The purpose of futures work is to ‘disturb the present’ and to help organisations understand and manage uncertainties and ambiguities. Futures thinking operates on an assumption that there is not one future but multiple futures, dependent partly on how we choose to respond to or create change. We can influence the future through our actions and our choices, even if many dimensions of the future are outside of our direct control.
Creating and working towards a vision of a preferred future is fundamental to the mission and actions of many civil society associations. While visions of a preferred future are a critical motivating force for people working within civil society associations, there are many factors that influence the outcomes of these associations that are outside of their direct control. Futures thinking enables organisations that are tackling complex problems to reflect on how they can effectively develop their strategies, their actions and establish appropriate alliances to shape the future.
- The future is uncertain. There is no single, certain forecast for ourselves, our organisations, communities, nations or for the planet as a whole. While we would like to eliminate this uncertainty, we must work to live with it effectively and creatively. Understanding trends and scenarios gives a sense of the patterns of opportunities and threats, and enhances our potential effectiveness and creativity.
- While the future is uncertain and much of it beyond our control, we can control many aspects of it. We choose our future: we create it by what we do or fail to do. Visions and strategies linked to a clear sense of trends and scenarios make us better able to shape the future we would prefer.
There are a number of futures methodologies, including forecasting and scenario thinking. It is important to emphasise that futures methodologies are tools to aid thinking, dialogue and action, not tools to predict the future. The effectiveness of futures methodologies will depend on whether it is an appropriate tool for the problem or challenge in question (for example, if the problem and the solution are clear, futures methodologies may not be appropriate) and whether the tool has been appropriately designed and adapted to address the problem or issue in question.
For the purpose of the Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in the UK and Ireland, we chose to apply scenario thinking and developed a methodology which was been specifically tailored to achieve the goals of the Inquiry. We chose scenario thinking as: it stimulates dialogue and strategic conversations between diverse stakeholders with different world-views and perspectives; the number of factors to be considered in relation to the future of civil society is high, as is the degree of uncertainty; and it enables us to challenge our assumptions about the future. The paper What if? The art of scenario thinking for non-profits states that ‘scenario thinking is a tool for motivating people to challenge the status quo, or get better at doing so by asking “What if?” Asking “What if?” in a disciplined way allows you to rehearse the possibilities of tomorrow, and then take actions today empowered by those provocations and insights’.
We have consciously chosen not to use forecasting as a methodology, as it assumes that the future will be a continuation of the past, which neglects the oft-quoted statement that ‘a trend is a trend is a trend until it bends.’ As noted by Ged Davis, it is the ‘bends’ that are generally of most interest to us as it is the bends that carry most risk or offer the greatest opportunities.