Humans are good at pattern recognition. But we see patterns based on personal experience and things that are close and familiar. This is called confirmation bias because that act of recognition typically confirms what we already believe. See also: Confirmation Bias in Foresight: Scanning to Find What You Already Believe. That is the biggest and most routine bias in observing change. It's more an instinct and even if people know better, they lapse into thinking that way.
There is no "everybody"
A great example is our assumptions about Millennials. It's common to see them as tech-savvy, urban, Starbucks-frequenting, plaid-wearing, indie-band-listening. That stereotype is a shorthand we use for understanding and explaining them, but it's dangerously narrow. It has been fixed in our heads and gets reinforced all the time. Then we look for it in the world and say to ourselves, "there's another one".
In fact, we base much of our view of the Millennials on what is a few percent, total, of people born 1980 to 2000. There is no "they all" you can lump together. What's everyone else born between 1980 and 2000 doing?
The same is true for Baby Boomers, Gen X, Hispanics, immigrants, Republicans, etc. etc. There is no everybody.
What to do about it
1. Check yourself. To understand the world and how it's changing better, examine your assumptions about what's going on. Assess your biases and face them. Write them down, say them out loud. Say, "of course I am biased because I am _________."
2. Step away from your worldview. Do what you can to deepen your understanding of others. This means getting past stereotypes, and wholesale categories. Read and view stories told in others' voices. Talk to strangers. Listen.
3. Walk a mile in another's shoes. Immerse yourself in other communities where you can. Watch and listen. Read and view stories from diverse viewpoints. Follow Instagram or photoblogs from places and cultures and groups far and far different from you. Think of someone quite unlike you. Then, look at things with those different eyes. For example, if you are exploring change for a consumer product, go to a store that sells products like that, "wearing" a different persona. What would that person see and care about? You can't get 100% there, but you will move off the safe zone of things that are familiar and comfortable to you.
4. Be ready to be wrong. Assume your conclusions will often be wrong. This means, despite your hard work at trying to transcend your biases, assume you won't get there every time. Knowing you might be biased will protect you from relying too much on your "certainty" about what's true.
Take these steps and you'll stop just confirming what you think you know. You will start knowing new things.
Another post: Talk to the Frog, has a parable to tell that relates to this post.
Of the 41 posts to ForesightCulture during 2011, the 12 below got the most visitors. The list reflects my main focus: the art and craft of exploring the future. Two posts got particularly personal for futurists, and drew a lot of interest from people in the field:
“I am a futurist, leave off the quote marks” and “A typology of futurists”
Just one post on the “content” side, i.e. about the future, made it in too, a 2021 scenario of a shopper.
Here are the top posts for 2011 in order:
Get comfortable with complexity — How we have to fight the tendency to explain change as have a single cause, and embrace that things are complex: many forces, interacting.
I am a futurist. Leave off the quote marks! — Why futurist is a genuine profession. How futurists bring value. An argument to leave off the air quotes when you talk about futurists.
A typology of futurists — Musing over different “types” of futurists; what they do and why it’s powerful.
5 critical things in foresight — The five things you must have for foresight: a purpose, a mindset, a habit, a toolkit, and a community.
I made the case in my previous post Experiencing the future Part 1: Getting beyond analysis and changing minds that experiencing the future is vital to good foresight and benefits organizations. I don’t claim to be a practitioner of the most exciting and advanced experiential futures, but I have decades’ experience getting real business execs in real organizational situations to engage the future better, adding experiences that fit what business seems able to embrace and make useful.
Below I offer some “how to” suggestions for making foresight more experiential. For more on the leading edge, have a look at The Sceptical Futuryst, Stuart Candy’s blog—his topic list is chock full of intriguing and valuable ideas about helping people experience the future. And try a Google search on “experiential futures”.
The ideas below range from the simple to the somewhat more challenging and complex.
Better scanning – See Talk to the Frog and the ideas I share in Ideas on effective environmental scanning in the digital age which make the case for understand how the world is changing better, where possible experiencing that change first hand. The philosophy there is, “get out from behind the mouse.” This is the key to getting a more visual, tactile, and experiential sense of future possibilities–where the first clues or examples of them are in our world now.
Clear ideas about the future – The best foresight concepts are evocative descriptions of future possibilities, which begin to get our heads into something new. For example, the concept of virtual reality. This kind of futures experience is in our thoughts, but that is already more powerful than just engaging with data and analysis about change.
