Predictive analytics are often used in strategic workforce planning (SWP), to forecast and close the gap between the future talent you’ll have versus the future talent you’ll need. Now, powerful analytical tools are driving that organizational calculus. Those tools predict who will leave and when, where talent will be plentiful and scarce, and how talent will move between roles. But there’s a catch: Very precisely matching talent to “the future” is of little value if that future doesn’t happen. For example, it can take five years or more to develop today’s high potentials into leadership roles. Can you know today the five-year future for which you should prepare them?  Increasingly, you cannot. Yet, because HR strategy typically reacts to organization strategy, SWP often assumes a single future as its goal.