John Mahaffie

Six things fiction writing taught me about foresight

February 18, 2025May 13, 2013 by John B. Mahaffie

I have posted at johnmahaffie.com, the inverse of this theme: Six things studying the future has taught me about fiction writing

I’ve spent a couple of years deep in the ranks of amateur novelists, working on a couple of novels, which I will confess, though I am a futurist, are set in the past, one in 1916, and one in the 1970s. I am still learning the basics by writing fiction every day, but doing it has already paid off for my work as a futurist. How? Several ways.

1. The parts of the story not told
In building a body of work for a futures project, I learn a lot, and think a lot, and develop a lot of ideas. I collect lots of information. I begin to know the “whole” future that my client faces, or at least have a large body of conjecture about it. But like the readers of a novel, my clients don’t want to know everything about the future, just the part that matters and that they can act on. So, overall, what I discovered in writing my novels is, don’t put something in just because you thought of it and researched it, and went some trouble to create it. That’s not your reader’s, or your client’s problem.

2. Things are complicated
Reinforcing the lesson of foresight, and one that I can benefit from learning, relearning, and building upon, is that human systems are complex: there’s never just one cause for a change, the swirl of forces large and small shape and reshape the destiny of people, families, towns, cities, societies, humankind. In building stories about people, you get a stronger sense of that, it’s the combination of forces that create change.

3. Point of view matters
Writers have to work out the point of view, and the voice they use to get across their stories. In foresight, getting the story told, or the forecast communicated, or the call to action made, means understanding who you are exploring the future for, what’s in their heads, and what needs to be in their heads. We spend a lot of time working out what future to focus on, how to frame ideas about change, and whose interests we have in mind in doing so. The first acts of a foresight initiative involve answering the question, “What future?

4. What’s worth exploring is change
There’s not much for the futurist to do in exploring the present, other folks are far more expert at that. Our value is in looking at change and the intersections of different kinds of change. In fiction, it’s also change that matters. If a character doesn’t change, if there are no points of no return, if nothing really happens, you’ve set a scene but not told a story. In foresight, if you get caught up in the discovery of what’s going on now, you may end up a little smarter, but it’s much more valuable to get at vital changes, what they mean, and how things could turn out.

5. Show don’t tell
Good futures work is about conveying insights and wisdom, but also about explaining, supporting, and giving examples. So like the writer admonished to “show, don’t tell,” in communicating about the future, examples and specifics and the concrete do better work than generalities. Concepts and new framings are powerful, but without the support of a “such as,” or “for example” the listener or reader may not get or accept what you are talking about.

6. Story telling is the thing
Futures work includes telling stories, often those are scenarios–narratives of the future. And the more they work as stories, the better a job they do in getting ideas about the future across to people. The scenarios I’ve worked on lately are better stories, with greater attention to real human lives, ideas, and reactions. Too much of my work in the past played out technologies for technologies’ sake, at the expense of true, deep insights on people. It’s not that I didn’t know the importance of people in futures stories, it’s just that I’ve gained strength in know how to focus on that side.

Image: rahego, via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License

On moral YouTube*: Is the Internet our new teacher, parent, and pastor?

February 18, 2025May 13, 2010 by John B. Mahaffie

A university soccer player’s reprehensible fouling becomes an instant Youtube hit. Reality show villains are the topic of “did you see…” discussions the next day at workplaces all over. The actions of ball players and politicians, pop stars and actors, on and off stage or field or legislative floor, become the stuff of moral outrage. They also become the stuff of moral lessons: for adults and for children.

The video above, just one version of dozens of the incident, got 2.4 million views on YouTube.

We used to share moral lessons through stories: “the boy who cried wolf” and so on. More and more, it’s up to real and fictional characters in modern entertainment, to instruct us through their actions.

And with Youtube and other social places on the Internet, the choices of what moral lessons to share and emphasize are in the hands of crowds. Do we vote by viewing? By sharing or linking? It’s not a pastor with a parable who is teaching us through moral stories, it’s a Facebook friend or an officemate, sharing a link.

What may be the biggest change in this is the directness of the connection between people and stories: instead of a pastor, an editor, or an author intervening, what gains widest viewing is what gets the most buzz, and gets to us.

We don’t yet know what it all adds up to. Is it a good mechanism for forming and strengthening our cultural and social norms? Or does it weaken them? We may never know–it will be hard to tease out the effects with all the other changes in society. No matter what, we’d better understand what people are seeing and sharing, even if it means dipping into new media, and following the trails of buzz where they lead.

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*this title rips off the title of John Gardner’s 1978 book, On Moral Fiction, which offers a detailed argument about how and why fiction, in particular, and the arts, in general should assert morals.

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

February 18, 2025April 30, 2009 by John B. Mahaffie

We’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

February 18, 2025March 19, 2009 by John B. Mahaffie

My 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.

Previous post on reframing: Framing and reframing, part 1: our mental frames shape how we see things

Talk to the frog–the fable as told to me

February 18, 2025June 19, 2008 by John B. Mahaffie

frog I 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.

What we can learn from 60-second lectures

February 18, 2025April 29, 2008 by John B. Mahaffie

J. T. Cobb, blogging at Mission to Learn recently wrote about a 60-second lecture series done at the University of Pennsylvania. This caught my eye because, first, I attended Penn for college and also because (note my previous post) I have been focused for a long time on how to be effective in presentations and communication about the future.

Cobb extracts some insights from the 60-second lectures on the importance (and difficultly) of getting to the point, the power of stories and props, and the essentialness of honest titles. This is good advice. I viewed about 10 of the lectures. Only a few really got something done in a minute or two, but seeing their attempts was instructive anyway. I suspect this is an art form that will develop further in the YouTube era of short video clips.

I had the chance almost immediately after reading his post to give a 20-minute talk–what a luxury of time! I put some of his thinking to use and got a great response.