An image of something that may become big in our future. The Espresso Book Machine produces books on demand
Images – There are, by definition, no pictures of the future. But we can do at least two things about that:
1). Create pictures of the future as an artist can, or you can do without art skills, simply doodling, collaging, etc. and
2). Finding pictures of things that may already exist, but aren’t commonplace, and represent something we may see much more of in the future. For example, a picture of a goods-producing kiosk such as the Espresso Book Machine is inspiring of a wide-range of future ideas about goods produced on demand.
Role playing – Having people get their heads into a particular identity, different from their own, is a powerful way to begin to shift their understanding and give them a different experience. And you can get a group to do this together, putting them into a simulated situation where their identities and circumstances are different, showcasing what might be true in the future. We also like to work with the “TOPs” (technical, organizational, and personal) multiple perspectives method with groups. This concept, described in detail here, was originated by futurist and systems science expert Hal Linstone. It helps a group understand the common perspectives that shape and are shaped by an organization’s decisions. We’ve had great success asking a group to break into three groups, each taking up one of these perspectives to confront issue or ideas about change.
“suffering” – A version of role playing is to have people lose something, or simulate losing something to highlight a potential future change. We had this experience with a futures team who decided to have those participating in a dinner be fed in three ways: normal food, a lavish feast, and plain rice and (simulated) dirty water. Each group had something to think and talk about, from different, simulated perspectives. You can also consider the opposite of “suffering”–Why not try out some utopian ideas and get people to describe and play with what the future would be like if something great happened, such as the end of hunger or cancer.
Getting people to see, touch, experience the leading edge of change: Packaging Executives visit a Center for Hard to Recycle Materials
In the world – It’s particular powerful with office-bound people to get them “out from behind the mouse” and out into experiences different from their own. That can mean seeing things that exist today, but that represent a change we will likely see more of. For example, we put a group of packaging executives on a bus and took them first to a standard municipal recycling plant and then to a center for hard to recycle materials (aka a “CHaRM”). The CHaRM is a rare facility–at the time there were only a few in the world. But it may represent a vital future in their business. Despite their being in the packaging business, some had never been to a conventional recycling facility, let alone to a CHaRM. It was eye-opening for some and idea-provoking for most of them. I reflected on this kind of experience in an earlier post, Offsetting your suburban, middle class, white collar bias which advocates for you getting loose of whatever built-in perspectives and biases you might have.
Scenario building – I’ve written several times about the scenario method and my fondness for it. Its power in really getting people’s head into the future is remarkable and reliable. Scenarios go far beyond basic trend analysis and forecasting to depict in words and/or pictures whole futures, with the changes we are thinking about portrayed in real situations. The greatest power of the method is in experiencing the process, though the outputs can be terrific tools for communicating about the future and sharing the experience with others.
Farmville and other mobile/web games teach people about big complex systems
Gaming – Games give players the power to shape future outcomes. They are a way to bring alive the forces and countercurrents possible that we try to convey in scenarios. Consider for example the power of fantasy ball teams in bringing to life the meaning and power of strategic decisions. More games are about life and decisions than ever. The mobile/computer game Farmville is teaching its virtual farmer users about climate change, for example.
Other tools, techniques and methods
Virtual worlds – online and console gaming can simulate futures in elaborate and immersive ways, including allowing players to game out outcomes of decisions.
Experiential scenarios – a method for bringing future possibilities more alive for people’s learning and understanding, debate and discussion. It goes beyond art and narrative storytelling to, for example, create experiences in the real world, such as simulating a pandemic’s effects on a city, as was done in Coral Cross.
Artifacts from the future – a long-time feature at the back of Wired magazine that features similated objects; consumer products, for example, from some future year. See: Found futures.
No matter how far into the experiential to reach, you’ll gain something from working to bring the future more alive with your colleagues. It’s worth the effort and the risk you’ll take. Give it a try!
Images: Espresso Book Machine via ondemandbooks.com, CHaRM by jbmahaffie, Farmville by tankgore1 via Flickr
It’s not possible to directly experience the future, it hasn’t happened yet, you cannot go there. And it’s also not possible to directly experience the past—we don’t have a way to go back. The situations have a lot in common–our understanding of past and future are challenged in much the same ways.
I’ve played with the problem on both ends. Before I became a futurist, I was intent on becoming an archaeologist, and studied archaeology at the bachelor’s and master’s levels. Over those years, I met a lot of archaeologists who went beyond books and field research to understand the past better. They tried out ancient technologies and lifeways. They were experiential archaeologists.
