What does a futurist do?
What value do futurists offer?
How the future will be, is dependent on the decisions (the conscious, unconscious, controllable and uncontrollable ones) that are made today.
If the decision is made to change nothing, over time that will result in a particular future playing out.
If the decision is to rather do something quite different from the norm, it is possible to estimate and picture what the consequence will be of that action, over a period of time.
The job of a futurist is to serve as a bridge between the decisions of today and the possible futures these choices may create. The job involves helping individuals and teams to think deeply, clearly and critically about these abstract concepts so that the quality of decision-making and acting in the face of uncertainty is improved.
Futurists don't have the answers themselves, but rather are equipped with a specialist toolkit of frameworks to assist with the interrogation of underlying thinking patterns and assumptions with the aim of easing the mental inertia that often thrives within complex systems.
When an organisation is faced with uncertainty, or is unsure as to how to overcome the barriers that are preventing progress, futurists have proven to be useful under these conditions.