Your Future... In Five Easy Steps by Will Phillips January 2010 Scenario Planning In these challenging times, wouldn't it be great if you had an easy-to-use tool to help make decisions? Wired magazine recently developed a Scenario Planning Tool. It was designed for large corporations, and can just as effectively be applied to your health club, your personal life, or even your children's lives. The tool may involve a new way of thinking, and it does take some time. But I encourage you to commit to running through the five steps, and I believe you'll be pleased and surprised at the way it helps you think through the problem, any problem! Here's an explanation of the process from Wired: Scenario planning is not prediction. The goal is to envision possible futures, which will serve as guideposts to the path forward. The payoff is a clearer view of what the future may hold and of the most advantageous route through it. The process starts with a question, and we've chosen a test case for our examples: You're an aerospace engineer. How can you future-proof your career in the coming five years? Once you've formulated the issue, the method is simple: Identify forces likely to bear on the problem, organize them into future possibilities, envision paths that would lead to those futures, and devise a strategy for surviving them all. With a sharp picture of potential futures and corresponding plans of action, you'll always be one step ahead. Download Wired Magazine's Scenario Planning Tool.