In a world beset by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, can futures thinking help you to achieve a better future? And how can futures methods and tools such as the futures cone help?

Taking a step back, it’s important to understand that every future is a potential future – including those we have not even imagined yet today. But when you apply the future lens to your own life, you can move away from fear of the unknown towards a futures zone of endless possibilities. This is by envisioning and focussing on positive images of the future that inspire and excite, fostering hope for oneself, others and the world around us.

Through futures thinking, we can:

• Cultivate curiosity about the unknown or uncertain, as well as nurture the feelings that these positive images of the future invoke.
• Feel inspired to ask “what if?” questions, even if we are not able to answer or solve everything.
• Feel more confident in moving out of our comfort zones, accepting that we cannot know it all.

Using a futures cone to plan for the future

Actively envisioning the future is not necessarily easy. But this is where a structured and systematic process such as the futures cone steps in, helping to guide our thinking and organise “classes” of futures.

So first, what is a futures cone?

The futures cone – sometimes called the cone of possibility or plausibility – is a visual diagram that portrays alternative futures beyond the present point in time. As a futures tool, this diagram is designed to structure thinking about different possible futures and help to plan for them.

Futurists often speak of three main classes of futures: possible, probable, and preferable. But as depicted in the diagram below, since the early 1970s this three-part taxonomy has been expanded to include at least six or even seven major types of alternative futures:

As we move further into the future, the cone and its range expands, highlighting that more possibilities exist five to ten years from now than what exist one year from today. In other words, the further we look towards the future, the more variables are at play.

In fact, the cone metaphor could just as easily be seen as a spotlight: as the lights shines away from the car or the person holding the spotlight, the edges become less prominent and fuzzy. Objects further away from the spotlight are not as clear as those nearer to the spotlight.

Those of you that have been on a safari or game drive at night will know that spotting animals within the range of the spotlight is much easier. And when you pan that spotlight to the right, you could miss one of the “Big Five” to the left of you. This does not mean that an elephant or lion is not there; it is just not visible within the cone of the spotlight. Likewise, the diagram encourages us to consider all potential futures – even those we consider extreme outliers.

Unpacking the classes of futures

As the diagram emphasises, the futures cone is intended to guide us in thinking about all potential futures, which include everything beyond the present moment. This is from the assumption that futures are undetermined and “open” rather than “fixed”. From there, we then categorise various futures into six potential classes:

1. Preposterous: These are the futures we judge to be ‘ridiculous’, ‘impossible’, or that will ‘never’ happen. This is a fantastic way to stretch your thinking – for some people, exceedingly difficult movement in prospection thinking.

2. Possible: These are the futures that we think ‘might’ happen based on some future knowledge we do not currently possess, but that we might possess someday.

3. Plausible: Those futures we think ‘could’ happen based on our current understanding of how the world works. In this case we look at physical laws and social processes.

4. Probable: The futures we think are ‘likely’ to happen. This is generally based on current trends, often quantitative. The challenge with this is that contexts rapidly change, rendering these futures useless. The way to do this well is to continually adjust, and, even then, it is difficult to account for all the variables and unknown unknowns.

5. Preferable: These are the futures we think ‘should’ or ‘ought’ to happen. Here, normative value judgements are applied – the example of global climate change scenarios comes to mind. But preferable futures must be at least imaginable (hence them being inside the cone). The trick is to remain open and not remain fixed on one’s own confirmation bias. This is more difficult to facilitate in larger groups, as each participant will bring their own perspective and value judgements.

Once the preferred future has been identified, ‘backcasting’ – another futures method – is often applied. This is where you work back from the preferred future to identify what needs to happen in the present in order to make the preferred future more likely to happen.

6. Projected: This is the business as usual or baseline future. Here we refer to a singular default. In this case, the continuation of the past through the present will lead to a specific future. However, the projected future (what ‘will’ happen) depends a lot on who you ask. Futurists rarely use this category for obvious reasons.

Overall, the cone should not be viewed as rigid in its application. The different futures categories are not inflexible but should be interpreted as classes of futures.