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Thoughts on Methodologies – Targeting Results |
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Essays and Ideas
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Written by Jay Forrest
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Sunday, 13 April 2008 |
As professional futurists, we must somehow beneficially influence the thinking of our client (or audience) for an engagement to be successful (where I would define the term “beneficially” as implying a more
realistic and/or actionable understanding of the possible futures). 
At one level, success should be relatively easy since most laypeople have rather narrow visions of the future, but productively influencing what people think is hardly straightforward because everyone’s perceptions of the future are ultimately inferred from personal experiences, biases, perceptions, and assumptions as illustrated in the accompanying figure. If we are to influence how someone views the future we generally have to impact on their perceptions, assumptions, or their inference process for our ability to provide experience or address biases is generally limited.
It should also be noted that perceptions of the future are generally quite personal. While a group may share a vision of a successful common goal such as electing a given politician, introducing a new product, or goingout to dinner, the larger elements may be common but the details will vary from person to person.
In planning events and interventions it is important to consider the level of alignment needed for success. If one is working with a group of individual investors, their actions need no coordination or synergy for
each to be successful. As a result, building alignment and common understanding is not particularly important. On the other hand, if the intervention involves a coordinated team effort, such as the design and
introduction of a new product or meeting a crisis, the need for a shared vision and alignment may be quite important. The ability of disparate actors in an organization to act independently while avoiding longer
term issues demands care to ensure the alignment of their understanding of the environment and system in which they are functioning.
While not technically a futures example, when I think of alignment I invariably flash back to a situation ten years ago where my partner was called in to help a new client with a problem. Nine months earlier the president of the company had called his executive vice presidents into his office and told them that they were going to have a tight cash flow for the next six months or so and needed to maximize cash flow to the company. There was no discussion for the message was clear. The VPs left and took independent action to maximize cash flow for the company. Of particular note, the VP of sales planned a sales campaign and hired two new salesmen. The VP of manufacturing cut back on overtime and reduced inventory. Both behaved perfectly logically given the levers available to respond to the shared objective of maximizing cash flow. In only a month product delivery times jumped from two weeks to six weeks. This was a regional manufacturer who had about 85% of the market in their region. Most customers had never even tried the competition. Customers were now forced to try the competition to meet their needs. Within three months their market share had fallen to less than 50% of the market in their region. Five years later the company was still in business but they never recovered the lost market share. This problem highlights the importance of shared understanding of how the world works and of meaningful communication to build common vision for cohesive action – even in simple, short-term situations. Fuzzier, longer-term futures would likely require deeper discussions.
In my opinion it is not enough to simply stimulate a client’s thinking when they need to act cohesively. I think we have a responsibility to
try to make sure that clients develop coherence in their vision appropriate to meet their needs. Giving clients a good or correct answer is not enough. They will need deeper and shared understanding if they are to address complex problems productively.
The need for impacting on perceptions and assumptions and building
stronger inferences has led me to categorize futures methods by
different criteria than the normal quantitative/qualitative criteria. A list of potential paired categories for categorizing futures methods
follows:
| Quantitative |
Qualitative |
| Divergent |
Convergent |
| Internal (personal) |
External (sharing with others) |
| Verbal |
Visual |
| Reductive |
Expansive |
| Simplifying |
Integrative |
| Possible |
Preferable |
| Emotional |
Logical |
| Analytical |
Conjectural (or interpretive) |
| Mechanical |
Systemic |
| Atomistic |
Holistic |
From time to time futurists are likely to need to use methods that address many, if not all of, these roles if we are to be of maximum benefit to our clients. We need a broad base of skill and the wisdom and
experience to know when to shift modes and how to beneficially educate and provoke our clients to deeper understanding.
This article has provided a brief introduction to my perception of the role of the futurist and the relationship between that role to the needs of the client, the role of methods, and the skills of the futurist. Clearly there is much more that can be said…in much greater detail, which I hope to cover in future articles. |
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The Role of Plausible Reasoning in Futures Work |
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Essays and Ideas
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Written by Joseph Coates
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Sunday, 13 April 2008 |
Two core characteristics of effective futures thinking are being systemic and relying heavily on plausible reasoning.
Any topic whose future is worth exploring is a system, that is, a complex of things, factors, and forces linked together in interactive ways. Therefore, defining the system under study is a basic early step. In my experience, the only successful way to do this to create a diagram or a figure which gives a position to every component of the system and connects them by lines that are unidirection or bidirectional. The diagram alone has a value, being a gestalt of the factors to be considered, rather than a mere list in serial order.
Another basic component of all good futures thinking is plausible reasoning, which is seldom written about and, as far as my experience goes, never discussed. One must wonder why this neglect. The general desire among futurists is to be seen as scientific and serious in all regards, which seems to hinge upon the ability to marshal numbers in their analyses. Unfortunately, many of those numbers are, themselves, misleading, but they do provide psychological comfort. Number-based modeling certainly has a great deal to say with regard to demography, and particularly strong in technological forecasting where frequently there are well developed mathematical models, experience, and tools for using numbers. See, for example, the standard textbook by Joe Martino.
