Periodic Fable

Predicting the future and tailoring your business strategy to suit can be difficult at the best of times, but did you know that effective futures scanning can help companies through a downturn such as we are experiencing today?

Particularly in difficult times it’s vitally important to think creatively about the long-term future, to consider what are the long-term consequences of technology change for one’s own business sector. From foresight comes insight which leads to action that takes the business through and keeps it successful.

One way is to create narratives or stories about how the future might look, to explore possible futures. It can seem a strange exercise for a business leader – creating fiction – but it enables one to think about practical scenarios and become aware of a variety of aspects of the business that are affected. It also enables leaders to view the future very intensively from the point of view of customers, clients, partners and other important stakeholders.

Looking at the future leads us to ask what does this mean for me today? What strategies do I need to develop, and what do I need to do now? It enables us to make better decisions in the present.

Creating stories, including narratives and stakeholder biographies, is a powerful tool that Reach Further uses to plan social media and online marketing campaigns, community engagement plans and elearning strategies for our clients. It helps that both key partners Helen Whitehead and Liz Cable have won awards for their creative writing!

Originally published at reachfurther.com