One of the most persistent misunderstandings about futures and foresight is that it’s about prediction.
When facilitating futures and foresight workshops, I still hear versions of this regularly: “So what do you think will happen?” or “Which future do you think is most likely?” It’s an understandable question because we’re conditioned to want certainty.
The thing is that futures work isn’t really about being right about what will happen. It’s about expanding what we’re able to consider. When futures work slips into prediction, a few things tend to happen: attention narrows. People start looking for the “correct” answer. Alternative possibilities quietly drop away. And uncertainty, which is actually the raw material of futures work, gets treated as something to eliminate.
What gets lost is the real value: the chance to explore assumptions, surface blind spots, and notice how different futures would change what matters, who benefits, and what becomes possible.
In practice, the most useful futures conversations I’ve been part of weren’t the ones where people agreed on a likely outcome. They were the ones where people realised they’d been asking the wrong questions, or where they saw how differently the future could unfold depending on choices made today.
Letting go of prediction can feel uncomfortable. It means giving up the promise of control. But it also creates space: for imagination, for responsibility, and for more honest conversations about uncertainty.
I’m still struck by how often futures work becomes more powerful when we stop asking, “What will happen?” and start asking, “What might happen, for whom, and why might this matter?”