Are you thinking about the year to come? Do you make New Year’s resolutions, or use January 1st as a turning point for your life at work or home?
Here’s a quick & easy planning tool I sometimes use in workshops. It’s adapted from the Oxford Scenario Planning Approach, where it’s called “Arrows of Time”.
You just need a piece of paper – even a napkin will do! – and something to write on it with.
First, put the paper in landscape orientation, with the long sides at the top and bottom, and draw an arrow from the bottom left corner, pointing right. This represents the past.
Now, around this arrow, answer these questions:
- What will we still be dealing with in 2019?
- What issues from the past can’t we get away from?
- What isn’t finished yet from the year just gone?
When this is done, draw another arrow from the top right corner, pointing left. This represents the future.
Now, around this arrow, answer these questions:
- What do we know is coming in 2019?
- What do we fear about the coming year? What do we hope for?
- What do we expect to happen?
- What have we failed to prepare for in 2019?
- What can’t we avoid about the year to come?
Between these two arrows lies your room to manoeuvre. In the space between them, draw a box, representing your capacity to choose the future you wish for.
In the box, answer these questions:
- What do you want to happen? What can you plausibly achieve next year?
- What actions should you take to meet these goals?
- What can you do to prepare against unpleasant surprises, or outcomes you wish to avoid?
- What can you do to be ready for happy accidents and unexpected opportunities next year?
This is just a quick, simple activity, but it helps you to plan in a way that allows for the turbulence and uncertainty of any future – looking not just towards your objectives but the context in which you will need to make them happen.
As Oxford University’s Rafael Ramirez put it in our recent discussion on scenario planning, such “back-of-the-napkin” activities can be valuable as a starting point, or in constrained financial circumstances:
The metaphor I use is buying a television. If you don’t have a lot of time, or your organisation has been cut back, you may have to do only a good-enough piece of work: like buying a cheap black-and-white television to see who has won the World Series.
If you have enough time or funds, you can buy yourself a big colour television which shows more detail about what is happening. […] To get more detail, better arguments, better references: a better, more detailed colour picture on your television. But getting started costs very little indeed.
An organisation’s intent should be clear, compelling, and easy to articulate succinctly. So should your plans for 2019.
Why not grab a piece of paper today and sketch out where you’d like to head in the year to come?
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 
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