communicating about the future

Don’t be a sheep in wolf’s clothing

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That's the past, no the futureIf you say you are going to take a look at the future, you should mean it. Far too often, organizations put together a program called, "The future of ____________" But then they build something that is, at best, about what's going on today.

That's a missed opportunity and it's false advertising!

I have just been the victim of one of these frauds. At a big, well-funded, and well-attended seminar called "The Office of the Future," I was subjected to, merely, a pretty good run-down on the office of the present. At best it included a few big trends in commercial office space. But it was not what they said it would be. What a wasted opportunity. It could have delivered folks true insights on what is around the corner, just out of sight, and likely to shape their destiny in 10 and 20 years.

One speaker went so far as to ridicule some of the big trends in commercial offices and business, especially telework. By mocking it, he effectively negated anyone's motivation to consider what it means to office development, planning, and design. He set a key future force aside, preferring to talk about the present at the expense of the future.

What a wasted opportunity!

The event I attended was for the real estate sector. This is a sector that includes developers, who make investments and build projects that are to last and be profitable for decades. It's a sector that includes tenants who pay a lot of money to find, fit out, and move into real estate, and who sign leases for ten years, and usually hope to renew those leases for longer. It's a sector that is served by office furniture makers who sell complex and expensive fittings for offices that take them time to design and market–they want and need payoffs over years, if not decades. And its a sector with big technology players who make and service the networks, security, lighting, etc. that enliven and energize offices-They too make bets, launch product development efforts and market with the need and hope that they have years, maybe decades of profits from their efforts.

At today's conference, none of these players were served very well. They may have gotten a taste of what their competitors are doing, what vendors are offering, what tenants are looking for, but all those with the lens of right now.

Cutting edge, maybe, but future? No.

Image: www.history,navy.mil

The power of fiction in exploring the future

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Mythmakers and LawbreakersA remarkable new book, Mythmakers & Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction, came to my attention because its editor, who goes by Margaret Killjoy, is my nephew. I bought the book merely to be supportive. But to be supportive, I also read the book, and was blown away by how many ideas I got from it, and how it stirred my thinking about the work I do as a futurist.
 
The core of the book is about why, and how, anarchist writers and others who have written about anarchism use fiction for exploring and communicating political ideas. Killjoy offers interviews with people in either camp who may or may not say they are anarchists.
 
As a futurist, I have struggled with the place and meaning of art, broadly, and creative writing, more specifically, in exploring and communicating about the future. I’ve learned, as so many of my colleagues in the futures field have, that storytelling is often the most powerful way we can explore, share, and communicate ideas about the future.
 
I use storytelling of several sorts in my work: intently, but imperfectly. I offer stories to make a point in speaking and in workshops on the future. By habit, I use stories and analogies in conversation, in trying to explain my ideas. And in much of our client work at Leading Futurists LLC, we use stories in the form of futures scenarios to deepen our understanding and that of our clients, of future possibilities. As I have written before, I think scenarios are the most powerful tool we have for communicating about change and the future.
 
The writers interviewed in Mythmakers & Lawbreakers clarified for me how fiction is a fundamental force in exploring and promoting ideas—any ideas, but certainly ideas about how the world and societies could be different. In that sense, futurists and anarchists have the same job: to help people understand much more deeply things that do not (yet) exist. So too, both futurists and anarchists have seen the mass of work depicting those different work coming in science fiction, along with some graphic novels, comics, video games, and hard-to-categorize forms of literature.
 
I have learned, and/or conclude some interesting things about fiction from my reading of Mythmakers and Lawbreakers:
 
+Some, but not all fiction writers have direct political goals in writing what they write—some are exploring a different society, some are promoting one, and perhaps some aren’t sure, but their art carries them deeply into exploratory 
 
+Fiction does not answer all of the questions it raises—it doesn’t try to. That means a writer can play out a distinct situation without fully understanding it, or its implications.
 
+Political ideas without a deeper (and perhaps fictional) exploration may be simplistic or poorly thought out, and may be driven by a dogma or principle, not tested fully against human realities. Thus we would all be better off, I am quite certain, if futurists developed much more fleshed out scenarios for the worlds we think we want.
 
+Where we want not just to explore, but to convince people about change in our world, the story may be essential. For example, I have found it inadequate to tell consumer product companies that there will be greater demands on them to create more sustainable products. They want to, and need to know, what those products would be like, and how consumers would incorporate those products into their lives.
 
If, as writers believe, fiction shapes our perceptions of ourselves, our surroundings, what is true about our world, then fiction surely can and will shape our view of the future. We can tap into that truth.
 
