Making Futures Work

Chapter 3. Understanding Your Audience

Futuring is both a mindset and a journey, and as on any journey, it’s essential to have a clear understanding of your destination as well as a plan for how you’ll successfully get there. Let’s use the analogy that you are sailing a boat to an uncharted island. No one has been there before, but you might have some satellite data about it. You know roughly where it is, and you know it is possible to get there on the right kind of vessel. But before you set sail, you have to do a bit of research. What kinds of threats might exist? What can you take advantage of, and what do you need to protect yourself against? It might be a treacherous place but may also be a place of beauty, bustling and full of life. And while you can try to gather as much data about the island as you can through various instruments, there will always be some level of speculation. The future is no different: it’s uncharted, and there are always surprises, and how we handle those surprises will determine our fate—our survival or our demise. Similarly, businesses, designs, projects, and strategies can live or die depending on whether we are prepared for what’s ahead.

But the island isn’t the only thing you have to prepare for. You need to prepare for the journey itself. The trip could take days, and you might be sailing with complete strangers. Do you normally just jump into a boat with strangers and set sail to an uncharted territory? I hope you’d be smarter than that and ...