Stop trying to future-proof. Start building organisations that can keep up.

There's a problem with the idea of "future-proofing." It sounds reassuring, but it rests on a false premise.

My son recently started walking. Almost overnight, our home changed. Every surface looked dangerous. Table corners at head height, a wine rack within easy reach, cables he could yank. The house had been perfectly functional the week before. Now it felt like an obstacle course.

So I did what most people do: I tried to control it.

I bought one of those comprehensive baby-proofing kits: oven locks, door jammers, magnetic cupboard catches, foam corner protectors. I spent a Saturday installing everything. For about an hour, it felt like the problem was solved.

Then I watched him.

Within minutes he was pulling things off, working around them, finding routes I hadn't thought of. The corner guards came loose. The door jammers stopped him trapping his fingers in a closing door, so he slid them under the door and opened it onto them instead. The oven lock kept him from opening the door, but nothing stopped him turning on the hob.

This was not a system that was going to hold. Not because the kit was badly made, but because he was exploring faster than I could install.

Around the same time we were arguing over a piece of writing at Fathm that leaned on the phrase "future-proofing." It's familiar ground for us. We help organisations make decisions today that put them in a better position for what comes next - avoiding expensive dead ends, setting up teams that can support new products, creating space to experiment.

The more we looked at the phrase, though, the more it grated. Are we really future-proofing anything? Can any organisation honestly claim to?

In 2026 it's hard to say yes. The pace of change in technology, audience behaviour and the wider information ecosystem makes even the near-term difficult to predict. The idea that a single strategy or structure can insulate an organisation from that is appealing but it just isn't how things are playing out.

And it can push you towards the wrong kind of focus. "Proofing" implies protection. It nudges you towards preserving what you already have and shielding it from disruption. That instinct is understandable, especially in journalism, where resources are tight and trust is hard won, but it tends to produce organisations that are beautifully optimised for today and brittle the moment conditions shift. Capability is more useful than protection.

Take the stairs. My first instinct was to gate them off at the top and bottom and treat the problem as solved. But he's going to encounter stairs for the rest of his life - at friends' houses, in shops, on the way to the park. So we put the gates in, and then we started practising. Sitting on the top step together. Turning around and coming down backwards on his belly. Hand on the rail. Slowly, with a lot of repetition, and with me hovering close enough to catch him. The gate buys time. The skill is what actually keeps him safe.

For organisations, that translates in fairly practical ways. Smaller bets instead of large ones. Systems that can be swapped out without tearing up the floor. Teams that are used to working across disciplines. Actual space to test things, rather than meetings about testing things.

It shows up in how decisions get made, too. A willingness to move without perfect information. Becoming comfortable with the fact that a decent share of what you try will not work. Learning quickly rather than burning months trying to get it right the first time.

None of this is an argument for being careless. Some risks genuinely need managing, and some boundaries matter. I'm not letting my son near open flames. But removing uncertainty altogether isn't an option, and it isn't how progress happens anyway.

What matters is how fast he learns. For organisations, I think that's the better parallel.

You can't make them safe from the future. You can make sure they're set up to keep up with it.