In our futures work, we may be too often creating scenarios that merely describe the future, but don’t have the power to really bring people to a sharp focus on a different world, because they lack conflict, a hero, a plot. I will ponder that issue some more. Perhaps our “fiction” cannot ever be quite as powerful as the novelist’s.
 
There is clearly lots of work to do here, to better understand what those of us engaged in foresight can learn from fiction writing and from other arts that strive to explore ideas. We won’t become great fiction writers or artists, but we may up our game in using fiction and art to delve deeper and get further, not to mention to communicate about the future better.
 
Some interesting thoughts from the Mythmaker interviews:
 
“Art is not a mirror with which to reflect life, but rather a hammer with which to shape it.” Bertolt Brecht [Mythmakers and Lawbreakers, p. 20, quoted by Derrick Jensen]
 
 “Fiction is not a good medium for preaching or for planning. It is really good, though, for what we used to call consciousness-raising.” [Mythmakers and Lawbreakers, p. 10, Ursula k. Le Guin]

Story learning—the power of stories in getting through to people

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The Power of Scenarios - SchwartzWe’ve learned a lot about learning styles in recent years, and that knowledge is making a difference in schools and in the workplace. There are tests to help you understand if you are an auditory, kinesthetic, or visual learner. Those learning styles are channels by which you get information. By themselves, they are powerful, even essential to understanding. In my work helping people think about the future, I get the best results when I can offer multiple ways of encountering and understanding information: visual and auditory, at least.
 
But access to information is not enough. Information has to have meaning to truly break through to people’s understanding. We are all capable of making intellectual connections to information—understanding it factually. But stories can get through to people by emotional connections to deliver meaning much more strongly. So ultimately we are “story learners,” whether we have a preference for the kinesthetic, or auditory, or visual.
 
Children when I was growing up would learn about the boy who cried wolf. Told as a story, that moral life’s lesson is stronger and more memorable—“don’t be the boy who cried wolf”–than a factual relating of the lesson—“if you sound a false alarm repeatedly, no one will believe you when there’s really an emergency.” The same thing is true in communicating ideas about the future. A dry, factual relating of the details, for example in a forecast about technology, doesn’t have the power of a story, set in the future, with real people in it, living with the technology.
 
The telling and retelling of stories, and retelling a story you heard your way, are all part of forging meaning and sharing meaning. In exploring the future on your own or with others, it’s the stories you try tell about the future that bring the future alive. The future isn’t just a collection of changes, it’s a changed world with people in it. This is why we often build scenarios that turn ideas about the future into stories about the future. Scenarios are usually easier to share, recall, and react to for people. See: Why I love introducing scenario thinking to people.
 
So too, we can look at how ideas are framed and reframed  See my thoughts on reframing here and here. The act of framing (or reframing) is about giving things a stronger emotional connection than information alone can carry.
 
We need to take a close look at how we present ideas about the future. While we may value data, evidence, and analysis, those things are not enough to really inspire new thinking. Try out stories about your organization and the people in it, in the future. Play out scenarios that get specific about people: using your products or services, perhaps. Put yourself or your children in the future you are trying to imagine. Move past the data and business analysis. Doing so will lead to more effective “story learning” for you and the people you work with.

Framing and reframing, part 2: emotional connections

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Emotional framingMy Leading Futurists LLC partner Jennifer Jarratt and I believe one of the most critical things we do for our clients is reframing. Over 22+ years working to be more effective as futurists, we’ve learned that truly helping people understand the future means not just reconceptualizing things (nearly any good business consultant does that) but connecting in meaningful ways to their worldview. Reconceptualizing can make an intellectual connection, but reframing can make a stronger, emotional connection.

That means helping people think about change from a personal, human, emotional perspective. Offering a compelling look at the future is not about explaining “how would that work?” It’s about answering “how would that affect me?”
 
The work of George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist at Berkley, has helped us surface and examine how we do that, why it matters, and how we can do it better. Lakoff’s book, The Political Mind, is particularly valuable in understanding the importance of frames and how people react to them.
 
Lakoff defines a frame as “a conceptual structure used in thinking.” [Link] He explains that it is the emotional content of a framing that connects most strongly to people.
 
In The Political Mind, Lakoff explains the centrality of framing in politics. While perhaps the stakes are higher in political battles than in exploring the future, we believe the ability of people to break through to new insights on the future is essential to having a successful future.
 
Let me share an example of reframing of the kind Lakoff explains so well. I mentioned this situation in a related reframing context in a previous post, but the case also distinctly highlights a central part of reframing: the power of an emotional hook in how something is framed.
 
