Planning For The Impossible

We all make plans for the future. Some come from big dreams like when I auditioned for the school musical at eight because I wanted to be an actor. Others feel more practical: studying to become a doctor, applying for a new job, getting pre-approved for a mortgage. Then there are near-term plans: running a marathon, quitting smoking, booking that trip we’ve been talking about for years. And finally, there are the everyday plans: groceries, gardening, drinks with friends, finishing that report before Friday.

Planning is deeply human. And when we do it well, strategically, our plans become more than tasks. They become mental models: filters through which we view the world. They shape our behavior, influence decisions, and guide how we respond to change. But the heart of futures thinking lies not just in planning for what’s likely, but daring to plan for what’s currently impossible. The question is: how do you do you do that? How do make what seems impossible possible? When done well, that kind of planning can change everything.

Shooting for the moon

It certainly did on a hot morning in Houston, Texas, on September 12, 1962. That’s when President John F. Kennedy stepped onto a sun-drenched podium in Rice Stadium, squinting into the light. Behind him, 40,000 students sat in white shirts and skinny ties, sweat already soaking their collars. In front, men in suits and sunglasses fanned themselves against the heat. And just nine minutes into his speech, Kennedy delivered the line that would echo through history:

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

That line turned an entire nation’s imagination toward the impossible. At the time, NASA had only just managed a brief suborbital flight with Alan Shepard. The Soviets were ahead. Sending someone to the moon, and bringing them home safely, within a decade wasn’t just ambitious. It bordered on science fiction. And yet, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon’s surface. The impossible had happened.

Where to start?

That story captivated me for years. As a teenager, I couldn’t stop thinking: how did they actually do it? Where do you even begin with something so enormous? I watched every documentary, read the books, studied the setbacks, the disasters, the planning. But the question always returned: if you know the goal is the moon, how do you start with that daunting task? I mean, do you start with a project plan? A Trello board? A very firm motivational poster? How do you go from “we’re not even in orbit yet” to “we’re hosting a lunar picnic”?

It’s the same question I hear from clients. They have a vision. A strategy. A north star. But how do you begin? It took me years to find an answer on how this was done with the Apollo program. And it came in the most unexpected place, during a long afternoon in 2008 in Arlington, West Virginia, with John L. Petersen, founder of The Arlington Institute: a think tank focused on highly uncertain futures.

I’d met John months earlier at a futures conference in Europe and reached out when work brought me to New York. He invited me to drive down for coffee. John was in his mid-sixties then, bald-headed, small in stature, big mustache. A former naval flight officer, veteran of two wars, advisor to the Secretary of Defense, and part of the National Security Council. Oh, and a former DJ. He was the first real futurist I ever met.

We sat in his office, surrounded by books and black coffee in oversized mugs. He told story after story: from military briefings to music festivals, until, out of nowhere, he asked: “Do you know how we got to the moon?” I laughed nervously. “I mean… put astronauts in a rocket?”

He smiled. “When Kennedy gave that speech, the U.S. had only launched one man into space. Not even into orbit. Technologically, the moon was out of reach. So how do you think they got there?” He leaned back, letting the silence land.

I didn’t have an answer. But I knew one was coming.

Believing you can do it

“They needed a shift,” he said. “Not just in tech, but in belief. A reframing. Kennedy’s speech helped. But it wasn’t enough. NASA realized they had to get people to really see it to believe it was possible. So they started with something no one expected: they planned the welcome home party for the astronauts.”

I couldn’t believe it. A party? That’s where you begin?

But it was also genius: they didn’t plan forward. They planned backward: from a vividly imagined future. They made the impossible feel inevitable. Not because they had all the answers, but because they’d committed to the outcome emotionally, before figuring out the steps logically. They created a future memory. A moment so vivid it could anchor people’s belief, align efforts, and fuel the impossible. As we now know from neuroscience, the brain processes imagined futures in the same region that it uses to recall memories. So when you simulate a vivid, emotional future, it’s almost as if you’ve already been there. And when your brain believes you’ve already seen it, the path to getting there is just a matter of remembering it. I know this still sounds a bit vague, but it is what got the US to the moon. When you would ask the janitor at that time what they were doing, the response would be: “I’m getting us to the moon.”

The conversation with John changed me. It unlocked something. Not just my passion for futures thinking, but the realization that our best plans start in imagination and emotional conncetion, not just in analysis. Since then, I’ve used this story and insight to help people and organizations around the world imagine new futures and make them real. And the good news is: you don’t have to be NASA to do it. You can do it too. In the next section, I’ll show you how.