A New Possibility – An Exciting Future Shaping Our Present

As Well as Forecasting From the Past – Backcast From the Future 

Backcasting starts from the future. A future, though not yet realized, lives nonetheless in imagination, in aspiration, in vision. It lives with all the reality and concreteness of an architect's blueprints and models of a future cityscape. Time has to pass, work has to be done, this backcast future is here, in the now, shaping actions and outcomes.

A backcast future, in the moments of creation, is one in which leaders scan the accomplishments of their enterprise in the future with satisfaction, with a sense of, "WOW! We did it, we pulled off an amazing transformation of our business and our industry. And, we have a sustainable, almost unstoppable, momentum. We have created an organization of excited, energetic and aligned people and a host of supportive collaborators". 

The process of backcasting in a process of remembering – remembering what happened and when it happened? What were the key accomplishments, milestone by milestone? Who were the heroes, the people who made audacious promises and produced breakthrough results? What were the setbacks and how did we deal with them? And so on into ever more granular detail till the whole pathway that led to the future is remembered.

As in any remembering of the past there will be different recollections, people will remember things differently. However, there is no doubt though – we did get to here, from there – about that there is no disagreement.

That was the journey of remembering is one in which I guide senior leaders through so they end up with a clearly articulated, and aligned on future for the enterprise and the pathway that got them there.

So How Does Forecasting and Backcasting Work Together?

Forecasting is our best shot at predicting what the future will look like, informed by the past – the enterprise's past, the industry's past, the economy's past, .... 

Forecasting is an essential tool. It is useful to know where we are and where we are headed if we stay on our current trajectory. 

Backcasting however, starts with the future, with realized vision, aspiration and intention as the context. A future arrived at unconstrained by circumstances, or limited feasibility [feasability is a past-based viewpoint anyway]. A future the leaders really, really, really want – not a pipe-dream. This is a future that was arrived at by creativity, out-of-the-box thinking and action, and by the thoughtful work of dedicated and committed people.

Mapping the forecast future onto the backcast future clearly shows the scale of the breakthroughs that were accomplished in making the backcast future real.

Using forecasting to support backcasting:

• Gives a way to think about present day reality – if we don't change course this is where we are headed – this is what we can expect qualitatively and quantitatively
• Shows clearly the scale of the breakthroughs that were accomplished on the way to realizing the future leaders really wanted – we could not have gotten here with more or better of our practices of a few years ago
• Shows, milestone by milestone, the problems that were solved, the projects that were taken on, the systems that got changed, the processes that got put in place, the accomplishments that were achieved...
• Shows where and how behaviors and practices got altered, where new accountabilities were established, where new ways of relating, collaborating and working showed up, who and where the heroes were...
• Shows too where breakdowns happened – stuff happened, it wasn't all plain sailing – and it shows where new approaches and solutions were invented turning breakdowns into breakthroughs...

Standing in the present: backcasting provides the context for inventing, generating and discovering – forecasting shows us the scale of breakthroughs that are needed and the timing in which they need to happened. The gap between the forecast and the backcast is the context in which leaders, visionary leaders, lead their organizations – these are leaders who are shaped by a future they really, really, really want, not circumscribed or constrained by predictions from the past.

Backcasting and forecasting – the two together are THE essential drivers of innovation, and THE context for a sustainable transformation of the enterprise – its culture, its strategies and its architecture, and its role in the larger network of relationships that make it a viable business.