my foresight methods, what’s missing and how i can do more
TRANSCRIPT
My methods, what’s missing and how I can do more
Maree ConwayThinking Futures
July 2016
Helping people in organisations use foresight methods in their work.
My view of the field, my take on methods, my take on desired outcomes from using foresight –a focus on scanning and strategic thinking.
And it reflects my foresight journey – which is different to yours I am sure!
The framework I use
Generic Foresight Process developed by Joseph Voros when we worked together at Swinburne University.
Defines key steps in thinking about the future and indicative methods at each step.
All three steps in the foresight ‘blue box’ need to be used for the use of foresight in practice to be effective.
An Integral Futures Framework
Jennifer M Gidley: “An Other View of Integral Futures: De/reconstructing the IF Brand: “the broad notion of integral futures has a long and deep history, a planetary geography and a complex genealogy.”
And this is more than just the Wilberan integral approach –nevertheless, I use an framework that uses what Jenny calls the Wilber brand of integral.
https://www.academia.edu/27116897/An_Other_View_of_Integral_Futures_De_reconstructing_the_IF_Brand
The scary version of Wilber’sIntegral Theory
Most accessible reference is Wilber’s Theory of Everything
The simplified version
Intentional ‘I’
Upper Left
Behavioural ‘It’
Upper Right
Cultural ‘We’
Lower Left
Social ‘Its’
Lower Right
Four quadrants: individual/interior, individual/exterior, collective/ interior, collective/exterior
Left hand quadrants: intangible, can’t be measured empirically, shared/defined by people.
Right hand quadrants: tangible, can be measured empirically, can be observed.
Need to consider all quadrants if you want to understand an issue.
Change needs to happen to an equal degree in all quadrants to be successful.
Interior Exterior
Individual
Collective
Integral applied to organisations
Individual beliefs (and
biases) about the future
Organisational processes/
behaviours to enable thinking
about the future
A futures facing organisational
culture
An outside in approach to
change
Thinking about the future in organisations is trapped in the right hand quadrants under the guise of strategic planning.
Integral applied requires all four quadrants to be considered:
individuals ‘heard’ and involved,
a culture that lets go of the past and present and faces the future,
an approach to understanding change that starts outside the organisation, and
processes that bring people together for collaborative strategic thinking.
Interior Exterior
Individual
Collective
In my client engagements, that means looking for
How people generate
meaning about the world and
the future
How people work together
in organisations to explore and create futures
How people collectively generate
futures facing cultures
How people identify and use
information about change
How people generate meaning about the world, individually and collectively.
The degree to which an organisational culture that supports thinking about the future exists.
How people identify and understand change – whether they look for only short term change or a combination of short and long term change.
Organisational processes that bring people together to create the organisation’s future.
Collective
Interior Exterior
Individual
Methods I use to do that now
Interviews
Surveys
Conversations
Scenario Thinking,
Wildcards, Backcasting
Causal Layered Analysis
Environmental/ Horizon
Scanning
Upper Left: engaging the individual using interviews, survey, conversations.
Upper Right: running futures processes using scenario thinking to build capacity to think about the future.
Lower Right: environmental or horizon scanning to create a long term change context for decision making today.
Lower Left: using Causal Layered Analysis to explore deeply held assumptions and beliefs about the organisation’s future.
Collective
Interior Exterior
Individual
A scanning example
What attributes do your scanners need to have? How can
you help them build depth in their
scanning?
What scanning systems, processes and structures will
you set up to enable you to scan and use the information you
find?
How can being open to change ‘out
there’ help build an organisational culture that is focused on the
future?
What will you scan for? What change
matters to your organisation?
A set of questions based in each quadrant to help people consider the factors essential for setting up an in-house environmental scanning system.
Interior Exterior
Individual
Collective
My approach
Social Constructionist
framework
Cognitive bias/assumptions
Looking for work with clients willing to spend the time on thinking about
the future
Deliberate focus on building
relationships with clients (and
Thinking Futures members)
Email, Feedly, Shaping
Tomorrow, Buffer,
IFTTT
Upper Left: I bring a social constructivist epistemology to my project design –people create meaning collectively. I also focus on challenging assumptions and biases held by individuals.
Upper Right: I aim to work with clients who are ready to think about the future rather than pay lip service to it.
Lower Right: these are the tools I use to gather, record and share information about change.
Lower Left: I promote a collaborative culture, seeking work that allows me to build a relationship with my clients rather than the walk in, walk out expert consultant positioning.
Collective
Interior Exterior
Individual
ExperientialFutures
Spiral Dynamics
Gaming/ Simulation
Design Thinking
Quantitative Approaches
What I want to learn more about, methods I’d like to use in each quadrant.
Aiming to stay in touch with preferred ways of creating the future in the present (as opposed to my preferred ways from my past).
• I choose the methods that are a fit for me.
• You (probably) choose the methods that are a fit for you.
• My integralisation means what I do, the methods I choose for a project have to integrate the four quadrants. So far the ones I use have worked –but I know I need to do more and use different ones pretty soon.
• I wonder though … is there something common that underpins our collective decisions to choose the methods we choose?
