The Five Futures Glasses: How to See and Understand More of the Future with the Eltville Model

Citation

Bishop, P. (2011), "The Five Futures Glasses: How to See and Understand More of the Future with the Eltville Model", Foresight, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 111-112. https://doi.org/10.1108/fs.2011.13.3.111.1

The futures field has lots of methods. In fact, Andy Hines, Terry Collins and I reviewed 22 different scenario techniques alone. And there are more because I came away from that experience realizing that any technique used to forecast the future can also be used to create scenarios. Any forecasting technique requires assumptions which, when plausibly challenged, create alternative futures (scenarios). That's a lot of techniques, and that's just for scenarios.

What is rare, and perhaps unique, in the field, however, is an integrated approach that covers the whole futures field. Fortunately, now we have one from Pero Mićić, Founder and CEO of the Future Management Group in Eltville, Germany. Pero has published the core findings from 20 years of research and practice in his new book, The Five Futures Glasses: How to see and understand more of the future with the Eltville Model. I have known Pero for over ten years; he has taken courses at the University of Houston; we have worked together on foresight projects, and I contributed this overall assessment which appears on the back of the book:

The Eltville Model, with the five futures glasses, is the most comprehensive and integrated model of strategy development using the perspectives and tools of strategic foresight that I know.

So I guess you can tell that I am quite high on this approach, and now on this book. It's not perfect. What is? But it's a one of a kind in our field that deserves a careful read by foresight professionals.

So what's with the glasses? Pero created the glasses metaphor a long time ago to describe the five sections of the Eltville Model where each section is a different way to look at the future – hence the glasses. The five ways and their appropriate colors are:

1. 1.

   The blue futures glasses are for assumptions about the probable future of your environment.

2. 2.

   The red futures glasses are for possible surprises in your environment.

3. 3.

   The green futures glasses are for opportunities to create a better future.

4. 4.

   The yellow futures glasses are for your vision of a desired future.

5. 5.

   The violet futures glasses are for your planned future and for your actions1.

These five sections map very well onto the way most futurists think about the field – from Roy Amara, who originally told us about the Probable, Possible and Preferable futures, to the way we and many others teach about the future. The first three glasses are about the world – the Expected future (what Mićić calls assumptions since we cannot know the future directly) and the Alternative futures (many of which will be surprising). He then uses that material to identify Opportunities, a very nice addition to the standard approach. Rather than simple blue sky visions and goals, which have their place, he bases the direction for the future on real opportunities that appear in the environment. Finally, then, the last two sections are the Vision (goal‐ and direction‐setting) and Planning (strategic and action plans). It comes together as an integrated approach to the whole field.

The book is therefore organized around an elaboration of each of these sections. The first three chapters describe the book, the rationale for seeing the future in different ways (through different glasses) and an introduction to the perspectives (the glasses) themselves respectively. The next five chapters describe each of the perspective in detail, and the final chapter describes the process of using the Eltville Model in different types of foresight projects. There he makes the point that one does not have to use the whole model, that one can use one or more of the perspectives depending on the needs of the client and the situation.

And I can tell you that Pero Mićić is nothing, if not systematic – very systematic. So each of the five core chapters follows the same outline:

1. 1.

   An overview of the perspective.

2. 2.

   A few case studies to illustrate the perspective (Mićić has accumulated many hundreds of cases in more than 20 years of practice).

3. 3.

   The purpose of the perspective.

4. 4.

   Its core concepts.

5. 5.

   Comments on its use.

6. 6.

   And finally, a list of specific methodologies that one can use within that perspective.

It's all there. Surprisingly, however, The Five Futures Glasses is not a cookbook. Each perspective is deeply conceptual, intellectually challenging, and accompanied with numerous tips and worksheets. It's dense – not a beach read or a how‐to book with more white space than text. Every page is filled to the brim with new information.

But, of course, no book is perfect, The Five Futures Glasses is no exception. The Comments section in the core chapters contain 90 different “comments” (propositions, principles, tips, suggestions, whatever) each one of which is inherently valuable, but taken as a step, hard to get through. (Of course, one could say the same about our book, Thinking about the Future!) Best to read the other sections straight through but only dip into the Comments over time.

And in the category of quibbles, Chapter 3 contains a chart of all possible types of futures one can imagine – ten in all. The chart works pretty well, but the ten pages it takes to explain it doesn't. I would need a whole class to figure out the conceptual equations involved.

And finally, Mićić identifies three sub‐categories of future assumptions: expectations (states that will probably occur), non‐expectations (states that will probably not occur), and eventualities (states that may or may not occur). The categories are good, but eventuality is a strange word to use for the last one. Merriam‐Webster defines an eventuality as “a possible event or outcome” so it is a technically usage, but “possibilities” (a synonym) or even “uncertainties” might be more readily understood.

At any rate, we have to leave something for the second edition! But not much because this book contains the result of 20 years of practice by a dedicated and deeply reflective foresight professional. As I said, I know of no one book or even no one approach that covers the whole futures field as systematically and intelligently as the Eltville Model does. It is a singular contribution to our field that brings us one step closer to building a professional consensus on how we should approach the future.

Notes

www.futuremanagement group.com/en/news/news/the‐ five‐futures‐glasses.html (accessed 2 December 2010).