5 things you can do to think like a futurist

Intent on beating the retailers at their own game, and seeing as New Year’s is the natural holiday for futurists, today we’re going to leapfrog both Thanksgiving and Christmas to start dispensing advice for the New Year!

And so here are five things you can do to think more like a trained futurist*.

Scan.  Scan, scan, and scan some more.  Trained futurists engage in a continual exercise classically known as environmental scanning.  For us it’s like breathing.  Find and flip through a lot of news and developments.  This isn’t classic research; it’s more like dipping your face into the fire hose.  Over time you’ll get a sense of patterns and shifts emerging out there in the world.  This is the raw info feed about the world from which trained futurists continually refine their notions of the nature of the possible.  It is from here that we typically pull the weak signals that we weave together into emerging issues.

Diversify Your Sources.  Whether you’re engaged in scanning or conducting more in-depth research, diversify your information sources and go farther afield to sniff out developments that might be important.  When scanning, this helps us identify emerging issues arising outside of classic industry/sector boundaries that might drive change that is in fact relevant to our concerns.  When doing research or even strategy development, the experiences, perspectives, and frameworks from outside of our concerns can often provide a breakthrough, through reframing or simple inspiration.

See the World Systemically.  Always ask yourself about connections, about the relationships that bind what you’re looking at with many other things in the world.  Think about upstream drivers and downstream effects.  Think about first, second, and third order impacts.  See the world around you as a web, see the strings of that web vibrate as feedback ripples around you.  Try thinking and note-taking in pictures, in diagrams that connect actors with each other and that link causes with effects with further effects, with even further effects.  And think about complexity: about how inputs don’t always relate to outputs; about sudden, unexpected shifts in the system; and how unexpected patterns can emerge from the undirected interactions of lots of individual actors…

Swing Both Ways.  Regularly alternate between deep dives into the work of great scholars and intellectually rigorous conceptual frameworks and the surface-skimming, social network-sampling activities of scanning.  Theory and mental models matter, so do not ignore them.  Always forecasting the futures of complex issues based solely on intuition and gut feeling is a poor practice.  At the same time, you need to draw upon your intuition and the capacity of your mind to see something entirely new.  Moving back and forth between these two approaches will keep your mind fresh while challenging it to always be rigorous and self-critical.

Be Humble.  Remind yourself that you don’t actually know how the universe works…

*recall: trained futurists are fundamentally dealing with the issue of change in society...

A better forecast for 3D printing

Today I was pleasantly surprised to come across what is by far the best example of proper forecasting regarding the future of 3D printing that I have seen yet.  It's an article titled, "A Skeptic's Guide to 3D Printing," from of all places, Booz & Company.

In particular, I like the authors' employment of well-documented patterns of change to develop their sense of the future potential and time horizon for 3D printing: experience curves, economies of scale, and total landed cost.  Would that more folks would employ some of these models when contemplating the future of emergent issues and technology.

Having said this, I also offer that this is an excellent example of how good forecasting, particularly that which aims beyond a three year horizon, should begin.  Beyond what these authors have presented there are a number of additional models that could and should be brought to bear in considering the multiple possible trajectories that 3D printing could follow.

Working the hype cycle, part 2

In my previous post today, "Working the hype cycle, part 1," I mentioned how I was wondering where on the Gartner hype cycle one would plot the entrance of the big consulting firms into a thought-leadership space.  After discussing it further in-house, I found myself thinking not of the hype cycle so much as the classic s-curve of issues development.

Trained, professional futurists, in addition to a great many other professionals, often use s-curves as our own thumbnail sketches as that sigmoid function is found so often in the maturation of public policy issues, development of technology, diffusion of tech, etc...  And so I began to think in terms of the s-curve, and more specifically, I began thinking about where you would expect to find different consultants entering a thought leadership/idea space.

Figure 1 is the result of my most recent thinking.

