realistic and/or actionable understanding of the possible futures).
At one level, success should be relatively easy since most laypeople have rather narrow visions of the future, but productively influencing what people think is hardly straightforward because everyone’s perceptions of the future are ultimately inferred from personal experiences, biases, perceptions, and assumptions as illustrated in the accompanying figure. If we are to influence how someone views the future we generally have to impact on their perceptions, assumptions, or their inference process for our ability to provide experience or address biases is generally limited.

It should also be noted that perceptions of the future are generally quite personal. While a group may share a vision of a successful common goal such as electing a given politician, introducing a new product, or goingout to dinner, the larger elements may be common but the details will vary from person to person.

In planning events and interventions it is important to consider the level of alignment needed for success. If one is working with a group of individual investors, their actions need no coordination or synergy for each to be successful. As a result, building alignment and common understanding is not particularly important. On the other hand, if the intervention involves a coordinated team effort, such as the design and introduction of a new product or meeting a crisis, the need for a shared vision and alignment may be quite important. The ability of disparate actors in an organization to act independently while avoiding longer term issues demands care to ensure the alignment of their understanding of the environment and system in which they are functioning.

While not technically a futures example, when I think of alignment I invariably flash back to a situation ten years ago where my partner was called in to help a new client with a problem. Nine months earlier the president of the company had called his executive vice presidents into his office and told them that they were going to have a tight cash flow for the next six months or so and needed to maximize cash flow to the company. There was no discussion for the message was clear. The VPs left and took independent action to maximize cash flow for the company. Of particular note, the VP of sales planned a sales campaign and hired two new salesmen. The VP of manufacturing cut back on overtime and reduced inventory. Both behaved perfectly logically given the levers available to respond to the shared objective of maximizing cash flow. In only a month product delivery times jumped from two weeks to six weeks. This was a regional manufacturer who had about 85% of the market in their region. Most customers had never even tried the competition. Customers were now forced to try the competition to meet their needs. Within three months their market share had fallen to less than 50% of the market in their region. Five years later the company was still in business but they never recovered the lost market share. This problem highlights the importance of shared understanding of how the world works and of meaningful communication to build common vision for cohesive action – even in simple, short-term situations. Fuzzier, longer-term futures would likely require deeper discussions.

In my opinion it is not enough to simply stimulate a client’s thinking when they need to act cohesively. I think we have a responsibility to try to make sure that clients develop coherence in their vision appropriate to meet their needs. Giving clients a good or correct answer is not enough. They will need deeper and shared understanding if they are to address complex problems productively.

The need for impacting on perceptions and assumptions and building stronger inferences has led me to categorize futures methods by different criteria than the normal quantitative/qualitative criteria. A list of potential paired categories for categorizing futures methods follows:

Quantitative	Qualitative
Divergent	Convergent
Internal (personal)	External (sharing with others)
Verbal	Visual
Reductive	Expansive
Simplifying	Integrative
Possible	Preferable
Emotional	Logical
Analytical	Conjectural (or interpretive)
Mechanical	Systemic
Atomistic	Holistic

From time to time futurists are likely to need to use methods that address many, if not all of, these roles if we are to be of maximum benefit to our clients. We need a broad base of skill and the wisdom and experience to know when to shift modes and how to beneficially educate and provoke our clients to deeper understanding.

This article has provided a brief introduction to my perception of the role of the futurist and the relationship between that role to the needs of the client, the role of methods, and the skills of the futurist. Clearly there is much more that can be said…in much greater detail, which I hope to cover in future articles.