visioning

A view of the future has to speak to today

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To be useful, a vision of the future has to speak to today. It has to help you decide on things to do right now.

Savvy foresight clients always say to me that they need the "what for" in the work we do for them. They mean, they want insights and help figuring out what the future view we're helping them have means to what they have to do right now.

And they are exactly right. Without connections to our lives and work today, a view of the future is not much more than playing with ideas–fun, entertaining, but not helpful.

At the same time, it's essential to not let the focus on "what for" back you off from really exploring your future. Working on strategy without a true view into the future is downright dangerous. It is fire, ready, aim.

So what are you supposed to do? It's simple to recognize, but hard to execute. You need to build views of your future, for example ten years from now–2021–and then focus carefully on how things would change, and what you would need or want to do between now and that year. 

You can work backwards or forwards doing this: tracing possible pathways from today to 2021 or working back in time from the 2021 outcomes to see how we might have gotten there, or working backwards and forwards in time. 

Ultimately, with ideas about where things are headed, and what changes will or must begin to happen now, your strategic options and needs will show through. You will have connected a view of 2021 to things you need to do right now, and you will have made the future relevant to today and clearly connected to your actions now.

So to put it succinctly, any foresight activity should end with "now let's begin."

 

Image: adapted from Mike Licht, notionscapital.com, via Flickr, cc attribution license

First, you should envision

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My good friend Mike Richmond, who advises companies in the packaging sector on strategy, likes the quote: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” He tells most every group this, he’s a huge advocate for visioning and foresight, along with strategic goal setting, and roadmapping. His clients know where they are trying to go, and work to choose the right road to get them there.

Mike’s quote has various sources and attributions. It’s sometimes called Hildebrant’s Principle.

The Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, weighed in in along the same lines:

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”

That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

I don’t much care where–” said Alice.

Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.

Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

–Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 6

Mike, Hildebrant, and the Cheshire Cat are right. You ought to figure out where you are trying to go. This is critical to anyone, any organization, and it ought to underpin any foresight effort.

So what should you do first when you want to explore your future? If you begin by looking at the trends at play, shaping your future, you’re doing something understandable, and quite typical, but perhaps dangerous. What’s the danger? It’s that you will accept future possibilities as what you are subject to, rather than what you can shape. So you need to not just know where you going, you need to decide where you want to go.

So start with a vision: your vision, the one you prefer. Do that before you get on the road to go somewhere. Get on the right road!

Image: commons.wikimedia.org

Why I love introducing scenario thinking to people

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Scenario workshop flipchartScenario workshop flipchartScenario workshop flipchartScenario workshop flipchartScenario workshop flipchartAs a futurist, my favorite thing is to work with groups to develScenario workshop flipchartScenario workshop flipchartop scenarios. The technique is powerful and it’s not easy for people to comprehend and do. But the rewards are enormous.

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. Every group I’ve done this with over 20 years has exceeded my expectations and probably their own, as well. They come up with marvelous, provocative ideas, and important insights for their organizations. I’ve learned from being a part of each group, and I’ve seen the people I’ve worked with gain from the experience.

It is clear that 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 also 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—that there are parts of their future they can shape, starting now.

So take this note as a call for more scenario building in organizations. This great experience should be shared by far more people. I am looking forward to my next chance to work with a group on scenarios.

The power of the paleo future

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Popular Mechanics 1950 view of 2000 "Because everything in her home is waterproof, the housewife of 2000 can do her daily cleaning with a hose"  Paleo Future is a blog that explores past ideas about the future. Its authors mine old books and magazines, movies, and literature for what we used to think the future would be like. It’s a visually-rich and fun site to visit, and it can be insightful and instructive for people trying to improve how they and their organizations think about the future. You might find an image there that could be the basis of a discussion with colleagues about your organization’s future. I have long used the cartoon above, from Popular Mechanics 1950, in presentations to illustrate a simple, but essential thing about foresight—our tendency to extrapolate one trend at a time. The image (posted above) looked out 50 years to a future of homelife in the year 2000. The home and life shown is utterly unchanged from 1950, except that the materials and surfaces in the home are plastic, and can be cleaned daily with a hose. This is a classic example of assuming a single change for the future and holding other things the same. We do this instinctively—it’s hard to envision the future, so we tend to do it with just one big change played out against a backdrop that’s actually the present. Past ideas about the future that envisioned a time we’ve now lived through give us the chance to see how the forecast turned out, and consider why the forecaster might have been right or wrong. Equally interesting is when the forecast timing was all wrong and the ideas about the future, while they haven’t happened yet, are still interesting and provocative. For example, we still don’t have robotic household servants (Roomba aside), so even a 50 year-old forecast about them might include interesting issues and ideas to consider. You can take images and stories like those in Paleo Future and start a conversation with colleagues. Explore how and why the visionaries were right or wrong, or partly right and partly wrong. Then consider whether your ideas about the future share some of those flaws—maybe, like the Popular Mechanics forecaster, you’ve fallen for a one-trend future view.

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