The Janney Elementary/Tenleytown Branch library public private partnership (PPP) was an intense issue in my community in Washington DC over the past few years. It was a proposal to combine a commercial real estate development on Wisconsin Avenue, NW in Washington, DC with a redevelopment of the public branch library and adjacent public elementary school. The land to be used for the commercial development would have included the city’s land where the now-demolished library is intended to be rebuilt, and part of the adjacent elementary school property. The sites would have been joined and reworked, with a new library, retail space, apartments, and garage parking for the elementary school staff. The developer was to contribute to renovating and adding on to the 1925 elementary school building.
 
In our neighborhood debate, a group that opposed the PPP framed the core of the issue as a “land grab” with the city surrendering land to a private developer, irrevocably. There are detailed technical arguments that can be, and have been made on each side of the issue. It’s quite possible for pro-PPP people to explain the potential deal not as a land grab, but as a multi-million dollar benefit to an aging, over-crowded elementary school. But the “land grab” notion was a stronger framing than any that had come up from proponents of the PPP. It connects in people’s minds to stealing—in this case, a corporate entity, the real estate developer, in cahoots with the city government, stealing from our children.
 
What happens so often in political debates is that one side comes up with framing that resonates with people’s emotions well, and the other side tries to counter that framing with a technical discussion of facts and truths. This is what has happened in my neighborhood.
 
Emotion usually wins out over the facts. A few days ago (March 16, 2009) the city relented and killed further discussions of a PPP on the site. So, perhaps the opponents who framed this as a “land grab” won the argument with their well-framed opposition.
 
In exploring the future, we need not see framing a simply a crass appeal to emotions. We can see it as a way of more effectively breaking through to people’s consciousness with ideas about a changed world. In our thinking, then, we specifically put the emphasis on reframing—recasting the situation with a new way of looking at it that can alter how people think about the possible and desirable future. Sometimes that means showing a new side to an issue, balancing people’s fears with ideas that suggest how a big change could be a good thing.
 
Effective work in foresight then, means not only depending on technical explanations and a wholly logical appeal to people. That’s why I’ve written so extensively here about the importance of stories, the value of images, the power of other voices, among many others.
 
As Jennifer and I work further on our concepts around reframing, we’ll publish ideas here and at www.leadingfuturists.biz. We’d of course be delighted to hear your ideas about this and we’re ready to help you in your exploration of the future any time.
 
Here is my take on some people who are really good at reconceptualizing and reframing. 
 

Crying “Wolf!” about the future

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Hurricane IkeOn September 12, 2008, the day before Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast, the U.S. National Weather Service told people in low-lying, thinly-protected Galveston that "Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single-family one- or two-story homes will face certain death.” [Link] My futurist friend Andy Hines found it bizarre to watch for hours as that phrase, “certain death” scroll across the tv screen in his Houston home.

Though things looked dire even before the storm hit, the Weather Service’s alert was an extreme statement to make. Hurricane paths shift moment by moment. They might have more accurately said that residents “face the risk of death”. It was clear they were saying it that way to scare people. Should they have? Were they “crying wolf!”? (As of this writing, we don’t know how many people in Galveston might have lost their lives. It seems likely that rescuers will discover more losses and that dire warnings were appropriate.)

In communicating about the future, should we exaggerate for effect? How, and how much so can we do that and not be crying “Wolf!” Are the recurring jokes and complaints to futurists; “what happened to the paperless office?” or “where’s my jetpack?” because we too often forecast something that does not happen? We risk losing our influence if that keeps happening, but we also lose influence if what we say is simply not interesting or compellingly different from what people are already thinking about.

I urged people working to explore the future, in my piece on  The 27 Habits of Highly Successful Futurists, to not be afraid to exaggerate for more effective communication and to get people thinking, but to also always know when they are exaggerating. That’s because there is a fundamental difference in the work of exploring the future between making a forecast—a statement about something we expect to happen—and exploring possibilities—asking “what if…” questions to try out new ideas about the future.

The key is be clear yourself and to make clear to all others what you are doing. If you make a forecast, give it with your best thinking on degree of likelihood and your level of confidence in the outcome happening. If you are exploring “what ifs” make sure everyone knows that, and know what the exploration is for. Then you can making more striking statements and not take the risk of crying "wolf".

Our most compelling work is usually an exploration of a world transformed, or a mind-bending new technology taking a place in people’s lives. But we have to know, and reveal, whether we think that transformation is likely, or low odds. I think good futures thinking demands the “exaggerated” views of the future, otherwise we can’t catch the notice and imagination of others. But I know it also demands careful reflection on and explanation of the drivers of the change, and clear assessments of the change’s likelihood.

