics, complexities

• Chapter 6, “Framing the Project”

  • Get organized to start the project ...