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I recently had the pleasure of joining Matt Ballantine and Julia Bellis on the WB-40 podcast to explore some of the most pressing questions facing organizations today: How do we make sense of an uncertain future? What role do our shared narratives play in shaping the paths ahead? And how can we proactively design strategies to thrive in complexity?
The conversation, sparked by a recent meeting with Matt at the Speakery Summit (it’s all Marcus’s fault), touched on a range of interconnected themes—from the subjective nature of uncertainty to the power of collective future visions. Here are the key insights from our conversation.
The Role of Future Narratives
We often treat future predictions as objective insights, when they’re actually stories we tell ourselves to deal with uncertainty. Take the current AI discourse: Much of what we discuss isn’t about current technological capabilities, but about future expectations heavily influenced by science fiction and tech industry narratives.
“The way a society deals with uncertainty is by telling each other, look, we don’t know what the future will bring. Let’s just agree on one. Let’s just agree on this future. And then everybody will behave according to, oh, this will be the future. And then the probability of it actually becoming the future is quite high.”
This matters because these stories shape real decisions. When Mark Zuckerberg began promoting his metaverse vision, he wasn’t just describing a technology roadmap – he was trying to manifest a specific future through constant storytelling and demonstrations. The more people believe in a particular future, the more likely it becomes through collective action.
From Abstract to Concrete
One challenge I often encounter in my work is the tendency to keep future scenarios vague and abstract. I shared an example from a recent project with a city government: Instead of just talking about “climate transformation,” we asked specific questions about how daily life would change. What would the streets look like? How would people’s routines differ?
This level of detail matters because it makes future possibilities tangible and reveals hidden assumptions. Often, the most telling insights come from asking “What would be annoying about this future?” – because those practical frictions make scenarios feel real and actionable.
Critical Futures Thinking
The discussion highlighted why we need more critical examination of future narratives.
“I’m always fascinated when I do workshops with clients. You don’t know how much you’re telling me about your organization – what’s working, what’s not working – by just talking about the future.”
Rather than just developing new scenarios, organizations benefit from first understanding:
- What future assumptions are already guiding their decisions?
- Where did these assumptions come from?
- Whose interests do these futures serve?
- What alternatives aren’t we seeing?
This approach helps organizations move from being passive recipients of others’ future visions to active shapers of their own path forward.
The full episode dives deeper into these topics and includes discussion of the role of science fiction, technology narratives, and practical approaches to future thinking. You can listen to it here.