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Bill Phillips: Management Consultant, The Phillips Consulting Company, Rochdale, UK
What would it be like if you could take a leap into the future, stop, and look around, noticing that what you see, hear and feel tells you this is real? Naturally, you would be able to remember the leap, and all that had occurred in between to make your future happen.
In addition, how would it be if the future you leapt into were one that you would describe as ideal or very successful? And if, as you remember the major steps and events which took you there, you were to map them out on a progress chart, this chart might serve, when you had finished, as something like a route map to an ideal outcome. This way of thinking, which I first formulated in 1989, is now called "future-mapping".
This paper will describe the future-mapping process in terms of what it is, how it works, its benefits over other processes, its value in teams - an example, conclusions: its operating assumptions, and brief case examples showing its versatility.
So what is future-mapping?
Future mapping is a powerful process for creating a compelling vision, deciding how to achieve it and generating a motivation to act. Because it engages the normal mechanisms of mind by which we all get to know what we want, it can work for everyone, is sensitive to organizational culture and style and helps people to notice immediate opportunities to take action.
It can range from being highly creative and generative, to being detailed, tightly structured and specific. Future-mapping will work for short-, medium- and long-term thinking and planning. Short term can be as short as a couple of hours, and long term can mean many years. Applications can range from long-term corporate and business planning, to agreeing the outcome of a meeting as it begins. It helps creative thinking and the sharing of ideas, and can build a strong sense of common purpose among those who use it together in teams or work groups, etc.
An example from most people's experience will illustrate the process. In recalling an event or a time in your life when you experienced success, you can probably recall the moment when you realized you had...