storytelling

Why we need scenarios to be ready for the future

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No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be…This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking 

–Isaac Asimov, Asimov on Science Fiction 1981

Organizations have to consider outside forces and trends as they build their strategies. But in most, too few people spend time thinking about how the future will shape the organization. Not enough of the knowledge and ideas of the organization finds its place in strategy. Leading firms use scenarios to solve these problems.

A science fictional way of thinking

Scenarios answer Asimov’s call for a “science fictional way of thinking”. They ask, “What if?” They are stories we build about future possibilities. The stories let us test and explore future risks and opportunities. 

The scenario building process draws out the insight of a team and helps make future challenges and opportunities clearer and more compelling. It gives participants a shared view of future possibilities. That view enriches their day-to-day work and strategic thinking.

We can use scenarios to think through potential decisions about strategy. The scenarios also become a tool for sharing strategic thinking with others. 

Most organizations have a good idea what they intend to do in the next few years. But that view can weaken their sense of more transformational change and bigger opportunities further out. Taking a look ten or even more years out lets us imagine bigger change. Then we can step back to today to understand what to do about it. 

The further into the future we look, the less certain we are about what will happen. But also, the further out we look the more our decisions today have the power to shape change and opportunity. 

This diagram shows how using scenarios can help us avoid just pursuing an “official” future. Official futures usually assume continuity. They tend to ignore both new threats and opportunities. Good foresight, exploring alternate scenarios, builds and maintains a broader view of what’s possible. 

Cone of uncertainty

Scenario building is a shared, immersive activity

The power of scenario building is in how it gets people to immerse themselves in the future. Working on scenarios leaves them no choice but to think both broadly and concretely about the future.

Once people have had the scenario-building experience, they have new ideas and places to go in their heads. They’ve got a much richer view of the future. They have a new mental habit–to think about alternative futures, not accepting that there’s some inevitable future out there. They should, and usually do, have a sense of empowerment. They discover there are parts of their future they can shape, starting now.

By the way, part of my practice is helping teams use scenarios. So, to be clear, I not only want you to do this, I’d love to help. We build scenario programs for all sorts of organizations. Here’s a page describing our support for workforce futures explorations.

Let me know if I can help you: jbmahaffie@leadingfuturists.biz and 202-271-0444.

Some of my other posts on scenarios:

Anachronisms

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In 10th grade, my English teacher, Mr. Simmons, put anachronism on our vocabulary test, and gave us the definition to memorize: “Something out of place or time”. Anachronisms are at issue in my professional work as a futurist and in my fiction writing. My futures work involves remembering that the future isn’t mostly the same as today, with a few changes (e.g. using only brainwaves to drive an internal combustion engine, gasoline-powered, four-door sedan).

My fiction writing has to involve intent focus on what would and would not be present in my stories, and since I’ve focused mainly on writing fiction set in the past, the potential for anachronisms is high.

Mr. Simmons used a broader definition of anachronism than most people do, most often, people use it to mean something in the present from the past, which no longer belongs. That’s the least of my worries. A story set in 2013 could have a butter churn standing in the corner, since such things can still exist as antiques (though the thing ought to be explained) but a story set in 1916 cannot have a mobile phone or a woman fighter pilot in it.

The arts of fiction and foresight involve thinking intently about these things. Everything matters. All the details count, and wrong details count multiply, and do only harm. It’s probably harder in futures, because we really don’t know what will change and how much. But in historical fiction, we can at least rule a lot of things out.

The biggest problem is not in material things, but in values and attitudes. It’s too easy to shine a current-day light on the past or the future which supposes that people back then or in that future will have the same values as today. They won’t or didn’t. I’ve learned to be humble about all this, it’s hard to get it right and you need to keep a watchful eye on yourself, and work at it.

Image: Mike Licht, via Flickr, creative commons attribution license

Six things studying the future has taught me about fiction writing

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On my foresight blog, I posted the reverse of this: “Six things fiction writing taught me about foresight” [LINK] 

Since the late 1980s, I’ve worked in the field of futures studies, also known as foresight. I am a consultant to any organization that will hire me to explore how the world is changing and where they might see challenges and find opportunities in that change. That work prepared me in certain ways for writing fiction. In fact, a big part of the work of a futurist is like writing fiction. Nothing is wholly known or provable about the future, so, in essence, you make it up. But like a novelist, you make up something based on logic, truth, and facts. My fiction work is based in history, and I stick to contextual setting truths about history, even as I have my way with my human characters within that reality.

