You should read this if… you are a leaders partway through a strategy cycle and want to pressure‑test your current operations plan against a rapidly changing future. This case study shows how scenario planning can be used mid‑strategy to pause, reflect, and recalibrate—helping leadership teams look beyond short‑term delivery and examine how emerging uncertainties and long‑term forces could affect today’s priorities. It demonstrates how using scenarios to review an operations plan surfaces hidden assumptions, strengthens alignment, and ensures near‑term actions remain robust and relevant across a range of plausible futures rather than being locked into a single, increasingly fragile view of what lies ahead.

You should read this if… you are a CEO or executive looking for a powerful way to engage and educate stakeholders about uncertain futures without relying on abstract reports or technical jargon. This case study shows how design fiction can be used to bring future possibilities to life through storytelling, visual artefacts, and speculative narratives that make complex change tangible and discussable. It demonstrates how design fiction helps organisations spark meaningful conversations, shift mindsets, and invite collaboration by creating a safe space to explore how emerging technologies and trends could shape their sector—enabling stakeholders to actively participate in imagining and shaping what might happen next

Key note presentation: 0900 Friday 02 June 2023, Doctors Health in Queensland “DHQ Forum: Doctors Unmasked: being human in medicine” Brisbane, Queensland.

To truly create value for stakeholders requires reimagining what’s possible through creative thinking and questioning our own assumptions about what we know about business as usual.

To meet the challenges of tomorrow, we need to anticipate and prepare for the unknowns. This means understanding the systems and contexts that drive what is happening today in order to better understand what will happen next. It also requires a mindset shift towards embracing uncertainty instead of trying to eliminate it.

Holacracy is a system of governance that seeks to replace the rigidity of a traditional command structure with a more flexible and adaptive system. Could it be the future of work?

Universal Basic Income is a system where all citizens of a country or state receive an income from the government to meet their basic needs. What could futures that include Universal Basic Income look like? How could it be funded?

As artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to evolve, so too will the role of robots in charity fundraising. Can we expect to see more human-robot teams in our futures?

Direct-to-avatar (D2A) is a new business model that allows companies to sell their goods directly to avatars or digital twins of customers in the virtual world. Could it become a reality?

Social ranking systems - part of our futures, or unlikely to happen? Have we already made the decisions that pre-empt a social ranking system?

Participatory budgeting - reality or fantasy? How could citizen lead decision making change the way you operate your for-purpose organisation?