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Break free from your constraints
Traditional strategic planning emphasizes linear progression and probable outcomes, limiting teams’ ability to imagine truly new things. This narrow thinking leads to incrementality rather than breakthrough innovations. Most planning approaches start with current constraints and then project forward, which inevitably creates self-limiting futures that merely extend present conditions.
It’s no wonder why things generally stay the same.
The traditional approach is based on the idea that the future is a logical extension of the present. This forces teams to think within their existing mental models, making it nearly impossible to break free from current assumptions.
- Existing constraints and assumptions automatically limit future possibilities.
- Current problems dominate discussions, stifling creative thinking.
- Teams focus on feasible next steps rather than desired end states.
- Strategic planning becomes an exercise in extrapolating the present rather than imagining new possibilities.
- The richness of collective imagination remains untapped.
Most organizations can’t escape the gravitational pull of their current reality. No matter how much they talk about innovation or transformation, their planning processes keep them tethered to incremental improvements rather than true reinvention.
Therefore...
Use the Future Backward method to create a structured process for teams to envision both utopian and dystopian futures, then work backward to connect these scenarios to the present. This technique deliberately breaks the tyranny of linear, forward-thinking planning by starting with divergent future states and working backward.