Figure 1: applying the s-curve to mapping thought leadership

Something like 2/3 the way through the curve you can see (what we're surmising as) the typical entry point for major consulting firms.  The reasons are neither terribly mysterious nor necessarily nefarious.  It generally isn't until about that point in the development of an issue that there is sufficient "trend" data or enough cases to study to begin to propose any sort of "best practice" action in response to an issue confronting a large organization.

Firms run by trained futurists, such as ours, are oriented below that point, spanning the entire first 2/3 of the curve, but often most useful in the Foresight Zone just before the "Application Gap."  And the application gap refers to the period of time in the development of an issue in which there is very little in the way of sound new wisdom to apply; no best practices to implement, no well-studied improvement projects to launch.  Just people more comfortable with risk and ambiguity deciding to wade in/strike early.

Put simply, our job is to help frame the full set of issues that will be cascading over you in the years ahead.  How can you make a truly informed decision regarding the "big" issues of the next 2-3 years without understanding the the waves of issues following right behind them?

Working the hype cycle, part 1

Yesterday, as I was reviewing some reports from the last couple of years from some of the big consulting firms like McKinsey, I idly wondered about how to interpret the entry of the big C consulting firms into any particular topical area.

Most of the big firms today like to claim thought leadership in their various practice areas, so their reports tend to be written as deeply insightful probes into an issue of critical future importance to (potential) clients.  But I have found over the years that for any particular area, a true subject matter expert would often not find anything they had not already read about or discussed with other experts for years, and sometimes decades.

And I'm not digging on anyone here, just thinking about what it means, in terms of the maturity and "lifecycle" of a big issue, that the big C firms have decided to start addressing it for (potential) clients.

Almost as a joke, I posted the following question yesterday on Twitter: "Where do we plot an issue on the @Gartner_inc hype cycle if the major consulting firms are piling into the space?"

Gartner Hype Cycle Special Report 2013

I got a couple of quick and clever answers from colleagues @nextwavefutures and @changeist, and their responses made me realize that I will now have to actually play with plotting this on the hype cycle.

More to follow shortly.

Is Tech THE Agent for Change in Healthcare

As much fun as Twitter is, 140 characters just cannot do justice to the complexity of real life, and so this longer post in response to @SusannahFox's discussion in response to @jayparkinson's post on "can tech be an agent for change/generational divide."

As with all complex social institutions, the answer to the question of whether or not technology can be an agent for change is, Yes, with caveats.  It can of course be an agent for change, and is an agent for change, but I think the real question that's being debated here is whether or not technology is the primary agent for change in healthcare.  And because this discussion is framed as a generational divide issue, it becomes a question of whether or not we think a younger generation will let technology do its change-agent thing on healthcare.

Having worked with health insurers, community health centers, specialized health services organizations, and small business physicians, my take is that in healthcare in the US (being made up of lots of sometimes-interoperable systems), change and/or stability is impacted by more drivers than in other countries.  The larger financing mechanisms, the reimbursement systems, privacy regulations, and even the straight-up ease-of-use of new technical infrastructures are all hugely important for shaping change or stability within a given area of American healthcare.  Layer under that competing value sets and worldviews (and here's where generational differences become even more important) and you've got a wonderfully complex turbulence.

So, structure matters.  Just replacing all of the America's current crop of congressional representation with under 40 individuals, but leaving all else in government and civic life constant, would not by any means necessarily produce significantly different outcomes.  So suddenly replacing all physicians (and we're not yet talking about all of the other people who actually make healthcare happen) with under 40 individuals, but keeping all the current systems and relationships in place, would not necessarily and magically produce new health outcomes.

Technology is a major driver of social change (which is why trained American futurists are normally so focused on it), but its impacts, and its trajectory, can be altered by the very social institutions in which we expect changes.  We can resist, delay, and deflect change.

So, our question is really, "will a younger generation (of physicians) unleash technology to truly transform healthcare?"

And my answer to that question right at this moment is, No.

