futurecast to untie the most stubborn knots

I worked for a long time within bureaucratic structures that people were convinced hemmed them in. The animating question other teams tried to answer was usually something like, “How do we get a hundred kids to grow two grade levels of reading in one year?” Pretty much nobody answered that question well. They chose old disproven answers or gave up.

When I prompted the team like this we had a lot more success: “It's the end of the year. We are popping champagne bottles because all of our kids grew two grade levels in reading. Journalists and experts and authors are here to ask us ‘How on earth did you do this?’ What do we say?” 

Futurecasting like this eliminated impossibility as an escape hatch from pragmatic, creative thinking. Often the smartest teams limit themselves with the weight of their knowledge. Instead of investing energy in carving the likeliest path to success, they get stymied by their awareness of all the obstacles. 

Futurecasting can have a miraculous effect for organizations when it becomes standard practice. I coach leaders to make this part of the culture, so teams do it for small and large scale goals. Plan backwards from the success that seems elusive or improbable, rather than planning forwards from the constrained and historically-weighted present.

-ben