This is a practical guide to improved medium-term decision-making for business leaders.
The changes that mark the end of the current historic phase of economic growth mean that its increasingly difficult to make decisions. Yet the quality of decisions made by organisations and governments affects us all: decisions made with old paradigm assumptions may not take advantage of opportunities presented by the new, emerging paradigm; they restrict our ability to develop resilient choices.
In The Possibility Wheel, Patricia Lustig and Gill Ringland collate and analyse the trends that underlie the changes that are overturning our economy and society. They provide a clear framework for making sense of what is happening around the world:
presenting evidence from the best sources outlining Forces for Change that surround us evaluating the disruptive Threats that we face and examining the fracturing social and economic Backbones on which we all rely.
Finally, they offer a toolset (the Possibility Wheel) to help senior executives and management teams make informed and resilient choices and strategic decisions. The Possibility Wheel brings the global evidence to play in your locality and organisational context so you can explore more opportunities, develop resilient choices leading to more robust decisions and enjoy better outcomes.
Introduction
PART ONE Threats
Chapter 2 Introduction to Part One
Chapter 3 Fractured Backbones
Chapter 4 Global Heating
Chapter 5 Breakdown of International Relations
Chapter 6 Collapse of Global Health
PART TWO Forces for Change
Chapter 7 Introduction to Part Two
Chapter 8 Population
Chapter 9 Urban Pull
Chapter 10 Mobility
Chapter 11 Energy Choices
Chapter 12 Connected World
Chapter 13 AI
Chapter 14 Biology
Chapter 15 Planetary Limits
Chapter 16 Economic Activity
Chapter 17 Social Change
Chapter 18 Pulling it all Together
PART THREE The Possibility Wheel
Chapter 19 Introduction to Part Three
Chapter 20 The Possibility Wheel Tool
Chapter 21 Example: Fractured Backbones
Chapter 22 Example: Global Heating
Chapter 23 Example: Breakdown in International Relations
Chapter 24 Example: Collapse of Global Health
Chapter 25 Insights
Appendix 1 UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030
Appendix 2 Terminology and some sources of data
Index
Patricia Lustig is an internationally recognised practitioner in foresight and strategy development, future thinking, scenario planning and innovation. She has worked globally and is multilingual.
Patricia is a Board Member of the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) and Programme Director of their flagship Emerging Fellows Programme. She runs LASA Insight Ltd. and works with SAMI Consulting.
She wrote the award winning Strategic Foresight: Learning from the future, has written 6 further books and publishes blogs and articles through Long Finance, APF, Radix often with Gill Ringland and on her Substack, Its Not All Bad.
Gill Ringland is an Emeritus Fellow of SAMI Consulting.
She is a Life Fellow of the BCS. She is an ICL Fellow Emeritus and a Fellow of the World Academy of Art & Science.
She wrote Scenario Planning while responsible for strategy at ICL. She has over 150 publications and her books are used at Business Schools including Harvard. This is her twelfth book She publishes thought pieces and blogs through the BCS, Long Finance, the apf and Radix, often with Patricia Lustig.