Part of my answer comes from my belief that structures matter and that we need much more institutional and systemic change than, say, ACA is able to command into existence.  And part of my answer comes from my belief that the very centrality of the allopathic physician in our modern conception of health and healthcare is one of the elements that needs to change in order for real transformation to occur.

Put another way, if younger Gen X physicians and Millennial physicians age up into leadership positions, but the rest of the systems underpinning healthcare in the US don't significantly change, then I don't expect real impressive transformation emerging under their watch.

On a minor note, it's interesting (and perhaps refreshing) to note that Jay marks a 40 year-old dividing line, which places Baby Boomers squarely on one end, Millennials on the other, but rather nicely splits Generation X across that line. Interesting...

Can a 2x2 Matrix Help You Facilitate Better?

Now that I've spent so much time with a 2x2 matrix in my last post, my mind keeps circling back to 2x2s.  In fact, several months ago I had a conversation with a colleague (I honestly cannot recollect who) about facilitation...

I've done my fair share of process design and workshop facilitation over the years, and have had the benefit of a number of formal facilitation trainings.  Then last year I read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking and, being a introvert myself, found myself thinking much more explicitly about common facilitation issues that often concern me.

Most pertinent to this post is what I've always called the "fallacy of the facilitated workshop."  This fallacy deals with the often unreasonable expectations we set for facilitated meetings to generate, validate, and secure consensus on important strategic decisions.  All within a one-day session!

Now related to this is the issue of extreme time constraints for participant exercises.  It is not uncommon to find groups tasked with answering deep questions within the space of 40 minutes, or rushing through important critical thinking exercises in 20 minutes.  In most cases this simply is not enough time for an individual, to say nothing of a team of people, to adequately wrestle with truly strategic issues.

What can often happen in these situations, and indeed, in American workshops in general, is that extroverts gain an advantage in shaping the conversations, especially in workshops that are extremely time-constrained.  In order to counter this a workshop designer has to think very carefully about the kinds of exercises and timing they program.

One book that I haven't yet read is Thinking, Fast and Slow though it is on my list.  I was having a chat with a colleague about "fast" and "slow" thinking and I remembered my thoughts about facilitation and about extroverts in workshops.  I immediately thought of a 2x2 matrix (bringing us back to the present), which would look like the following:

And my thought was: what if you used this matrix to help you make sure that no one type of thinking or one type of personality had an overwhelming advantage in a workshop?  Put another way, could you use this to help design the right workshop?

My experience tells me that, at least in the US, most facilitated privilege the upper right quadrant, the realm of the extroverted and the fast thinking response.  And often the issues we are assembling people to deliberate on are strategic and complex.

It seems to me that using a framework like this should make it easier to design a session that draws on the strengths of the full spectrum of personalities and that plays with the interplay between Kahneman's system 1 and system 2 thinking.

We'll definitely be using this in 2014 for our client sessions and we'll post later on how it seems to work.

Working on the Future

The older I get the less I feel the need to define for everyone else and the more I become comfortable with just defining for myself.  For some time I have been thinking about the things that distinguish professionals who call themselves “futurists.”

Futures studies is one of those unknown academic fields.  Indeed, even within the field there are those who argue that it is not, perhaps, a true field yet.  In any case, the label given to students emerging from futures studies is unfortunate: futurist.  Like “democracy,” “democratization,” and “strategy” this is a term that is terribly overused and misused, adopted by a very wide cast of consulting/speaking/thinking characters out there in the wild world.

Those coming out of futures studies are concerned with understanding change, with anticipating change, and with helping people to shape change.  But because the field is currently so… unregulated, and in fact may never become strictly regulated, the variety of methods, preferences, and degree of training among those claiming the title of futurist give rise to an extremely wide array of practices and objectives.

As a trusted colleague frequently points out, there is a considerable body of literature now built up around futures studies, so often grad students or newcomers end up reinventing things that they simply hadn’t been aware of beforehand.  While I risk doing the same thing, I have been occasionally returning to the exercise of trying to sort and distinguish between the various professionals who tend to work specifically and explicitly on the “the future.”  This is a schema based on my current thinking.

