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Ricardo (4s): Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Five Minutes PM podcast today. I like to talk to you about the Futures wheel or the consequence wheel. One of the coolest Tool I have seen recently to frame and try to understand the future. So let me tell you, how does it work? It's very similar to a mind map, a mind map. You have a central idea, and then you develop these ideas into pieces and you go one level deeper, two levels deeper, and then you build your mind map. The process of constructing the Futures Wheel is very, very similar. You have a central idea, but the central idea, instead of splitting one bid into smaller ones, can you talk about hows and consequence.
Ricardo (51s): So you start the middle with one, event, and then you worked with an assumption. What will be the consequences? If this event happens, then you frame all possible consequences, then you take each consequence, and then you go one level deeper. And say if that consequence happens, what will be the next consequences? And then you will start creating like a network of events that may happen based on your initial assumptions. So for example, I started and I learned that this, in an innovation course, and we used the central topic as self-driven cars.
Ricardo (1m 35s): So we are working with an assumption, self grievance cars will exist. And then we start framing the consequences around that. So if self-driven cars exist, first drivers may lose their job. Second consequence, maybe the roads we will have to be changing because several aspects have a road are for human drivers and not for robots or computer third consequence, the cars, will have massive changes. So for example, why you will have windows, for example, if you are a truck carrying for example, food, if there is no one driving, why do you need?
Ricardo (2m 18s): Because the window is for someone to see. Another consequence. What happens with the gas stations and the services around the road, service selling food in this way. So they won't change their constitution the way they operate. So all of that, and also if self-driving cars become real, what will be the legal implications on that? For example, if a self-driven car, hits a person, who will be guilty, the computer, why we do the work. So look this is a perfect example. And then you go on each of them, one level deeper. So you take, for example, the drivers will lose their job. And then let's now suppose that the drivers will lose the job.
Ricardo (2m 60s): So what will be the secondary consequence? Oh, will have a raise unemployment rate. You will have an increase at cost of social welfare. You will have to create possibilities. For example, to learn new skills, you may have social unrest. So then you go if I have social unrest, you have a political crisis. You can have a civil clash. So this is the idea of the Futures Wheel So you start framing the future based it on events that may or may not happen, but you treat them as something that will happen. This is extremely useful in the project environment, for example, to help you to understand any identify secondary risks.
Ricardo (3m 43s): So you'd take a risk. For example, if the supplier does not deliver the product on time, so let's suppose that the supply will not deliver. Then what happens? For example, I can delay that part of the project. I can have people without anything to do. I may have to start a legal action against the supplier. So if you start a legal action against the supplier, what can happen afterward? This supplier can stop supplying for, all of my projects, and not this one. And if this happened, so I can have missed deadline not on this project, that delayed, but in all projects. So this is exactly what the Futures wheel is four.
Ricardo (4m 26s): And this is a very simple, it's one page. You only need pencil and paper another use of that is for stakeholder management. For example, I'd love to understand what will be the behavior of a stakeholder. So I bought the name of this decoder and the events, for example, a key stakeholder in the project leaves and your organization. So what can happen? I can lose support on that. I can be without anyone to approve my work. And then you go further and further. And then you try to identify, which are the risks, or which actions do you need to do to create a favorable outcome in the future that may happen in a week or may happen in a month or may happen in a near a third And final example is when we use agile methods.
Ricardo (5m 14s): So when we create a minimum viable product and then based on the result of that, we develop a second wave then based on the results of the second wave we developed a third wave. So You, it's like rolling wave planning. So as soon as you get some more information, you can frame potential outcomes to the future. Very simple. If you go to your search engine and put Futures wheel, you will find thousands of examples and templates. So it's a very simple tool and very useful to, for your work as a project manager. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast and see you next week with another five minutes PM Podcast.
