What is a futurist? And why we all need to be one

Ask most people what a futurist is and they picture someone with a crystal ball: a professional predictor, paid to guess what happens next. Paul Spain sees it differently. A futurist isn’t someone who forecasts the future from the sidelines - it’s someone who helps create it.

The prediction myth

The popular image of a futurist - part fortune-teller, part science-fiction commentator - quietly frames the future as something that happens to us. Something to be guessed at, then waited for. That framing isn’t just unhelpful; it’s disempowering. It puts you in the audience for your own future.

Prediction is also a trap. Nobody reliably calls the exact shape of the next decade, and chasing precise forecasts misses the point. The value of thinking about the future was never in being right about a date. It’s in being ready - in seeing a shift early enough that you can do something while it still counts.

Paul’s definition: think ahead, strategise, execute

Paul’s definition turns the passive picture on its head with three deliberate moves.

Think ahead. Look past the here and now. Notice what’s changing at the edges - in technology, in behaviour, in your industry - before it’s obvious to everyone. Strategise. Decide what those changes actually mean for you, and choose a direction rather than drifting into one. Execute. Act on it. Run the experiment, make the call, take the first step.

That final move is the one most “futurism” skips. Ideas about the future are cheap and plentiful. Doing something about them early is what separates the people helping to define the future from those left reacting to it. Foresight without action is just a nicer word for daydreaming.

Why we all need to be futurists

Here is where Paul’s view departs most sharply from the stereotype: being a futurist isn’t a rare job title held by a handful of people on conference stages. It’s a way of thinking that anyone can adopt - and, as the pace of change accelerates, one we increasingly can’t afford to be without.

When technology moved slowly, you could get away with thinking almost entirely about today. That’s no longer true. AI, automation, security and shifting customer expectations are reshaping industries faster than annual plans can keep up. The cost of only ever looking at the here and now keeps rising - for leaders, for teams and for individuals.

Paul’s phrase for the fix is putting on our futurist hats: deliberately stepping out of the operational day-to-day to ask where things are heading, and what that means for the decisions in front of us right now. It’s not a one-off exercise for a strategy offsite. It’s a habit - one worth returning to regularly.

How to put on your futurist hat

You don’t need a crystal ball or a job title. You need a repeatable habit:

• Watch the edges. Pay attention to the weak signals and early movers, not just the headlines.
• Get hands-on. Tinker and experiment with the most cutting-edge AI and technologies yourself - nothing builds foresight faster than direct experience of what’s newly possible.
• Ask what’s changing. For any signal, ask what it makes newly possible - or newly risky.
• Think in horizons. Sort what you see into near, mid and far, so the urgent doesn’t crowd out the important.
• Strategise. Decide what it means for you specifically, and pick a direction.
• Act early. Run the small experiment now, while being early still gives you an edge.

Foresight, for business and life

This isn’t only a boardroom skill. The same habit applies to a career, a family, a community - anywhere the future is being shaped by choices made today. Thinking ahead, choosing a direction and acting early is as useful for a person deciding what skills to build as it is for an organisation deciding where to invest.

That’s the heart of Paul’s message, and the reason he argues we should all be futurists: the future isn’t a forecast to wait for. It’s something we help define, every time we look up, think ahead and take the first action while it still counts.