By Brian McNeill

Virginia Commonwealth University professor Andrew T. Arroyo has introduced a framework for organizational change – Swift Futuring – that offers a new approach for organizations to quickly build a positive culture.

“Swift Futuring addresses the question: ‘How might organizational stakeholders collectively define, influence and reach a bold, even audacious, preferred future three to five years out, under significant existential pressures and time constraints?’” said Arroyo, Ed.D., senior vice provost for academic affairs, interim dean of University College and professor of educational leadership in the School of Education. “The end goal of Swift Futuring is a positive organizational climate and culture that has broad stakeholder ownership.”

Swift Futuring is the topic of two recent peer-reviewed articles by Arroyo. “Toward a New Approach for ’Swift Futuring:’ With a Use Case of Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs)” and “An Autoethnography of Swift Futuring in Practice” were published in the Journal of Future Studies.

It will also be the focus AI and Swift Futuring, an offering this fall in VCU’s Vertically Integrated Projects program. As part of the project, undergraduate and graduate students will engage in real-world consulting projects and longitudinal studies to examine the use and effects of the Swift Futuring approach.

Key elements of Swift Futuring are its reliance on storytelling, its relatively short time horizon and its emphasis on quick prototyping in a participatory environment, Arroyo said.

“The storytelling feature is crucial because that’s how we think and communicate as humans,” Arroyo said. “Traditional strategic plans are important with their goals and metrics, but when was the last time you dreamed in statistics? Swift Futuring recognizes that people gravitate toward stories. The wrong story can spark a destructive wildfire that damages an organization’s climate and culture, whereas the right story can buoy spirits and make people feel purposeful and unstoppable.”

Swift Futuring’s short time horizon differentiates it from other foresight approaches, which tend to focus 10 to 100 years or more into the future, Arroyo said. By shrinking the time horizon, Swift Futuring gives organizational leaders a tool for quick momentum. That can be crucial when founding a organization or trying to reorient an existing organization without delay.

Swift Futuring also emphasizes built-in flexibility for prototyping. “Stories are meant to be fluid. Anything living must evolve, and stories are no different,” Arroyo said. “Unlike a strategic plan, which tends to be more fixed in nature, Swift Futuring allows for rapid, organic updates that move at the speed of stories.”

For researchers, he added, Swift Futuring is a practical tool for organizational change, and it opens new interdisciplinary pathways for studying anticipatory governance, narrative dynamics and the impact of participatory foresight on organizational behavior.