Planning for the Future!
GUEST POST from Teresa Spangler
“Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.” – Charles Kettering
The line between humans and machines is blurring by the day. The future, as we know it today may be tomorrow’s history book; with our exponential technological advancement in fields like Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics, automation etc., there will come a time when machine intelligence could exceed human capabilities to an extent that would require us to contemplate on how this might affect society for better or worse.
The question of whether AI can take over has been at the forefront among futurists ever since computers began matching human abilities—albeit not entirely replacing them just yet! Although no one knows what lies ahead for humanity, these advancements are certainly going bring changes in every sphere from socioeconomics all the way up to space exploration.
So how best can we do future planning with so many priorities sitting on our day-to-day plates? Here is a simple exercise you and your organization can use to get imaginative about your future and design the best possible outcomes you desire.
In order to formulate the best possible outcomes for your organization, you need to get imaginative and plan. One way of doing this is by looking 10 years into the future! Can you predict what the future will look like in 10 years? Probably not. But, with a little time and creativity, we can get close!
Using this first strategy that may help you started planning a possible future.
Exercise:
Look forward 10 years
Divide a wall, white board or use a conference table into two sections
- Doom– most negative possible outcomes that could happen
- Boom– most positive possible outcomes that could happen
Considerations in your scenarios:
- How will the world be impacted?
- How will humanity be impacted?
- How will your company be impacted?
- How will you personally be impacted?
- How did each of the above contribute to these scenarios?
- + Any other points you feel need to be considered
Using sticky notes
- Write as many worse possible outcomes as the team can imagine
- Write as many of the best possible outcome you can imagine impacting the world and humans positively.
Have each person contributing to craft a mini story of each scenario as if it’s happened already with as much detail as possible. Each person read out their mini story and collectivity design one story scenario from everyone’s input.
Now you have two possible future worlds one worst case and one best case.
Now for the planning:
Take the best case and reimagine your vision and mission as a company. What products, technologies, services, solutions will you have (no barriers! Imagine anything is possible)?
What roles will you have, what skills will everyone have, what does the organization look like, how have your customers and their needs changed?
This is not a one-hour or one-day exercise. The idea of designing the future is ongoing.
In the future, humans will coexist with machines.
The question is: how?
What do you think about this and what are your thoughts on adapting to it now?
How does company’s products change in relation to human-machine relationships or interactions reflected by technology usage habits of today’s youth who grew up using smartphones from an early age they can type faster than 5 WPM typing speed?
Consider the possibilities!
Let us help you start your journey into the future. We’d love to help!
Request our free two-hour facilitated workshop and see what you come up with!
Image credit: Pixabay
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