Articles

Do you love or hate surprises? Is your love language an unexpected gift or do you start distributing your prioritized Amazon wish list well in advance of your birthday?   If you enjoy being surprised, you probably embrace uncertainty and are open to considering different possibilities for the future. But if surprises make you cringe, then the future can seem unsettling. We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world that will be full of surprises IF we don’t…

In a world that is enamored with short-term actions, incremental innovation, and quantifying everything, it’s important to understand that “forecasting” and “foresight” are not the same thing. They may have the future in common, but that does not make them equals. Forecasting uses quantitative data and trends in an attempt to fill in gaps and extrapolate outcomes. However, data by its very nature is a snapshot of the past (just as trends are the present – you know about them…

If you’re a Wicked Opportunities Podcast listener or a TFS alumni then you probably know that our founder’s favorite holiday is Halloween. Sorry, All-Hallows Eve as Frank would say! This year we celebrate spooky season by walking down the wickedest memory lane. Our podcast hosts looked under society’s bed and found a lot of scary critters- zombies, mad scientists, and aliens! They didn’t destroy these monsters, but they did reframe them into inspiring visions across multiple futures. Get cozy in…

It was here in Bell Valley that team members from The Futures School gathered in the Fall of 2022 with fourteen brilliant and kind individuals for a truly unique experience based on rethinking, redefining and reframing foresight for broad-based prosperity, emerging consciousness and cocreation of transformational realities. We called this retreat Transformations of Natural Foresight®.

What are the rules and characteristics of this new era, The Age of Opportunity?

We want to highlight an organization that is focused on equipping educators and administrative leaders with the mindset and resources to empower their students to own and influence the future.

A higher education administrator was at a career crossroads. As she approached the standard retirement age, traditional career mapping suggested a linear path forward.

Strategic Foresight is the key to reframing our outdated, Industrial Age processes that are no longer effective in our Postnormal environment. One such antiquated process is Career Development.

In this volatile environment, people are searching for new ways to explore their options and plan their careers. However, employees must change the way they approach the situation if they are going to successfully move to new opportunities and thrive amidst our changing world. To chart a future-ready career path, there are three skills individuals can adopt: sense, mesh, transform.

Leaders and companies often tell me how much they love design thinking. It provides them a tangible way to “think outside of the box” and create new pathways toward innovative action. However, once they integrate it into their organizational strategy and processes, they also tell me that they feel like a key element is still missing.