John Mahaffie

A key to success in communicating about change is to know as much as you can about what others are feeling and thinking. So take a walk in their shoes.

There’s probably a gap between your views and what’s on the minds of the people you are trying to reach. What matters to you may not matter to them, and how they think about things is probably not how you think about things. So you have to try to bridge that gap, and get through to people on their terms.

It takes a fight with yourself to keep that fixed in your mind as you prepare and as you communicate. It helps if you are empathetic by nature. If so, channel that and make sure you get the most out of your natural tendency. If not, you will have to try to bridge this gap intellectually, by preparation and by keeping open the question on behalf of others, “what’s in it for me?” Ask that question, and answer it honestly, not from your point of view, but from the point of view of others who are key stakeholders.

It may be that your instinct in hearing about others’ reactions to things is to think, at worst: “those idiots!” and at best: “those poor, misguided souls.” Neither thought helps the cause of getting ideas about change through to people. Instead, you have to take at face value—as a fact—whatever reaction people have. You have to work with that, not deny it or argue with it. It is part of the system you are dealing with, you won’t change it by dismissing it, and probably won’t by fighting against it. You need to accommodate it.

Also, as I’ve written in earlier posts, you won’t always change people’s minds with a technical, factual argument. You often have to find an argument that works for them, not for you, and it may be an emotional one. Chances are, you have a technical knowledge-base on the question at hand, but don’t assume your knowledge will be effective in changing people’s minds. What’s in their hearts? What are their hopes and fears? Find out! You can be much more effective if you know what you can about that.

See also “Getting to know the anti-you” on finding people who are distinctly different from you that can help you take a fresh perspective.

Also, my Leading Futurists LLC colleague Jennifer Jarratt and I co-authored an essay recently on "Reframing the Future" that elaborates on the importance of understanding what is in people’s minds as you try to get them to explore the future.

Image: Sabrina Campagna, cc license, via Flickr

Presentism is the tendency people have in studying and writing about history to apply today’s values to a prior time. I always noticed this on the TV Show M*A*S*H, which, to me, blended Vietnam-era sensibilities with a Korean War story line. Presentism is one of the biggest dangers in historical analysis, since it can lead to interpretations of past behavior that are simply wrong.

When we explore the future, we can fall into the same trap. One tendency is to look at a single dimension of change, for example, the commercialization and proliferation of a new technology, holding the rest of the world constant. We get today’s world with a twist. We might, through this, have a view of our world with photovoltaic energy, otherwise unchanged, or our world with $500 per barrell oil, otherwise unchanged. So many other things will have also happened that will shape our values, attitudes, behavior, and what’s happening around us. The world is never “otherwise unchanged.”

Another tendency–which is extremely hard to avoid–is to look at future possibilities with today’s attitudes. Routinely, in my work as a futurist, I hear people say that the next wave of computer and communication technology is cold and impersonal. They say, “where’s the human contact?”. But when that next wave of technology arrives, for example when we got instant messaging and mobile telephony, we found that more people were in touch with others, more of the time.

If we take a “one trend future” approach, our efforts will not be adequate. We are likely to overlook countertrends, amplifying trends, social forces, cultural forces, and so on. The ongoing effort in foresight is to try to understand how the future might shape up against a backdrop of social forces and conditions undergoing constant change. That is hard to do, and is surely a task we can never truly complete. But we have to try.

A frank acknowledgement of our “presentism” in discussions with colleagues, and even to ourselves, can go a long way towards avoiding narrow explorations of the future, and can keep us sharp and attentive to the wide sweep of forces of change we need to pay attention to. So ‘fess up, admit your limitations, then fight your way past them. Don’t be a presentist when you need to be a futurist.

Molecular biologist Deric Bownds, in Deric Bownds’ Mindblog, has written insightfully on this topic. [Link]