Eccentric Flint, Late Classic Maya
My own experiential effort was brief—I tried flint knapping—the shaping process used to make stone tools from cryptocrystalline stone (flint or chert). That gave me an appreciation for some of the finer specimens of stone axes, blades, spear points and arrowheads we were excavating at a Woodland Indian site in southern Illinois, and the amazing Mayan eccentrics (see picture) I learned about when working in Belize. The main results of my experiential effort were cut and blending hands. But I gained an appreciation for ancient technologists.
A recent article in the New Yorker brought this back to mind (abstract here). It tells the story of Lucy Worsley the Chief Curator, at Historic Royal Palaces, a non-profit that runs the Tower of London, Kensington Palace, and Hampton Court Palace, Kew Palace, and the Banqueting House at Whitehall.
Worsley’s work is about bringing to life the lives of Britons (mainly royals) from centuries ago. Among the big experiences she has worked on is recreating and eating a meal served to George III on February 6, 1789.
Leading edge futurists are doing things like this too, and their efforts are a superb way to bring the future alive—to get people beyond the analytical to ideas (experiences) about the future they can actually feel and understand.
Futurist Stuart Candy is one of the field’s leading practitioners. He frequently blogs about experiential futures at The Sceptical Futuryst. Stuart has developed techniques around experiential futures scenarios and recently completed a PhD on that topic, “The Futures of Everyday Life: Politics and the Design of Experiential Scenarios.”
Lucy Wolsey—the experiential historian—has caught a lot of flack from more “serious” historians who think her efforts are silly, misleading, etc. The experiential futurist risks the same thing, with the most likely push-back being from business clients who think their people won’t tolerate things like role playing, and that good business behavior is about PowerPoint briefings in a meeting room, not going places, seeing things, and trying things.
There is at least one blog that focuses on what’s wrong with “experiential archaeology”, it’s called Bad Archaeology. Its authors make the reasonable point that “We cannot shake off the contemporary nature of the experience” when trying to simulate the past. And further, “When we experience places like Stonehenge, Giza or West Kennet, we are experiencing 21st Century, contemporary places.” I think these guys go too far, and they’ve painted themselves into a philosophical corner. There’s plenty of learning and insight to be had by standing at the foot of the Great Pyramid.
The same problem applies to the future, our presentist tendencies are unavoidable as we try, pretend even, to experience what the future might be like.
But I’ve seen over the years that to shake people loose from their fixed thoughts about the future, and to get them to examine their assumptions, you have to try to take them new places, and analytical thinking won’t always get that done. Experiences help change minds.
Lucy Worsley, debating the validity and value of experiential work, told a scholarly audience: “I don’t feel my job will be done until history is as popular as the ‘The X-Factor.’” I am sure they hated that thought, but she’s right, you get more done if you engages people’s minds and hearts, whether trying to have them understand the past or the future.
Not being from a traditionally, academic-based discipline, futurists are less persnickety than historians about the value and validity of experiences. But these efforts can still be a hard sell. It’s worth trying.
Foresight gives us grey areas, lots of them. And almost nothing significant we want to figure out about the future is definable or predictable enough to sharpen things to a clear black and white. So exploring the future of anything means you have to tolerate uncertainty.
If you’ve found your way to this blog, you may not suffer from discomfort with uncertainty—I hope you don’t. But chances are, some of the people you work with do, and so will others you will encounter along the way. They will (I predict!) either be opposed to the “squishiness” of what you are doing, or they will feel so certain themselves about things, that they won’t like the grey. Quite likely, both those things will be true.
You can't let these folks win the arguments: your foresight work can't produce certainty, nor can you let folks tell you that unless you pin things down, what you are doing isn’t valid.
So what can you do about this?
First, there’s a simple lesson you need to teach and re-teach:
We cannot predict the future with certainty
There is a range of possibility for any big question or large system you need to explore
Exploring that range is what foresight is about, and it’s what makes us able to be ready for uncertain outcomes. We should not pick a future and aim for it–that's too risky, we have to keep our sense of alternative futures open
Second, set expectations early, and remind people about them along the way. Keep your folks aware that you are exploring an uncertain thing, but that they can get value and ultimately be able to make better decisions by understanding more about the future.
Third, in workgroups, discussions, electronic communications, and so on, keep a watch out for “shut down” comments or actions that look to either provide a clear “answer” to the future you’re exploring, or that looks to invalidate your efforts. You will need to respond, in whatever way fits the culture and politics of your organization, but in a way that counters the negative push back you are getting.
