Field Scanning is the practice of systematically surveying a landscape—organizations, practitioners, funders, and emerging practices—to understand the current shape of a field before charting where it's headed. Rooted in Dot Connector's origins in media impact and narrative change research, field scanning and ecosystem mapping help us surface who's doing the work, what's working, what's missing, and how power, resources, and relationships move through a system. This grounding in the present is makes our futures work robust: understanding what is happening now is essential to imagining what comes next.

Foresight (or Strategic Foresight) is the rigorous, interdisciplinary practice of anticipating possible future developments and designing interventions to meet them. Rather than trying to predict a single outcome, it is an organized and systematic process used to engage with uncertainty, look beyond the expected, and improve decision-making today by exploring a variety of alternative futures. Foresight is often rooted in rigorous analysis and hypothesis, working on hunches about potential futures and sensemaking trends from data, facts, reporting, and science. We frequently use Horizon Scanning and Scenario Planning as part of our Foresight Practice.

Radical Imagination is the ability to conceive of new possibilities outside of the constraints and structures of the present, and applying this to challenge oppressive systems and envision just, transformed futures. [Sources: Hill-Jarrett, Haiven & Khasnabish, Everyday Activism Network].

Visioning (or Speculative Visioning) is the specific act of creating those imaginative futures to challenge dominant assumptions and provoke new possibilities for action in the present. Visioning often relies on creative practices to help participants "feel" their way into alternative paradigms where all communities can thrive.

We take a Liberatory Futures approach, which refers to futures where interlocking systems of white supremacy, colonialism, and other oppressions are dismantled, and where the freedom and thriving of people most impacted by these systems are centered and affirmed. Liberatory futures are enacted through enduring imagination and action to resist, abolish, and transform harms that these systems cause. [Sources: Nassiri-Ansari et al., Wilson, Gumbs, O’Brien & Simon, Shillingford, Takla, Priyadharshini]

We create imaginary worlds or settings, often irresistible future realities in which we dream of a sovereign future for ourselves. We use speculation to consider aspects of otherworldly or possible futures. This work often creates speculative fiction—an expansive genre that explores alternative, nonrealist ways of being to provoke thought—and the creation of Artifacts. An artifact is a tangible or conceptual representation (such as an object, text, or piece of art) of an imagined future, designed to make that potential world more concrete, experiential, and accessible for reflection.

From the work of Otto Scharmer in the Presencing Institute’s Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges and also the work of the Guild of the Future Architects, we embraced a framework for leadership and organizational change that focuses on shifting awareness to co-create a better future, moving from ego-system to eco-system thinking.

In this model, we start with coaching, group cohesion, personal transformation, mindfulness, and embodiment practices that support undoing what blocks us. This invites us to let go of our blocks and turning it into compost for what we want to embody, enact, and perform in a new system that feels whole.