Let’s sort individuals according to two spectra: the purpose of their work and the underlying approach of their work.  Purpose can be thought of as the intent or objective of the practitioner.  Approach refers roughly to the sources of information and the ways of knowing upon which they build their work.  Using both spectra as axes we create a typical 2x2 matrix.

Figure 1: the basic 2x2 matrix

Purpose runs from anticipating change on one end to shaping change on the other.  The extreme left of anticipating change would be sincere attempts at prediction; more tentative or careful forecasts would fall to the right of that.  Crossing over the Y axis, efforts at shaping change would run from light efforts to shake people out of their assumptions all the way to grand attempts at social change.

The Y axis of approach runs from methods that rely entirely on participant knowledge and responses on the bottom end to the upper end with work that is entirely dependent on quantitative data (and likely disdains most intuition not based on “facts”).

Using these two axes we can play with plotting a variety of methods that are commonly used by “futurists”.  This is just a sample, to be sure; if we were to plot methods common to, say, urban planners, the quadrants would probably fill differently.  And this is just a quick generalization.

Figure 2: common methods plotted

Now, to follow classic business management practice, let’s give the quadrants labels and identities.  We’ll call the Data-Driven/Anticipate Change quadrant the Analyst quadrant.  The Analyst’s domain is about explicit models and information, and it’s about needing to understand.  Below that is the Intuitive/Anticipate Change quadrant, which is the domain of the Sage.  Merriam-Webster.com defines sage as “wise through reflection and experience,” and that aptly describes the methods and motivation within this domain.  To the right we have the Intuitive/Shape Change quadrant which we label as the domain of the Provocateur.  The Provocateur’s work is to shake people out of their assumptions and their complacency.  Finally, we have the Data-Driven/Shape Change quadrant, which is the domain of the Planner.  By definition, Planners want things to happen, and they lean towards information and structure to accomplish that.

For added fun, we can perhaps start to overlay archetypes, and specifically the brand-related use of archetypes developed by Mark and Pearson in The Hero and the Outlaw.  The Analyst domain is probably where the Ruler archetype feels most comfortable.  The Sage archetype would fit the Sage domain.  We might place the Magician in the Planner domain and the Outlaw and the Jester might both fit into the Provocateur domain.

Figure 3: the four quadrants

Knowing many actual trained futurists as I do, and having met a great many people who otherwise call themselves “futurist” or whose work focuses on the future, I think individual professionals have preferences or biases that tend to draw them into one quadrant more than others.  I myself was trained very much from the Provocateur’s domain, yet naturally gravitate towards the Sage quadrant (but higher in the quadrant and closer to the Analyst domain), while consciously wanting to explore the Analyst domain more.

Of course, what becomes obvious once you start staring at this matrix is that a really good futures or foresight process will glide across more than one quadrant.  While some engagements are wholly within a single domain (say, a futures-driven creativity/ideation workshop resting comfortably in the Provocateur domain), many probably do, and all probably should, move across multiple domains.

A process could begin in the Analyst domain say with some Emerging Issues Analysis, dip over into the Provocateur space for some Manoa scenario process, and then conclude in the Planner quadrant some Participatory Action Research (example 1).  Alternatively, it could start in the Sage mode with some Forecasting by Analogy, move to the Analyst mode for validation and additional perspectives from Learning Curves (and maybe some technology adoption curves), then end in the Provocateur mode with participants oriented for creating new products/services through morphological analysis (example 2).

Figure 4: processes across the matrix

In fact, you could probably develop this further to make it an easy-to-use process develop framework.  Aligning your project with client needs (archetypes) and making sure to include strengths from each of the quadrants would seem to always be beneficial.  This would just be a framework to help someone do that.

Well, this is not exactly where I had planned to end up when I started this post, but this is an interesting place to pause for now.