A Futuring 101 Deep Dive: Part 1
In simple terms, Futuring is like surfing.
The goal of a surfer is to ride gnarly waves and eventually return to the beach. "To ride" is to sense and play with multiple uncertain conditions in the moment.
Surfers aim for no specified goal like arriving at point in space or time in a pre-planned way, or to execute a move in a time period or in a formalized way like in gymnastics or ice skating. The entire objective is to play with ungoverned conditions in creative and athletic ways.
Surfing seems antifragile, as coined by Nassim Talib. The act of surfing takes advantage of randomness in a scenario with potential black swans.
Futuring, like surfing, is sensing conditions in the moment and skillfully adjusting responses to optimize the ride.
Futures Thinking is a fluency like mastering a skill or settling into a new home. It's the same way that mastery of a language or financial or digital domains is a fluency.
Arriving at a revelation is a process.
Futures Thinking is sharpened critical thinking and applies imagination to uncertain conditions over time. It taps into intuitive ways of knowing.
What matters in Futures Thinking is foreseeing possible futures unfolding today, backed by empirical evidence, rigorously shorn of delusional thoughts. Like a surfer, we strive to ride reality happening in real time while imaging "what if...".
01/ Futuring and its Purpose
Futures processes apply new mental lenses. They help forestall prolonging the status quo.
What's wrong with prolonging the status quo? What's wrong with the way things are? Are we living in a utopia? No, we are not living in a utopia, by definition.
First, we can all think of problems, even crises - real or perceived, in our world. Second, imperfect or not, a steady state status quo is impossible. The atoms that comprise everything in the universe respond to forces constantly. Living things respond to their environments, intentionally or not.
Futures Thinking develops mental muscles to pre-think, pre-imagine, and even pre-feel how conditions might change and the implications of those changes. This enables us to imagine more numerous and detailed possible futures. The intellect better understands consequences of intentional actions, and emotions and visceral senses understand in their ways.
It's like writing an essay just to practice writing essays. The entire point is to enrich the imagination and to sharpen perception and critical thinking in a select domain.
02/ What Futures is Not
Futures Thinkers try to be, at best, objective - neither utopian nor dystopian but protopian. Still, being optimistic at heart helps Futurists weather the firehose of troubling signals and trends of futures. We see opportunities everywhere.
As such, futuring is generally considered a Woo-free Zone, i.e., devoid of "woo-woo".
When practiced for optimal results, Futures principles and methods are rooted in empirical reality. For Shimoshi NM, whether conditions are somehow intended by forces unknown to science is out of scope.
So - no dragons, zombies, space aliens, or miracles. Nothing quantum. Nothing that breaks physics. Nothing supernatural.
03/ The Futures Process
Futuring and scenarios precede and bolster standard strategic planning.
It's a mindset applied to data, assets, and teamwork prior to and during common organizational decision making.
At strategic plan implementation, Futurists continue to scan for changing conditions in foreseen scenarios. External signals of changing conditions continue to inform contingency decisions. The organization may deploy its resources adaptively or disruptively to achieve its vision and mission - the North Star.
04/ Futures Outcomes
The Futures framework produces a sort of model. Unlike, say, an economic model, these models are in the form of qualitative complexity system maps and scenarios.
There is no specific deliverable, such as a report or presentation. There is documentation of a sort - in the form of artifacts of the process.
The outcomes of Futuring are unlike those of processes for strict tasks. Futuring, like possible futures themselves, does not arrive at its own end result. It is a fluid thinking and imaginative process that informs and guides other end results.
Like the process of surfing is for the sport.
So Futuring (a.k.a. strategic foresight) is absolutely not prediction.
The Hero’s Journey
For as long as there have been stories there have been tales of heroes and their internal growth via grueling trials. It’s the initiation rite, the vision quest, or agonizing ordeal from which a character emerges an evolved person. They're heroes like Jonah, Luke Skywalker, Frodo and thousands more forgotten progenitors of today’s preserved examples.
Not all of these fictional characters are considered worthy of the journey or a happy ending by their peers or elders, or the figures they meet along the way, or even by the heroes themselves. But all take the plunge.
In stories, a hero leaves their reality to encounter situations that force them to question everything they knew about the world and their existence. In these fictional worlds, there may be dragons.
This diving or being thrust into murky depths must be grindingly challenging to be effective – intellectually, emotionally, and physically.
The journey is no memorized lesson. It’s an experience. It’s when doubt boggles the mind – why am I not safe at home, comfortable and content? Why did I consent to this, WANT this? Will I be alright in the end, require healing, or be fundamentally broken?
How one emerges depends on the character and the story, the journey - the process. It culminates in a discovered knowledge, sometimes with a reconciliation, or an elixir to pass on. Always with a radically adjusted worldview and broadened capacities.
The revelations may be so profound that we might look for excuses to dive into other strenuous rabbit holes.
Note: We encounter people every day in the throes of their own Hero’s Journey. People who often seem “down”, confused, or not okay. So be kind out there.
How Futuring Fuels Strategic Planning
Now let's take a hard turn into applying Futures Thinking to organizational planning.
Futures work is most often adopted by established organizations that have big responsibilities: challenges to meet, risks to mitigate, and opportunities to seize when conditions are ripe. These enterprises understand process and operations, from annual planning to financial forecasting.
Still, established organizations seek enriching inputs to these operational routines - for ways to infuse more flexibility and resiliency toward stronger strategic and contingency planning, and greater openness in imagining possible futures.
Futuring precedes strategic planning and parallels execution. It is not risk management. Adding this layer of continuous information + imagination nourishes greater decision-making confidence.
The strategic planning process map starting with futuring
Vision/Mission to Organization Goals to Means to Strategic Plan(s) to Execution
Futuring offers visionary concepts + 1-3 preferred futures and talking points that boost stakeholder buy-in on an eventual strategic plan.
More than that, Futuring offers more than one Plan B. Rather, it offers pre-imagined macro strategic goals to swerve to as conditions inevitably morph. There is no "problem" and only open, iteratively derived "solutions". We flex to possibilities in uncertainty.
What's next is continued Horizon Scanning to watch expected conditions and their interactions play out in futures scenarios. Then organizations pull pre-planned levers to direct conditions toward preferred futures.
Case Study of a Strategic Pivot Using Futures
Organization A crafts a set of possible, plausible, and probable futures in their domain and selects a couple of these as preferable. Six months later, continued Horizon Scanning reveals that conditions have changed. That might mean that one of the preferred futures has moved from being a probable future to merely possible.
Now the organization has choices. If they still prefer that future, are they in a position to change micro strategies and tactics to make it happen in the timeline and way that they want? If not, is one of the other futures now preferable? And can they marshal the resources to respond for best results? Can they make the case for this flex to employees, partners, and stakeholders?
If this organization can draw a direct line from their earlier strategy to the new strategy under new conditions, it makes more sense to everyone. Plus, they can feel more confident making tactical decisions.
Heroes Journey = Futuring
Too much damned trouble, some say.
Today, prediction and growth models are all that some deem necessary for an organization to survive and thrive. A target to hit and explode into disruption that showers the world with shards of capital opportunities.
See how that's starting to seem short-sighted and even irrational?
Futuring is not (usually) mortally dangerous like a Hero’s Journey. Futuring fertilizes strategy. To accomplish anything great, we leave behind the safety and familiarity of current reality and imagine the possible. And that leads to true resilience.
One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight, for a very long time, of the shore. Andre Gide, 1925 |
Next Up
In A Futuring 101 Deep Dive: Part 2 we examine the 4 stages of Futuring.
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