Futures Cone and OKRs: build your own future

How can we use Futures Cones to represent our company’s Objectives, Key Results, and Initiatives?

I will explain it in this post, perhaps more to me than to you, to find a visual representation that helps us better understand what OKR initiatives are.

First, however, use (increasingly precise) examples to introduce Joseph Voros’ Futures Cone.

We can make a sure prediction on how much an investment could yield over the next few years. Using futures cones, we would represent this forecast as a cone, with our specific estimate placed at the center of the cone and the uncertainty expanding as you move forward.

But we are not Nostradamus, and we do not have the certainties hypothesized at the beginning. In the center, we can find the most probable future; going outwards, we will find plausible, possible, or impossible scenarios.

Copyrighht by Joseph Voros (2017)

We can consider it a “probability zone” around our prediction. If we are reasonably certain, the cone will be narrower, but if there is a lot of uncertainty, the cone will widen, indicating a more comprehensive range of possible outcome

The best way to predict the future is by inventing it. — Alan Key

It is not sure that the possible future matches the one we prefer, and therefore, we will have to act to change it. As Alan Key said: “the best way to predict the future is by inventing it.”

It is precisely how we create the Preferable cone that we can bring OKRs into play.

Objectives, Key Results, Initiatives and Futures Cone

Without going on to discuss my solid artistic skills (I swear it was much more beautiful on paper), we could say that:

• Objectives are sections of the cone of the Preferable future achieved at a given time.
• The objectives can be contained within three or more Key Results (given three points on the plane, there is always a circumference that connects them)
• We can represent an initiative as that truncated cone with several objectives (complete or not) within a specific time frame.

An initiative that has an OKR inside it and part of a second.

This system therefore allows us to represent over time which objectives are both part of an Initiative and which lead us to reach the Preferable future (for example a strategic OKR or the company mission).

how time influences goals and futures

Time is also an essential dimension; the longer the duration of an initiative, the broader the final objective will necessarily have to be and, therefore, less accurate in its KRs or with KRs expressed as generic moonshots.

OKR iterations and cones within cones…

Not to mention that the iterative process of OKRs can easily be represented as a series of cones that follow one another, which allows for the identification of important moments or alignment with the North Star or company Mission.

OKRs that are misaligned, unclear, too broad or too small.

Another intriguing effect that we can see in this visualization model is that if we have particularly limited OKRs, we will effectively reduce the space of possibilities for the future. Preferable by going and being less resilient in case of changes in the market around us; the same goes for disproportionate initiatives compared to the space of possibilities or OKRs that are too broad; in this case, the cost of managing them will exceed the benefits obtainable, also causing us to risk going off target.

The potential of this interpretation of OKRs alongside Futures Cones can be very powerful and represent an excellent analysis tool to understand when things are not going as hoped and/or to plan the next steps.

In the meantime, if you want to discuss it, there will soon be another OKRs course with Avanscoperta and a new dedicated meetup.