Photo, above: Steampunk Jewelry made by CatherinetteRings - image by Catherinette Rings Steampunk, CC-licensed
What futurists actually do:
“Even though we can’t predict exactly what will happen, we can make reasonable assumptions about what potential futures might look like, and in doing so we can begin to make choices today that can help us bring about the changes we hope to realize in the world.”
Managers of strategy and planning also do this.
Another thing we do is try to ask the right questions, ones that will help the business to be successful.
These are not the right questions:
Who is our customer?
What is our market?
What is our goal?
What problem does our product solve for the customer?
Those are hindsight questions: you need to know their answers in order to keep your business running, but they will not help you understand your particular situation and what needs to change.
Before you can answer formulaic questions like the ones above, you need to ask and answer some insight questions:
“…Real questions, useful questions, questions with promising attacks, are always motivated by the specific situation at hand. They are often about situational anomalies and unusual patterns in data that you cannot explain based on your current mental model of the situation… Real questions frame things in a way that creates a restless tension, by highlighting the potentially important stuff that you don’t know. You cannot frame a painting without knowing its dimensions. You cannot frame a problem without knowing something about it. Frames must contain situational information.”
Instead of asking “How can I be happy?” try examining the factors that contribute to the state (or situation) of happiness. By answering the question “Are people with strong friendships happier than loners?” you identify a possible course of action.
