Recent work on strategizing as future making has drawn attention to the practices for making sense of possible and probable futures, and evaluating, negotiating and giving form to preferred ones. However, much of this research is at the organizational level and so fails to address future making around key societal issues. We argue that future making around the key societal issues facing organizations is grounded in policy-making processes that are instigated by governments to both consult with organizational and individual stakeholders and to legislate for societal change. Such policy processes are thus key future-making tools that elicit potential futures and contribute towards their enactment. Taking a practice approach to these tools, we examine how their use shapes the emergence and navigation of multiple alternative futures. Our study is situated in the empirical context of a longitudinal consultation process around the failure of a market sector in the face of extreme weather. Drawing from interviews, documentary data and parliamentary hearings, we explain the different practices through which the policy tool is used to identify and navigate four different futures, ultimately settling on an incremental future that did not respond to the magnitude of the societal problem being addressed. We draw these findings together into a conceptual process model that is the basis for our contributions into future-making as an incremental process, in which policy tools-in-use comprise a key means of navigating amongst alternative futures.
