Engagement Technique: Future Headlines

So you’ve got your company strategy documents, you’re prepared for the future. But what about your people – what do they want their role to be, and what do they achieve?
The Future Headlines exercise asks people to picture that future. 

Here, you invite teams to imagine a news headline about your company 12 months from now – one that they’d be genuinely proud to read.

For example:

🗞️ “Company X wins award for happiest workforce in the UK”
🗞️ “Record year driven by employee-led innovation”
🗞️ “Company X named employer of choice for growth and development”

You can use your company goals and targets to steer it, but once you have your headline, you can ask individuals to think about their contribution – where they might be featured within that story.
Will they make the front cover, will they be referenced on page 4, or does it matter? The idea is that they’re thinking about the future, and can articulate what great looks like.

This helps the prophecy come true, and less likely to fade away!

How it works

Ask teams to agree on one future headline. Then explore what must have happened for that headline to be true. It’s a reverse engineering technique that helps plan out greatness.

Use questions like:

• What did we do to get there?

• What habits changed along the way?

• What did we stop doing?

• How did each team contribute?

This moves the discussion from vague ambition to practical behaviour.

Once you’ve completed the exercise, get these headlines and stories in public view, and ensure that in 12 months time when you revisit these ‘predictions’ you celebrate the wins!

Why it works

• It makes strategy feel human and relatable.

• It encourages ownership rather than top-down direction.

• It links day-to-day behaviour to long-term outcomes.

• It helps teams align around what success actually looks like.

Where it works best

This is more of a group exercise, there is a version of this for individuals which you’ll see in a few weeks called ‘Letter to Yourself’ (if you can’t wait Indeed explain that here)

Good for: strategy days or away days, leadership offsites, department planning sessions, or even as a follow-up to engagement or EVP insights

It’s especially powerful when teams create different headlines, then compare them. You quickly see where priorities align – and where they don’t. But it’s not to call anyone out, remember!

What to watch out for

• Avoid turning it into a branding exercise, yes it’s great to see inventive titles, but – and I’ll admit this is a little bit of a contradiction – it’s about the meaning rather than the headline itself.

• Keep it grounded. Headlines should be aspirational but believable. Maybe a psychological moonshot?

• Make sure actions are captured! You’ll want this visible, and don’t forget to celebrate it when you achieve it in 12 months!

The takeaway

The Future Headlines Exercise turns vision into something tangible for your team. It’s a great internal comms exercise, using reverse engineering to build momentum and create a shared sense of direction. In the words of Emilie Sande.. read all about it!

This post is part of our Engagement Techniques series of practical, low-cost ideas to bring more connection and meaning into work. Find the rest here

👉 Want to explore techniques like this in more depth? I run interactive employee engagement workshops where we bring these ideas to life.