What's the point of studying futures?

“The purpose of looking at the future is to disturb the present.”- French futurist Gaston Berger

At university we spent some time calculating the future value of money; the formula is FV = PV × (1 + r)^n. - i.e. the future value of money [FV] is equal to the present value [PV] multiplied by the rate of return to the power of the number of years the money stays invested.

Playing around with this formula changed how we saw the spending of money in the present.

Suddenly there was a realisation that buying a surfboard for R1000 wasn't just about spending R1000, but rather forgoing the future value of the R1000 over time.

Because of the magic of compounding (in this particular case), studying the future changed how we saw the present.

Which is exactly what studying futures is meant to do.

One of the significant reasons for doing scenario planning (a popular method for studying various futures), as a part of strategy work, is not to simply go through the interesting exercise of constructing multiple future landscapes out of curiosity, but to shine a bright spotlight on conduct in the present moment in relation to those future scenarios.

Scenarios help organisations create the much-needed urgency for the purposes of transformation. A good set of scenarios has the power to change how organisations see themselves.

Looking at the future disturbs the present. Which is why its useful.