Fourth, if you can avoid collaborating with folks who want black and white, sharp-line answers, consider doing so, but remember Machiavelli's advice: “keep your friends close, your enemies closer.” Or, put more bluntly by Lyndon Johnson, "
"It’s probably better to have [your enemy] inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."
It may be better to have these folks on board, where you can try to build their understanding.
For more on the grey areas, and alternative futures, see:
Sorry, no, not offering free samples! (Though you can always lure me in to sharing thoughts on the future with you). But I can share tips on getting deeper thinking and scouting on the future going, costing you only some time, and less of that than you would spend otherwise.
Sometimes there’s a little bit of lead time when you will be exploring the issues, forces, and trends at play for a particular subject. If you have at least a few weeks before you’ll start really probing a new topic, you can “chum the waters” a bit, and get data flowing and insights percolating. It makes a difference, first, to tell your colleagues and friends that you’re looking into the topic. Feed them some insights you have, maybe even provocative ones they cannot help responding to. Make it interesting. Get the sharing going and your colleagues will become scouts—they often can’t help but think about the topic on your behalf, and share a thought or two along the way, once you’ve started them. Also, you’ll owe them some news on what you found out—share back! And you will owe them your best thoughts when it’s their turn to pose questions.
Second, you can sign up for newsletters, newfeeds, listservs and so on, in advance of plunging into the topic more earnestly. For example, if you have a topic that isn’t likely to have a lot of content flowing on the Internet, but that will have some, you can create a Google Alert, which will send you an email with links whenever the topic, constructed as a search, comes up on the Web. This will get you a range of intelligence on the topic, and it will “push” that information to you, regularly, until you ask Google to stop.
Third, there are a number of blogs and e-news sources that report on the big trends at play. Their authors are doing work you might otherwise have to do. We can wonder why they offer it up for free, but better yet is to quietly enjoy the fruits of their labor, and be happy they are doing it. As you do research and reading, look for which sources keep coming up as useful to you, and make them a regular stop, or set up to get their new postings.
These are just a couple of ways to get a bit of help, at no cost (but your time). I use them all the time as I explore a changing set of futures issues. They are good foresight habits to cultivate and adapt to your needs.
I studied Southeast Asian Archaeology in college around 1980 under Chet Gorman. I was a huge admirer. Since he took his coffee black, so did I, and I do to this day. Chet taught us up close and personal details about ancient life in the valleys and caves of Thailand. As I understand it, on his expeditions in the region, he even explored in some of the war zones, including Cambodia, at the tail end of the Vietnam War. Chet also told us he sailed some of the islands in Southeast Asia in an outrigger canoe, loaned him by an island chief. He was totally cool.
Chet used to say that he was just a digger, and that he left theories to others. His job was to reveal what he could about the past, as accurately as he could, with his spade and trowel, and a powerful analytical mind.
I have lately been thinking about Chet, who died at just 43 of cancer while I was still at the University of Pennsylvania. I liked his sleeves-rolled-up approach to his discipline and his modest view about just being a digger. In my work as a futurist, I have come to feel the same way. My tools are like his spade and trowel. Nothing grand or complicated, just good careful work.
I learn a lot from my peers’ exploration of ideas about foresight and when they share ideas from new and old theorists and philosophers. The conversations on the Foresight Network and the Association of Professional Futurists‘ listserv are rich, deep, and cutting edge. But most abstract thinking about the futures field doesn’t take a firm footing in my thinking, unless and until it meets up with experiences I’ve had over about 21 years exploring the future.
That is why you will see that Foresight Culture is about the nuts and bolts, and practicalities of exploring the future. It’s not a place where I try to break new ground on theory, but perhaps I can do so on practice–on applied futures. That is where I know I can bring some value. My colleagues continue to advance the theory, practice, and methodology of the futures studies field. I am happy to take a place with them, trowel in hand, on the applied futures beat.
You will note on the pages menu to the right a new page: The 27 habits of highly effective futurists. This is my thinking–and it's an evolving set–on the principles of good foresight. There are already more than 27, but I like the sound of that number. I'd love to hear what you think about the list.
A great example is our assumptions about Millennials. It's common to see them as tech-savvy, urban, Starbucks-frequenting, plaid-wearing, indie-band-listening. That stereotype is a shorthand we use for understanding and explaining them, but it's dangerously narrow. It has been fixed in our heads and gets reinforced all the time. Then we look for it in the world and say to ourselves, "there's another one".
