Future Backwards is a retrospective activity
Outcome
Things learns from the exercise:
- There is value in doing this with multiple sub groups and then reporting back to the main group. Sometimes you find one groups idea of heaven is another’s idea of hell. That’s interesting.
- It’s mostly a tool to stimulate sense making and dialog, not an end in itself - so make a lot of space for that.
- On a technical key point, make sure that the heaven and hell paths link back to a previous point in time, not current state. We’ve seen a team completely unblock themselves by mentally going back to a point in time and carrying on from there, rather than being blocked by the current state, and that was a magical moment for them.
