What Disney Got Right (And Wrong) 10 Years Ago
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra
The year is 2014. Frank and Yvette have been traveling the globe for two years, training leaders across Walt Disney International and racking up the frequent flyer miles.
The Workforce of the Future initiative is reaching a critical juncture – the Advanced Practitioner training. Dubbed the “UN of Foresight”, this weeklong gathering in London includes delegates from each Disney Futures country team who are chosen to become certified trainers. Each has previously completed the initial 3-day learning program and demonstrates their passion and ability for foresight facilitation. Now it’s time for them to gather as a multinational Disney Futures Team for the first time in the company’s long and storied history.
Speaking of stories, a major element of the Train-the-Trainer session is the development of several scenarios set in the year 2025.
⏩Fast forward, 11 years (and seemingly a lifetime) later, it’s tempting to grade these narratives on their accuracy. It’s like discovering a preserved time capsule from a previous era.
Who wouldn’t want to unlock its contents?
What if I told you that the scenarios for the year 2025 written by those Disney teams in 2014 were somehow spot on? What if a post mortem of the scenario suite uncovered laughable misrepresentations? What if, across three scenarios, the teams failed to predict even one outcome?
As it turns out, of course, these scenarios were neither 100% “right” or 100% “wrong.” Rather, there are elements of each of the scenarios across the broad suite created that have come to pass.
You see, it was never about predicting what would happen in 2025. Getting it “right” is never the point of good scenario writing.
If that sounds counterintuitive to you, then you are likely practicing scenarios as an “add-on” to established planning methods (like forecasting or strategic planning). The goal with the foresight used in these situations is often expressed as “peering around corners” or getting a glimpse of future disruptions. While most foresight practitioners can recite from muscle memory the adage, “Futurists don’t predict the future,” many still operate under that false assumption that if our visions of the future do not come to pass then our foresight efforts were a failure.
I fear you’re missing the point.
Foresight (including scenario development) is not about the future at all. Rather, good foresight and scenario work is ultimately about informing our actions in the present. The goal is not accuracy.
- We paint pictures of future worlds to help us imagine what is possible.
- We create these narratives to rehearse the future.
- We build scenarios to make our greatest hopes more tangible and to deconstruct our greatest fears.
The Disney Advanced Practitioners that gathered for the UN of Foresight over a decade ago achieved something far more valuable than an accurate glimpse into our current day 2025.
Through the art of scenario development they time traveled briefly into possible futures and leveraged that insight into creating an even better 2025.