Image: Nasa

Thoughts on Why?

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Why? by Charles TillyJust because your careful, reasoned look at the future makes a decision or conclusion clear to you, doesn’t mean everyone else will “get” your reasoning. When you have grasped how things are changing, and decided what should be done that is new and different, you still have to explain your thinking to others.

It’s hard to make change without doing that, and there are some good ways of understanding what kinds of explanations might work. Charles Tilly’s Why? (2006) explains how we explain things, and is a good framing for people trying to get others to understand the basis for conclusions and decisions about the future.
Tilly describes four ways we answer the question Why? Let me use a story from my family to show what each one is about.
A couple of years ago, we decided to dismantle a wooden swing set in our backyard to make room for an addition to the house. At the time, one of our boys was about 7 years old, and he was the key stakeholder in this decision. He was the one who would ask Why?
As I used a crowbar to dismantle the swing set, while my son was out for the day, I tried out Tilly’s four kinds of explanations in my mind. Here they are with my thinking ab out what I would tell my son:
  • Conventions–Connect the decision to common practice, what others are doing, the social, business, societal norms. In my case I framed it as: “You’re a big boy now, big boys don’t play on swing sets”
  • Stories—Use a story to explain the situation, put the decision in a context familiar to the ones you are explaining it to. My approach: “Remember how we’ve been talking about building a climbing wall up to the tree house?”
  • Codes—Frame the decision as essential to legal requirements, social norms, rules, etc. My framing: “If this were a public park, the swing set would not meet safety requirements, and we’d be told to take it down”
  • Technical accounts—Explain the decision technically, with the technical details making the case for a change. My technical explanation: “The pressure treated wood has gotten splintered and rotted, and isn’t safe anymore”
 
In my work with Jennifer Jarratt, we’ve increasingly recognized the value and power of stories. This certainly carries over to explaining the reasoning behind changes that are often scary for people. But stories are not the only thing to reach for. Of the four kinds of explanations, your situation may dictate what you use and perhaps what combination you use. On my decision, I used the story approach, using it to show my son the promise of something better.
It’s critical to remember your audiences when you explore how best to explain things. What we’ve found over 20+ years helping people explore the future is that we often start our efforts with a technical group, one that’s happy and comfortable in having technical explanations for things. The problem arises when they see their stakeholders and ultimately the public as most easily swayed by a technical explanation. For a young boy, at least, the technical explanation would have failed, led to tears, in fact.
Of the four, I am tempted to say that conventions is the weakest, but we have to remember that lots of people, even lots of business executives, have times when they want to follow the norms, and not take big risks or strike out on their own. Conventions may be quite compelling to them. For a 7-year-old, saying “you are a big boy now” rings hollow. He felt like a little boy, and couldn’t imagine life without his swing set.
Codes are important too, because they tend to be fixed requirements. You are not usually in position to change them. But they are not sufficient explanations to really energize people to get them on board for doing something new. Our son didn’t, of course, care about codes, about the law, and so on. He just wanted to have a place to play.
In the end we built a great climbing wall up to the tree house. The decision made sense to the critical stakeholder. The future didn’t look scary or arbitrary.

The power of words

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Thinking about roles

We may often get a breakthrough in thinking by changing the words we use. Linguists and psychologists have long debated how much language shapes how we think, but there’s little debate that it does. A powerful way to break down barriers to new thinking is to reconsider what words we use.I’ve learned a lot about this from a futurist colleague of mine, Mimi Stokes Katzenbach, who is also an actor and playwright. Mimi has taught my colleagues and me new things about how the work we do in exploring the future is about people, roles, and stories at least as much as it’s about data, trendlines, and technologies.

Mimi and I had a conversation this week about roles. In a World Futures Society session on the social future, I had supposed that some people might, because of strong and rising concern for environment, recast themselves from “consumer” to “sustainer”. Mimi seized on that word, sustainer, as a great example of how we can break through to new thinking by changing the words we use.

“Sustainer” is a role word. Having it can move our thinking off of the broad, theoretical noun: “sustainability,” to a role or function we can define and play. If you say “I am a sustainer, not a consumer” you redefine your role, and can have a much clearer idea what you need to do.

We live in roles we play; parent, executive, student, friend, cyclist, artist, and so on. Otherwise, we would not know what we are all about. By creating a “role” word for a situation, we can open up our thinking about what we will or should do.

Mimi’s other observation is the power of a verb over a noun. By transforming a noun into a verb, you move to action. So instead of saying that sustainablity is important to us, we might say that we are going to “lower our carbon footprint” which implies and can define specific action.

