Plenty of things can happen in the future. There are many variables that twist and turn, players trying to influence, and unknowns that have yet to reveal themselves. The future is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Because of this there is no single foreseeable future state with a straight line leading directly to it. The future holds many paths and destinations. The paths meander and fork, converge, circle back, and dead end at branching points where events unfold, innovations emerge, new laws and policies are enacted, decisions are made, customers and competitors react, and so forth. Depending on what happens at a branching point, the future is routed along a course towards or away from a given destination. If we draw a border around all this it would be cone shaped with the apex at the present and expanding at it moves forward through time due to increasing variables and uncertainty.
Through the Future Discovery Framework™, we can identify the potential paths, branching points and destinations, but won’t be able to specify the exact flow. Again, there are just too many unknowns. We can; however, bound the possibilities. We can evaluate the probabilities and eliminate some things that then fall outside the cone. Our goal is to narrow the cone as much as possible and get it to the point we can cover the possibilities with strategy. We won’t have all the answers, but can get close enough the properly plan and position.
Ideally, we can construct a cone as shown below. Using the right combination of probability and consequence, we can then focus our attention on the most important issues and devise strategies for the road ahead.
