John Mahaffie

Please note: foresightculture.com is 5 years old today. Thanks to all my readers, followers, commenters and linkers for all the great help over the years. I am delighted to celebrate with a Blog Action Day post. #BAD12 #PowerOfWe #Blogactionday

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
–Margaret Mead

Foresight–the deliberate act of looking into the future and assessing what we can know and should do about it–is critical. And foresight is a social act. It depends on the power of we.

Foresight can hardly be successful without engaging others. For one, you are not likely to know enough to adequately understand possible and likely futures, if you try to figure it all out by yourself. For another, the things you decide to do about the future: shaping it and responding to it, will involve others. You can’t go it alone. Any future that would wholly belong to a single person, impacting and depending on no others, is not a future of any significance

Margaret Mead’s quote at the top reminds us that we don’t “get” a future, and can’t simply wait for the future and deal with it when it comes. We have to take action, together, to create it. Turning from just accepting change to actively shaping it is likely to fail if you go it alone, and succeed if you engage with others.

So we have to work to invent the future with others:

their inputs will make our efforts stronger, ensure clarity and comprehensive thinking
their participation will give our results credibility and buy in
it’s their future too, and they need to be a part of creating it

For organizations…

In organizations, it’s natural to explore the future and make plans with a focus inside the organization and aimed at its interests. But that too is limiting. Good organizational foresight lets stakeholders in and is not done in a vacuum. The power of we for organizations means building the organization’s part of the future with clear thinking about opinions from, and impacts on, every one affected. I always urge organizations to develop their ideas for the future with the people they will impact: workers, the community, customers, business partners.

So how big can your “we” be? If you are a big player, it may literally be the world. If you are part of a local system, it ought to include your neighbors, other community players, the public, etc. Inside an organization, you at least should be talking about “we” the whole organization, not “we” the executive suite.

Otherwise, an organization is at best trying to spring a future plan on others without their foreknowledge, and without their input. They may not like it, and they probably will not get it. “Where did this come from?” they’ll ask, and rightly so. “Why didn’t you ask me?” “I don’t see things this way.” And so on. It’s likely to fail.

The essence of a foresight culture–the theme of my blog–is that foresight is done by the group, not some individual. I summarized this in a post: What is a Foresight Culture?

So for a successful future, harness the Power of We!

Image: James Cridland, via Flickr, CC attribution license

I spent a little time on a beach beside the Gulf of Mexico the other week. It was beautiful, and sitting there, I felt totally optimistic about the future. But I also felt that optimism on a day’s visit to Sea World with my son. The people there were friendly, happy, reasonably healthy, and engaged in learning about nature. Positive feelings often strike me when I fly over the great pine forests in the western United States. I get them when I visit an elementary classroom or coach a bunch of rambunctious 10-year-olds in baseball.

I am an instinctive optimist, even knee-jerk about it. The glass is always at least half full for me.

The futures field has people in it who are often tagged with being techno-optimists-they seem to think technology will fix everything. My malady is different–I am generally optimistic, not specifically so about technology–I harbor a lot of skepticism there–but I am optimistic about life in general.

I know and often meet people with the opposite problem. They keep right out front in their thinking and in how they encounter the world, a long list of problems and looming disasters. Americans are grossly overweight. Those 10-year-olds don’t know anything, those Western pine forests are afflicted with pine beetles and are dying. Climate change will flood the fine Gulf beaches we enjoy. In fact, there’s poison in the water, and so on.

In exploring the future with others, it’s important to not fall too far into either trap. Most people can’t do much with a doom and gloom view of the future. There has to be a potential positive future among the range of possibilities, or else we are denying that we have any power over our destinies.

On the other hand, we might too easily see everything as bright and positive and stifle discussions of the very real problems we face. In exploring the future, we have to fight both tendencies, and try to keep discussions on reasonable ground. The future is neither all-rosy, nor all-gloomy.

Extreme views should not be allowed to subvert thoughtful discussion. You can and should try to pull the story back towards a middle ground. No, the world isn’t going to hell, but that’s because we’re working to keep that from happening. We should get on with that work, and justify our optimism.

Image: James Grimmelmann, via Flickr, cc license

The essential power of we in shaping the future

It doesn’t seem like the world is going to hell