The lesson here is to move our thinking from the abstract to the specific and to put people into the change we want to understand and make happen. That’s a critical part of the bigger issue we face in foresight, which is to make the future clear, relevant, and real to people. There are no great changes in the world, good or bad, without people driving them.

Image: gemsling, via Flickr, cc license

Small questions, big answers

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My old archaeology professor, John Witthoft, shared a bit of wisdom I have not forgotten in the nearly 30 years since I took his classes. He said, “ask a small, simple question, and you will find a great complex of things to explore.” He knew that too many of us undergraduates would reach for huge topics like the decline and fall of empires, when we were likely to have greater success, and get more out of, a paper on how metal smelting enabled greater technological advances, or the role of the horse for plains Indians, for example.

So it is with studying the future. In exploring the future, we are too often faced with the impossible: imagine and understand “the future” –the whole thing! That’s just too much to undertake. It’s certainly not helpful to people trying to get a stronger sense of change and the possibilities for their product, their sector, their profession, their community, and so on. The enormity of the task is too great, and too often people will give up trying to understand the future. There are simpler ways to get the conversation about the future going.

I suggest starting with a small question or a small “what if”. It will open up a big world of thoughts and perhaps answers. It will drive your thinking to the bigger questions, but they’ll have a purpose and a focus. Try using “artifacts from the future”. Wired has a regular feature on those “artifacts”. They publish a back-page Photoshopped image that showcases a future possibility. A recent one showed produce for sale, but the produce comes from “Ventria Bioscience” and Monsanto, and includes the Pizzamato, a pizza flavored tomato, and the Cinna-Del, an apple with cinnamon flavor. The “artifact” images are usually subtle but powerful, and the few details brought forward each are worthy of a conversation. These small details open up a big range of thinking, and I would argue, lead more naturally to a sense of future possibilities than a great thick report on the global future can.

So in exploring the future, don’t aim too high too fast. It’s important to put the focus on something we can think about and understand. Maybe it’s a simple artifact or prosaic detail of daily life. Those are things that mean much to people. And pictures are ideal.

Talk to the frog–the fable as told to me

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frogI wrote a while back a piece called “Talk to the Frog.” Mary Jane Naquin, of Informed Futures, Houston had shared a fable at the opening of a World Future Society General Assembly she chaired in Houston some years ago. I have always remembered the fable as a great way to make the point that we always learn new, unexpected, and valuable things from what we think are unlikely sources. The lesson of the fable of the frog is the lesson at the center of this blog, Foresight Culture. We have to open our ears, our minds, and our hearts to new things, and keep them open.

Mary Jane doesn’t claim credit for the story, but I give her credit for sharing it with me and showing me how to use it. She found the text she has used for telling the story the other day, and sent it along. With her kind permission, here it is:

In another time, another place, there was a wonderful land where lived a king (or perhaps it was a queen), who had three sons (or perhaps they were daughters) oh well, it doesn’t matter.

It was the time of their lives at which they were of age to seek the Future and to search for the Holy Grail… and so they did.

The charmed firstborn left the castle on a fine horse, and rode confidently along the path leading from the palace….

When out of the bushes a frog jumped into the middle of the road!

Out of the way – said the prince – be gone frog – I’m off to search for the Holy Grail and find the Future… and he brushed the frog aside and rode on….. He returned late that day, very disappointed and without success.

And some time later, the second son, the middle child did likewise, riding away from the castle at a quick clip, determined to find the Holy Grail and understand the Future……and as he rounded a curve in the path, there in the middle of the road sat a big plump FROG staring at him!

Oh ! said the prince – be out of my way – I’m on a mission to find the Holy Grail and understand the Future ….. and he too, swept the frog away and went on his journey. The second son returned late that evening, without the Holy Grail, and very confused about the Future.

And so it was for the youngest to set out to seek the Holy Grail and learn about the Future. And later that day he rode happily out of the castle ground, looking about, and enjoying the journey. Near the end of the path leading from the castle a frog popped out of the bushes and landed smack in the middle of the road….. Oh my, said the prince … who are you? And what do you want?

The frog smiled broadly, and said I want you to come with me… I know how the secret of the Holy Grail and how to understand the future…… and so … you can imagine the rest of the story.

Communicating effectively about change

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DUSTIN, of the blog Casual Fridays, offers some great wisdom on why new ideas (yours!) can fall flat with your colleagues. His post is well worth a look if you have to communicate about the future. I am certain I’ve experienced each one of these problems in my work as a futurist, and most of them are battles I continue to fight in communicating about change.

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