Using scenarios to plan your career.
Last fall Heather and I were approached by Montreal-based YES Employment & Entrepreneurship to deliver a pilot training series for career practitioners on the future of work. Immediately we envisioned a curriculum that not only reviewed the latest research on labour market changes and innovative retraining programs (like our friends at Palette Skills), but also explored the basics of strategic foresight. With this in mind, we developed a program designed to help career practitioners to think like futurists.
Our first session in November 2021 took 25 participants through the basics of foresight including horizon scanning, scenario development, and scenario application. To make this real and interactive, we used foresight games (like Jobs of the future, which we co-developed at the Brookfield Institute), and group discussions about the trends they have each noticed.
Building on this, the second session introduced the field of personal foresight - using scenarios to explore one's future. After sharing a few different approaches to personal foresight, we tested a tool that drew from Draudt and West’s work, published in What the Foresight.
To do this, we had participants role play as job seekers and career practitioners. We created a series of questions for the career practitioner, which provoked the job seeker to imagine themselves in four possible futures, reflect on their preferred option, and identify the steps needed to make it come true. For example, we asked:
Today, in your career, what keeps you up at night?
Imagine that it is 2041, and [the thing from question #1] is no longer your concern.
Now in your career, what are you able to focus on?
What do you like about this future scenario?
What are your concerns about this scenario?
This was our first time testing this tool, so we were keen to get their feedback. We heard that for job seekers in immediate need, this tool was not the best approach as they will not be in the right mindset to explore the future. However, for job seekers starting to think about future career options (such as new grads, workers considering a change), this tool successfully provoked a conversation about what was most important to the job seeker to explore. Similarly, we heard that this tool may be helpful for job seekers who closely align their personal identity to their current job to broaden their thinking.
We’ve long believed that futures literacy is a critical skill for everyone (hence why we typically include it in our projects with new clients), and recently we advocated for a futures literacy pilot for workers. After delivering this course we feel even stronger about this need - especially for job seekers. While just a pilot program for now, we look forward to delivering this program again in the future.
Are you interested in learning strategic foresight basics? Or joining a network to explore changes together? Let’s chat!