In a blog post last year, Andy Hines defined “futurizers” as “those who introduce the meme of foresight or thinking about the future into their organization”. These farsighted staff members ask questions and do what they can to shift conversations and thinking from short to long term.
We need more of these futurizers. Lots more. Therefore today is launch day for the new website Futurizers.
WHY?
“Whilst large organisations need foresight, they are also notorious in their bias for short term thinking, sometimes rejecting or even suppressing foresight.” - Tom Graves
Most of our organizational systems and processes are not built to integrate the long-term thinking needed in today’s rapidly changing, turbulent and highly interconnected world. Large organizations need to be changed from within and by introducing the meme of foresight and futures thinking in every organization, this transformation will begin.
WHAT?
Futurizers is a new guerrilla network of undercover people, which injects the future in their organizations. It is a community of corporate radicals who are fed up with the short-term thinking and shallow discourse in business. Based on similar guerrilla tactics used by the radical initiatives trying to reboot our corporate and organizational culture and hack management we fight the war against short term thinking in organizations.
HOW?
We provide tools and run online workshops for our global network of corporate guerrilla futurizers. Our web shop features the following weapons:
Thought-provoking and Practical Coffee Mug. For the lunch room. Comes with two quotes:
a) ”The future is not a destination. It’s the end result of the actions that we take when we’ve had this cup of coffee”
b) “This present coffee break used to be the unimaginable future”
Wild Cards. Buy our deck of wild cards and pull them out in meetings, which are stuck. Classic cards like “Zombie invasion!” “Icelandic Volcano Erupts!” and “Our CEO turns out to be a robot!” are sure to change the thinking in any dull planning meeting.
Delphi Oracle: Small gadget to place on your desk to inspire you at hard and organizationally shallow times. Preprogrammed with 299 inspiring futures quotes.
CLA Water Cooler Cover. This adhesive film with an illustration of Inayatullah’s Causal Layered Analysis “ice berg” can be wrapped around standard water coolers and will unquestionably deepen any water cooler moment.
Spiral Dynamics Color Pen. Beautifully designed ball pen with rotating multicolor head. Can be spread around the office to remind your coworkers of the unfolding narrative of human evolution.
The Futures Megaphone. This awesome tool is something you keep hidden somewhere in your cubicle. Will amplify your voice to 110 decibels and comes with 23 pre-recorded phrases. For example Winston Churchill’s loud and clear British voice in ”He who is forewarned is also forearmed”, which will drown out even the most short-term office banter.
JOIN US
Join the revolution! Become a futurizer today! Sign up here!
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A start-up is an image of the future.
This post originally appeared on the APF Emerging Fellows blog, and is the second of two in a series about communicating foresight.
References / Inspiration
Andy Hines – Hinesight: The Futurizers
Tom Graves - Stealth Foresight for Innovation: Creating Support for Creative Change in Large Organisations in Australia, Journal of Futures Studies.
Sohail Inayatullah - Causal Layered Analysis
Joseph Voros – Version of The Futures Cone.
Polly LaBarre - How to Hack Management: A Practical Guide to High-Impact Disruption and Storytelling
Stewart Brand
Edward Cornish
Stuart Candy – Guerrilla Futures
Winston Churchill
