Untangled Community Event: Back From The Future
This Untangled Community Event is with Charley Johnson.
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Most strategy processes assume the world is stable, linear, and predictable.
But real social systems ...aren’t. They’re uncertain, adaptive, and shaped by relationships, power, and history. When we plan as if the future is a clean theory of change waiting to be mapped, our strategies often fail in practice.
This community event invites you to try a different approach.
Instead of starting with actions or roadmaps, we’ll start with the future itself—the social, economic, political, and relational outcomes you want to see—and work backward from there.
What We’ll Do Together
In this session, you’ll participate in a guided world-building exercise that helps you:
Describe outcomes, not actions
What would a radically different future actually look and feel like—for communities, institutions, and relationships?Surface hidden values and power
We’ll make explicit the assumptions and dynamics that usually operate invisibly in sociotechnical systems—and decide what belongs in the future you’re imagining.Focus on relationships, not just results
Systems change is about how people and organizations relate differently over time—not just new tools or policies.Check for alignment across difference
You’ll explore where visions converge, where they diverge, and which differences matter as groups move in the same direction.
From Vision to Direction
We’ll then translate futures into directional goals—orientations rather than fixed targets. Like a compass, directional goals create coherence without foreclosing learning or adaptation in uncertain conditions.
Designing Across Time
Finally, we’ll explore interventions that work across past, present, and future. Because systems don’t reset—the past shapes trust, data, incentives, and power today.
You’ll see how effective strategies can:
Repair past harms
Shift present-day dynamics
Build future capacity and stewardship
This is a space for leaders who want strategic clarity without pretending the future is controllable—and who want to practice imagining and moving toward more just, resilient possibilities.
Join me?
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