The 5 Core Questions for Your Future –The 5 Futures Glasses

Every time you make and implement decision, you are shaping your future. You got only this one life. The future is the space for your desires, ambitions and dreams. Your future begins in your head and continues in your conversations, decisions, and actions. Unfortunately, we are oftentimes overwhelmed by the the complexity of the future.

Wouldn't it be great if it was easier to imagine and literally manage your future? What happens when people think about and discuss their future? Soon there is sheer chaos. Not only because the perceptions and the opinions differ so much. Another reason is even more important: We don't have a clear language for the future. There is a Babylonian confusion in the thinking and in the language for the future. When the language is not clear, so are the thoughts. When the thoughts are unclear, so are the discussions. When the discussions are chaotic, assessments and decisions are bad and risky.

How can we do better? It wouldn't make much sense to develop a complicated set of definitions that people need to learn the hard way. No one feels like that, it would not work. There is an easier way. Over more than twenty years we have been listening when people talk about the future. We have done that with hundreds of teams and thousands of individuals and we discovered exactly five categories of futures. Those are the five basic motives and desires about the future. People want to be oriented, safe and secure, inspired, have a vision and a purpose and be focused on what is to be done. This is why people are so curious about and fascinated by the future. We call those five categories the five futures glasses. The good news is that you don't need to learn the futures glasses. They are already in your head. You are using them on a daily basis, only you are not aware.

By using the five futures glasses ....

• you can realistically and productively manage your thoughts about the future and your future in your head and in the heads of your team members.
• This means you are able to think and talk about the future much more precisely
• you can apply methods and tools for foresight and strategy way more meaningfully
• and in the end, you can better anticipate, shape and create your future