Quarterly Planning
Remember the Future, then Pre-mortem, then dot-vote. Three formats, ninety minutes, real roadmap. Skip any of them and the kickoff is a wishlist.
Why this matters
Quarterly planning is the meeting where futurespectives earn their keep. Pre-mortem and Remember the Future are siblings — failure-imagined and success-imagined — and almost no page pairs them. Run them in order or you have half the picture. Most kickoffs stop at 'discuss findings' and never produce a ranked roadmap; the closer is the load-bearing part. Skip the inspiration-deck framing — pick three formats, run them in sequence, leave with commitments.
Recommended activities
Sailboat
A four-quadrant retro for naming structural friction without pointing at a person.
Hopes and Fears
A pre-mortem that doesn't admit to being a pre-mortem. Run it before kickoff; come back at the halfway mark.
Dot Voting
Three dots, vote silently, the senior person votes last. Anything else is a popularity contest with a sticker budget.
Appreciations (Kudos)
Specific or skip. 'Thanks for being awesome' is worse than silence.
Remember the Future
The press release dated six months out. Past tense or you're back to a wishlist.
Pre-Mortem
Anonymous or you wasted the meeting. The senior person's fears anchor the room.
How to run it
Start with Remember the Future — paint what success looks like in past tense, dated six months out. The grammar is what makes this exercise different from a wishlist. Then Pre-mortem (or Hopes and Fears as the gentler-named version for cross-functional kickoffs where 'mortem' lands wrong) — name the threats to the success you just described. If the team likes the metaphor, Sailboat as a pre-mortem variant works well — anchors and rocks before the project starts, not after. Close with Dot Voting on the combined list of opportunities and risks; that's the step that turns a futurespective into a roadmap. Appreciations as the closer if the planning meeting also closed a quarter — otherwise skip it; the dot-vote is enough.