Toolkit series · episode 01
Future Design
A six-stage programme for designing an ideal future across the life areas that matter, including the future to avoid. Built for career transition and any engagement that starts too early with a CV.
For: Outplacement and career-transition coaches
Worked example: Graham Fielder, operations director, 18 years in one firm, made redundant. Waypoint Career Transitions.
Fictional composite for illustration. No real client data.
Walkthrough
Graham arrives with a CV and a date. Future Design delays the document. He picks the domains he will work, writes the life he wants and the life he is trying not to slide into, names a purpose, and only then writes goals. Progress saves between sittings.
1 · Choose domains
Twelve areas, from career and finance through family, creativity and physical environment. Graham picks career, finance, health, family and learning. The ones he does not pick stay visible as a choice, not an omission the coach invents.
- Career is obvious after redundancy. Family and health are the ones coaches usually have to drag onto the table.
- Unselected domains are data. They are not a to-do list.
2 · Where you are now
Short reflections: the one thing that would change everything, what he needs to learn, habits, qualities he admires. Each block can be shared with the coach or kept private.
- Privacy per section matters. Not every sentence is for the room.
- ‘One thing’ almost always arrives as a job title. The later stages are there to test that.
3 · Ideal future
Per selected domain, a written picture of a good life three years out. Not a five-year plan. A picture specific enough to disagree with.
- Vague ‘more balance’ fails here. The page asks for a scene.
- This is the artefact a sponsor never sees, and should not.
4 · Future to avoid
The life that looks like a reasonable next job and is, for him, a slow reduction. Graham’s version is another operations directorate in a similar firm, same hours, less say.
- The avoid-future is usually more honest than the ideal.
- It is the best filter on the roles that will arrive next week.
5 · Purpose, then goals
Purpose is one paragraph. Goals only after that: title, motive, impact, strategies, obstacles, how he will know. The review stage ranks what the coaching will actually hold.
- Goals written before purpose recreate the CV.
- The review list is what goes on the engagement, not the whole sitting.
Three insights
1
Start with a picture, not a document
A CV is a history of what the last employer paid for. Future Design is a picture of what must be true next. The document comes after the picture survives contact with the avoid-future.
2
The unselected domains are a finding
Graham did not pick romance or community. That is not a gap to fill in session one. It is a boundary the coach should not steamroll with a wheel of life.
3
Goals are a last stage, not a first
Most career programmes invert this: SMART goals on day one, vision if there is time. The sitting only earns the goals once purpose and avoid-future can veto them.
90-minute sitting (or two 45s)
- 0′+10m
Contract and domains
Why this is not a CV session. Graham picks domains; unselected ones are named and left.
- 10′+15m
Where you are now
The four short reflections. Coach stays out of the private blocks.
- 25′+20m
Ideal future
Write, then read aloud only what he will share. Specificity over encouragement.
- 45′+15m
Future to avoid
The reasonable next job that would be a reduction. Keep it concrete.
- 60′+15m
Purpose
One paragraph that could veto a role. If it cannot, it is not done.
- 75′+15m
Goals and close
At most three goals that survive the veto. Book the second sitting if the writing overran.
Run Future Design in CustomCoach — 14-day Professional trial
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