We’re Asking the Wrong Questions (and I’m Over It)

It’s time to reclaim our collective power to imagine and build different futures.

Jul 26, 2025

The future is not predetermined. We can shape it with the choice we make today. Image generated with AI.

Lately, I’ve been deeply frustrated with the world. It feels like we’re living inside a giant dumpster fire. I see so many people, organizations, and communities trying, really trying, to do good. But it often feels like a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of chaos and the raging fires all around us.

And I think I’ve finally honed in on what the problem is.

We’re so fixated on solving the problems directly in front of us, in the hopes of a better future, that we rarely pause to ask the most important question:

What kind of future do we actually want to build?

This isn’t a new frustration for me. Over a decade ago, I was working as a consultant with some of the most powerful and well-resourced actors in global development. You know, those institutions, the ones that shape the global development agenda. Time and time again, project after project, we were asked to look at the wrong questions.

We were tasked with analyzing symptoms, not root causes. With optimizing broken systems instead of asking how to build better ones. We were using incredibly powerful tools to answer questions that, frankly, weren’t worth asking.

That pattern hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s become more entrenched across the impact space. Too often, we’re stuck in reactive cycles, scrambling for relevance, for funding, for influence in a world that’s shifting rapidly beneath our feet. It puts us in a position of weakness: always responding, never shaping. We become bystanders to the future instead of active stewards of it.

And then a few months ago, in an ironic twist, I found inspiration in the most unexpected place: a Reel on Instagram. Not just a Reel, an ad. For Chobani.

It was a beautiful Ghibli-style animation from Chobani, depicting a solarpunk future where humanity, nature, and technology exist in harmony. A world of collective well-being, creativity, and care- not one of scarcity, burnout, or fear. It’s short, idealistic, maybe even a little naïve, but every time I see it, I think: that’s the kind of future I want to live in. I’ve never wanted more to climb through my phone screen and land in a world like that.

And yet, that kind of future feels impossibly far away. Because those aren’t the futures we’re sold. We’re fed visions of collapse. AI dominance. Climate dystopia. The erosion of democracy. These stories capture the collective imagination, and before we know it, they become self-fulfilling prophecies and the seemingly inevitable future. I’m tired of this. I will not allow my future to be highjacked.

The future isn’t something we inherit.
It’s something we build.

Then, at a serendipitous moment of peak frustration with the world, a friend invited me to give a guest lecture on theory of change to a university class. And while I’ve always appreciated what theories of change offer (yes please to structure and clarity), when I sat down to prepare, I found myself struggling. Because theories of change feel too small for the problems we face.

Yes, they help us plan through inputs, outputs, outcomes, and goals, but they also narrow our vision. They anchor us in short timelines, reinforcing a cycle of short-term thinking that stifles imagination. They focus on what’s measurable, not necessarily what matters. They can keep us locked in existing paradigms, seeking validation rather than transformation.

This realization pushed me in a new direction.

We need a futures lens in the impact space.

A futures lens means beginning with imagination, not just problem-solving. Expanding the scope of what’s possible before narrowing into strategy. It’s about asking:

What would it look like to thrive?
What does a just, regenerative, prosperous future actually feel like?
And what would it take—economically, politically, socially, ecologically—to get there?

It’s still early, but the core idea is this: We need to intentionally imagine the futures we want to create, before we build strategies, projects, or partnerships. Because if we don’t define where we’re going, we’re constantly reacting to someone else’s future*.

At first, I thought I had stumbled into something new. But soon, I realized: this is already a field. It’s called futures thinking. And the more I read, the more I felt like I’d found my intellectual home.

This radical, hopeful, rigorous approach challenges us to start with imaging the world we want and working backward to the actions we need to take in the present. It’s not utopian fantasy. It’s a practice of grounded imagination. And it’s profoundly underused in our sector.

Yes, it does exists. But it’s niche. The process can be expensive and time consuming. These conversations usually happen in closed, elite spaces. And too rarely integrated into mainstream impact, social and environmental strategy.

So that’s my new mission: To make futures thinking as essential building block in the impact space.

Forget theories of change- show me your theory of future.

Don’t just tell me to get it in the car- tell me where we are going. I want to help organizations move beyond 1–2 year strategic plans and reactive funding cycles and instead start with a vision of the future they want to help shape and then working our way back to what we need to do TODAY to change TOMORROW.

From here on out, I’ll be sharing more about this thinking; how futures work can transform how we design strategies, raise funds, build organizations, and create change. I’ll explore where this work is already happening—inside and outside our sector—in corporate strategy, city planning, and futures innovation labs. And I’ll make the case for why the social impact-development-humanitarian world urgently needs to catch up.

This isn’t just about what we fund or how we operate. It’s about reclaiming our collective power to imagine and build different futures.

I hope you’ll join me on this journey. I hope you’ll question, challenge, share your visions. I hope this sparks something.

Because the future isn’t something we passively wait for, and it’s not something that happens to us. It’s something we create—together.

*Do you want to live in a future shaped by space billionaires and surveillance capitalism?

I sure don’t.

LEAPO Futures was born from a simple idea: the future doesn’t just happen to us - we shape it. The name comes from a phrase my partner and I use: “taking a leapo”, our shorthand for a leap of faith. It’s about trusting yourself enough to move forward, even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed. Whether it’s crossing a rickety bridge in Albania or launching something new, it’s the belief that things could go right—and that the only way forward is through.

But more than that, it’s a refusal to let fear, cynicism, or inertia dictate what comes next. LEAPO is a call to be bold. To imagine futures worth fighting for—and then to start building them. LEAPO Futures exists to support that leap. We help organizations imagine bolder possibilities and give them the tools to get there. Our work lives at the intersection of systems thinking, storytelling, funding, and futures design. Our belief? Strategy should start with the future, not just the next funding cycle.