Category: Mapping Futures

Causal Layer Analysis is a foresight tool developed by Sohail Inayatullah to break down complex challenges into four layers:

• Surface Level: Immediate concerns and visible issues.
• Systemic Level: The broader systems and structures influencing those issues.
• Worldview Level: The beliefs and perspectives shaping those systems.
• Myth/Metaphor Level: The deeper narratives and stories underlying the worldview.

This exercise helps you examine the deeper structures influencing an issue by exploring multiple layers of meaning. By analyzing surface-level symptoms, underlying causes, worldviews, and core myths, you can develop a more comprehensive understanding of complex challenges and potential solutions.

Balancing Aspirations, Reality and Challenges

This exercise helps you to analyze the forces shaping your career trajectory by identifying the Pulls from the Future, Pushes of the Present, and Weight of History. By mapping these forces, you will gain a clearer understanding of the opportunities, constraints, and dynamics influencing your career decisions. The Future Triangle allows you to see how past influences, present conditions, and future possibilities interact, helping you to make informed career choices and identify strategies for progress.

In this exercise, you will consider three elements:

• Pulls from the Future: Aspirations and visions drawing you forward.
• Pushes of the Present: Current opportunities and trends supporting progress.
• Weight of History: Barriers and constraints holding you back.

This exercise helps you explore the potential impacts of your career choices by identifying immediate, secondary, and long-term consequences. By using a structured thought process, you can better anticipate challenges, opportunities, and unintended effects of your career path.

The Futures Wheel, developed by Jerome C. Glenn in the 1970s, is a tool for visualizing the ripple effects of a decision:

• First-Order Effects: Immediate outcomes of a decision.
• Second-Order Effects: Indirect results caused by the first effects.
• Third-Order Effects: Long-term or systemic changes that might emerge over time.

The Three Horizons Framework is a strategic foresight tool for envisioning change over time. Developed by futurist Bill Sharpe, this tool helps us to explore how systems evolve over time and to identify pathways towards a better future. It encourages thinking beyond the present to envision transformational change.