Backcasting

• Pre-session framing document and a brief call to confirm the future we're working from.
• Backcasting map from chosen future to present.
• Decision points with indicative timelines.
• Honest identification of which steps are underdetermined and need further work before they can be planned.

Before the session, we align on the scenario together, usually on a short call: a specific, concrete description of how things work, what exists, and what has changed. This preparation is the most important part of the session: a vague future cannot be backcast from, and a session that spends its first hour trying to agree on what the future looks like is a session that runs out of time before doing the actual work.

A useful scenario statement is one where everyone in the room would agree, without discussion, what it means. "We want to be more inclusive" means something different to everyone, but "by 2030, promotion rates are within 5 percentage points across gender and ethnicity at every level" means the same thing to everyone.

A scenario can be ambitious, highly speculative, or even unrealistic – as long as everyone in the room is in agreement about what it means we can work with it.

In the session, the group maps backwards from that agreed future: what decisions about your structure, your partnerships, your processes has to be made by a specific point for this future to remain reachable? What has to be in place before that decision can be made? Which choices that look optional now are actually foreclosing options?

The output is a map of the decision landscape — not a plan, but the evidence base for making one.