The Strategic Planning Weapon: Your Imagination
Estimated Reading Time: 8-10 minutes
I like to think that the perfect recipe for a strategic plan includes a heaping portion of imagination. Of course, we want to do the hard work of collecting the critical information that can help us better understand the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. We can also try to understand current trends and how what is happening outside our organization might impact what goes on inside our organization. But without using our imaginations to dream about preferred futures, a strategic plan has a strong likelihood of simply perpetuating the status quo or making incremental changes. In a world where the pace of change has accelerated faster than most schools have kept up, we risk being left behind, solving challenges that are irrelevant to our students and families, and missing opportunities because we haven’t developed the mindsets, systems or resources necessary to seize on them.
A model that might be helpful is the one developed by the futurist Joseph Voros in 2003 called the Cone of Possibilities. Imagine yourself standing with a flashlight looking into the future.
The beam of the flashlight is wide and allows you to see into the distance. The brightest part of your beam illuminates the path straight ahead of you, while the periphery is less clear. Maybe there is enough light on the outside to get a vague sense of what is out on the margins, but the path you are most likely to take is usually the clearest. Voros’s model shows that there are an infinite number of possible futures, but when most schools engage in strategic planning, the data we collect, both quantitative and qualitative, tends to sharpen our focus towards probable futures. We tend to dismiss the things that seem less certain, even some of the more plausible futures and definitely those futures on the margins that are hazy and “unimaginable.”
Jane McGonigal wrote in her book Imaginable, "Almost everything important that's ever happened was unimaginable shortly before it happened."
In Voros’ model, you can see that the beam of preferred futures doesn’t ignore what’s probable - that would probably be rash and unhelpful - but it expands into what is plausible and even entertains some of the possible futures that we might think of as "preposterous," which traditional strategic planning might ignore.
This focus on a broader range of possible futures borrows from the field of Speculative Design. Unlike more traditional design thinking, with which it shares a human centered focus, Speculative Design requires us to tap into our imaginations and design for the needs of people in the future.
According to Delve, a product design firm, “Speculative Design requires people to suspend their disbelief, allow their imaginations to wander, and pull in inspiration from beyond traditional product disciplines.” Simply start with the “What if?” and begin to imagine a very different reality than today, using drivers of the future and signals we see on the margins to craft scenarios for ten years in the future.
Ten years is a long time. Jane McGonigal reminds us of how a decade can yield significant social and technological changes.
There was exactly 10 years between when the iphone was released to when the majority of people had a smart phone - and thus were constantly connected to the internet (2007-2017)
It was even less than a full decade from when same sex marriage was considered controversial and first legalized by the Netherlands to being supported in global surveys by a majority of people in a majority of countries (2001-2010)
Nine years spanned the time from the first bus boycott in the Civil Rights movement to the passage of the Civil Rights Act (1955-1964)
You might not be exactly right about how the world will have changed in 10 years, but you can be sure things will be different. So, dig into those What ifs.
What if, in 10 years. . .
50-60% of independent school students are choosing options other than four year colleges after graduation?
Every student comes to school with a personalized AI companion that serves as a tutor, coach and collaborator?
We’ve eliminated traditional schedules in favor of centering learning around circadian rhythms and created flexible schedules based on energy, curiosity, and collaboration cycles.
Due to rising seas that reshape coastlines and other climate challenges that upend major cities, schools become mobile learning communities, moving with displaced families and maintaining continuity through solar-powered pop-up campuses?
In a polarized world, schools are declared nonpartisan sanctuaries and state-mandated to teach truth-seeking, empathy, and civil discourse as core literacies.
Designing for future generations is not hard to do. Look no further than the class of 2040, today’s prekindergartners. They are already in many of your schools. Picture these students crossing the stage at high school graduation, college graduation, and getting their first jobs. Picturing a world that may be fully immersed in artificial intelligence, where the jobs they have rely on their most human skills or where they have to co-create with robots.
Consider writing a fictional interview with one of these new college graduates about what it is like to enter the workforce in 2044. How did they find their first job? What was the work force seeking? How are these young people getting to their jobs each day? What is the work day like? How many work days do they have each week? How are they meeting their future partners? Where are they spending time with friends and family and what are they doing in these social moments?
Then try building artifacts from this world. What objects are on their work desks (if they have them). What kinds of technology are they using? What might we find in their living room or kitchen that doesn’t exist today? If you need inspiration, look around your own house and think about what wasn’t there 10 years ago.
What do we do with the answers to these what ifs, interviews, and artifacts? Do we create a strategic plan specifically from these imagined ideas? Of course not. What this kind of thinking - speculative design - can do is help us imagine a future that looks different than today and to remember that a strategic plan shouldn’t design with only the challenges and needs of the people of today. After all,a truly ambitious strategic plan won’t really be implemented for five years and maybe not fully embodied for ten years. So imagine the people living in that future and what their needs might be and what their lives might be like.
Using our imaginations in this way helps us to remember that we can’t assume tomorrow will look like today. Even if we aren’t exactly sure what will come to pass. We have agency to direct our schools in ways that offer solutions that are going to be attractive to future generations. Even if 95% of our students still go onto four year colleges, helping them to develop skills and mindsets to take advantage of new opportunities beyond the traditional path is something to design around. Even if our students don’t have a personal AI companion, helping students co-create with AI and take advantage of what it might offer to personalize learning support is very likely to help almost any learner. Having truth-seeking as a core literacy in almost any political landscape seems like an impossible idea to reject once you imagine it.
Yes. Collect the data. Understand the humans in your school community. But also imagine the students, families and staff of the future. Design for these future stakeholders in mind.
If you are considering a plan in the next 24 months, and you are looking for a partner to help guide your process, please reach out to Leadership+Design soon. We are already engaging with schools for 2026-27, so now is the time to let us know how we can be helpful to you in designing the future for your school.
