The SVFL method
FRAME · SENSE · CHALLENGE · IMAGINE · REHEARSE · ACT
A six-stage cycle that moves a team from a strategic question to tested decisions and monitored signals.
Every guided session in the Lab is built on this structure — whether it runs for thirty minutes or a full day.
The cycle
Six stages, one continuous loop.
Stage by stage
What happens at each stage.
FRAME
What decision are we really making?
Define the strategic question, the time horizon and the boundaries of the conversation. A weak frame produces a pleasant discussion with no consequence.
Output — A sharp question, a horizon, and the decisions that hang on it.
SENSE
What is changing around us?
Gather signals, trends and drivers from across political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal domains — including the ones outside your industry.
Output — A mapped landscape of change with the strongest drivers named.
CHALLENGE
What are we assuming?
Surface the beliefs holding today's strategy together and separate what is fairly predictable from what is genuinely uncertain and consequential.
Output — Tested assumptions and two or three critical uncertainties.
IMAGINE
What futures are plausible?
Build contrasting, internally coherent futures. Not forecasts, not preferences — plausible worlds that stretch the group's thinking.
Output — A set of alternative futures the team can reason inside.
REHEARSE
How do our decisions hold up?
Stress-test strategies, options and commitments across each future. Introduce a Future Shock and see what breaks.
Output — Robust options, fragile assumptions, and known failure modes.
ACT
What do we do on Monday?
Translate the conversation into no-regret moves, real options, signposts to monitor and owners with dates.
Output — Commitments, options and signals to watch.
Principles
What the method insists on.
Plausible over probable
The goal is not to predict the future but to be prepared for more than one.
Assumptions before answers
Most strategic failures are assumption failures, not analysis failures.
Contrast creates insight
Futures that differ sharply reveal more than futures that differ politely.
Rehearsal beats prediction
A decision tested in four futures is stronger than a forecast defended in one.
Ways of seeing
The visual language of the method.
The futures cone
Possible, plausible, probable and preferable futures.
The futures triangle
Pull of the future, push of the present, weight of the past.
Impact / uncertainty
Separating what matters from what is merely uncertain.
Three horizons
The declining present, the transition, the emerging future.