Here are some key things I’ve carried from my work as a futurist to my efforts as a novelist:

1. Technology changes, but it’s the human changes that spring from that which matter most. I don’t write science fiction, but even Sci-Fi, in my limited experience with it, is really about the human things that technology does.

2. Placement in time of a story is a critical step and in that setting you have to get the conjecture right; avoiding anachronisms  and being as true as anyone can be to the times you are writing about. Whether a story is set in the future or the past, it’s important work to avoid putting too much of today’s values into the minds of people of another time. This is unavoidable, but we still have to try.

3. The world is a complex of systems connected to systems. Nothing is simple, and nothing has just one cause.

4. Conjecture is essential, and I’ve had the chance to build a habit of, and comfort with conjecture over years of working to suppose things about the future.

5. Storytelling has proven essential to getting across ideas about change in my work as a futurist. The stories meet what’s already in people’s heads, what George Lakoff calls “frames”. In fiction, your story doesn’t have much success unless it does that. So though we strive for originality, our characters may fit archetypes and other known qualities that the reader brings.

6. Exaggeration, or sharp contrasts, may make the difference in storytelling, as they do in getting ideas about the future across to people. So, even if we don’t think it will ever happen, we may spend time talking or writing as futurists about “what ifs” such as “zero waste” or “free energy.” In fiction, the lives of our characters cannot just be ordinary lives, at least not without something big happening too. We exaggerate, you could say, or at least draw sharp contrasts.

Image: rahego, via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License

Six things fiction writing taught me about foresight

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI 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

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. 
 

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.

Foresight illustrated: Considering different environmental scanning approaches

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Environmental Scanning Approaches The diagram above looks at how organizations may choose to monitor the forces and trends acting on their interests. It can help you consider how you do environmental scanning, and how to make it more valuable to you and your colleagues. Most competent organizations do periodic scanning, formally or informally, but they often do it in a bounded way. They get the obvious periodic due diligence done or have an ongoing culture of monitoring. They catch up with and keep up with their industry or sector, or current markets. But they often miss the longer-term forces that will shape their futures, and don't get early notice of the more speculative or hidden things that may become critically important. It's better to include some stretch thinking–to at least periodically explore beyond the current view of what's happening and what's important. Even better, the culture of foresight approach covers good monitoring of the sector, the market, etc. and the due diligence you need, stretches thinking, but makes those things a continuous habit. That is probably critical to your organization's success, and can move you from reacting to change, to anticipating it and discovering new opportunities.

Update: Please see also this special page on environmental scanning.

Making foresight a habit

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Foresight and futures thinking tools should be a part of everyday strategy making in organizations. Making it so means pushing back against the dominance of urgent, immediate problems, and short-term thinking. What we need to do is open up a space for foresight, and make it habitual.

We will always battle the widespread conviction that what is relevant is the immediate scene; this quarter’s performance and today’s issues. Short-term thinking is a condition of organizational life, but if left alone, it can drive out habitual foresight.

Making foresight a daily habit of more people in more organizations is a new kind of work. It is different from just being provocative and wowing an audience with gee whiz ideas about startling new technologies. Here’s what we need to do instead:

  • Keep the future on the agenda, bring up trends and themes of change in work meetings and planning sessions
  • Change what people expect when you talk about the future from the gee whiz, to useful, actionable ideas about emerging challenges and opportunities
  • As you get a new insight on the future from your scanning, think about who the 5 or 6 people in your organization are who you know should see it. Send it along to them with a comment or interpretation. Any busy colleague will appreciate it
  • Show people how to think about change. Model this by giving people an image of the future that relates to a question they are grappling with. For example, in the packaging sector, you imagine for them a near term future in which every package has a radio-frequency ID tag on it for automated inventory and checkout.

You can look across the entries in this blog for other ideas too. The goal we are aiming for—of making foresight a habit, is central to building and benefiting from a foresight culture.

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