In this segment of the Long‑Term Strategy Conference, strategic foresight practitioner Maggie Greyson explains a practical framework for thinking about the future. She begins by acknowledging the mental complexity of juggling present concerns with future possibilities, then outlines a step‑by‑step mental model: (1) define "today" as a reference point, (2) imagine a preferred constellation of futures, (3) use curated scenario sets to road‑test ideas and de‑risk decisions, and (4) incorporate participants' lived and professional experiences as valuable data. Greyson emphasizes that facilitators should not prescribe a single future but instead invite participants to envision what they hope for, what they fear, and what unexpected outcomes might look like, postponing likelihood assessments to later stages. The approach aims to generate broader knowledge beyond immediate customer insights and to empower stakeholders to co‑create strategic visions.
Chapters
so they can now tackle some of this game-changing work?
Yeah, thanks for asking that question. I'm sure everybody's processes are different. What I like to do, because I know that thinking about the future, whether it's short-term or long-term future, there's— it's hard because you've got all these things going on in your mind, in your life, in your view at the same time. So to acknowledge that, and then through there, as a strategic foresight practitioner, I'll show them what thinking about the future in a strategic way looks like and what the framework is for this work. So I'll show them, this is a mental model of where we are today, and we know this much information about today. We can define today in however we want, meaning Wednesday, it could be 2024, it could be, you know, the 2000s, whatever today is. And that we're going to imagine a preferred future or a constellation of futures that we like. And through that, in between today and there, we're gonna go through a number of, um, curated scenarios in order to road test the ideas that we have. So to de-risk It's not let's get this right or wrong on our first shot. It's let's generate some bigger knowledge, the outside-the-door knowledge, the outside of the immediate customer base knowledge. There's frameworks for that. Then there's also acknowledging their own lived experience. And their professional experience, what they wake up thinking about, what they studied in university, these are all valid and important data points as well. And that bringing them into the space and saying, all right, so if, if these particular cluster of major trends or drivers of change was important, it might look like this. And I don't, I don't tell people what the future is going to look like. I let them come with what they imagine it's going to look like and what they hope it looks like. And also a little bit of agitation. So what don't you want it to look like? 'Or what if things went differently?' Let's just imagine what we don't expect it to be, and we won't talk about the likelihood right now. We'll, we'll go to that later.