The third area where numbers play a crucial role is in the short-term forecasting that is associated with business, industry, and government, where there is rarely focus beyond three years and often intense focus on only three months. For these short term forecasts, there are available well developed quantitative models, enormous amounts of data, and great experience in using them. This kind of short-term forecasting is not what I am writing about here. I am rather writing about strategic futures that attempt to serve a client by looking out 10-30 or more years. There is a fuzzy boundary; some strategic futures consider as close as the next five years and, in other cases, including a project I am now engaged in, go forward to a hundred years or more. On another project looking forward a thousand years, I am an advisor.
In the case of strategic forecasting, there is usually no significant corpus of numbers and few or no models that one can use, but more on that in another column. In concentrating on the strategic future, we can easily get caught up in several tools that are quantitative and seem to bring numbers into significant play, but in fact, all they do is put a false face on plausible reasoning. Take the most significant example of that - the Delphi. I am sure every reader has read many Delphis and most of us have created and used them. What they quantify are the judgments and opinions of a panel of people. The person running the Delphi has no idea of what method, technique, or tool a respondent uses in developing his or her numerical answers to the questions posed. My experience in talking with people who respond to Delphis is that they spend little time developing answers to the questions, but rather draw responses out of professional experience, i.e., plausible reasoning.
When asked questions like “When will we have the first gay president” or “What is the most important socio-economic need in Paraguay, to put it in good economic condition in the next 20 years,” the respondent is pushed to plausible reasoning, assembling what he or she knows and seeing how it might come together in some future state of change. The same steps happen when one is asked any Delphi questions. We haven’t the slightest idea how the answers are derived. But the quantification only enters into organizing the answers. Not into the basic thinking. Remember that Delphi was developed as a substitute for face-to-face participation in a group meeting. For anyone who has ever worked with a live panel, it should be clear that what goes on is a large amount of plausible reasoning under the label of discussion and group interaction - no models, no quantification, and generally no significant use of numbers.
Consider another common tool, cross impact analysis. It makes a set of judgments about how variables A through X will be influenced by each other if each continues along the present line of development. Anyone who has ever used the technique knows that it depends primarily on plausible reasoning about relationships and may prove valuable in heightening attention to a relationship that had been ignored previously in the study, or in highlighting a place where there is great uncertainty, where one should search for data. Fundamentally, cross impact analysis is an exercise in plausible reasoning. At best, and in general, we do not know what the reasoning is in the creation of a cross-impact analysis. Further along in its development and use, it may highlight the search for quantitative data or even for quantitative models, but that is not the cross-impact itself, that is a successor to it. Another valuable use of cross-impact is being the conceptual core in setting up any systems dynamic model.
Scenarios, as they are now largely practiced, are highly complex activities in plausible reasoning. In a well thought out and presented scenario, one can often see, and should be able to see, all the bases of the linkages between the variables that enter into the scenario, and how they interact. Formal quantitative judgments usually play a small part. In earlier times futurists often called scenarios mere lists of five to ten statements of change. I take the scenario now to be a complex integrated picture of a future state, reflecting the forces for change and the consequences of their interaction in interesting, useful, and plausible detail - a rational brief story.
Other techniques less widely used, but valuable, are the various “mock” tools such as a mock jury or a mock congressional hearing. The extreme level of the mock activity is the war game. War games are so valuable to national security that, at least for the military, performance in a war game is entered into one’s official dossier and becomes an important part of one’s credentials, which will or will not promote one in the system. The war games are nothing but exercises in plausible reasoning. In the war game, the central control acts in the role of God in each wave of the changing game. God hits the group everyday, with what He sees as the implications of the total responses given on that previous day. Another feature pushing further plausible reasoning, is that each of the participants in the game has only partial information. Only God knows the whole story. That situation forces one to plausible reasoning in which one has to engage not only one’s own reasoning, but also anticipate the plausible reasoning of the other actors in the game.
To the best of my knowledge, no group of futurist graduate students are taught plausible reasoning. Why is that? It is because it probably hinges on intelligence, of a more than common sort. I checked one of the standard works, a classic on human intelligence, the handbook by Robert J. Sternberg, which says almost everything there was to say about its subject, up to the time of publication. The phrase “plausible reasoning” is not used. It obviously would fall into the category, inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning is worked on in many psychological experiments and usually involves topics that are convenient to handle experimentally, but have virtually no relationship to the complex matters that concern us futurists.
Going to a different general source, I looked at some books under the rubric “critical thinking,” where the emphasis is on Aristotelian logic. But when they come to inductive reasoning, which is largely what is done in futures work, there is virtually nothing of any value to futurists. To give the readers deeper insight into the importance of plausible reasoning and its woeful neglect in formal training, let me suggest that you do the following exercise. Take one of the following three topics and work for about an hour and a half, in 10 to 15 minute blocks, to describe the selected topic 25 years in the future. Make no references to any books, almanacs, printed information, or discussion. Just sit down and do it yourself. Then review your work the next day by adding, deleting, and modifying. While you are doing the exercise, pay conscious attention to the intellectual processes that you are going through. My three candidates from which you should choose one, are such that you know little of the formal literature on the subject, and yet have a great deal of personal or common knowledge, awareness, or experience, from which to jump off.
The first topic is high school, the second, pornography and prostitution, and the third is museums — each in 2035.
Do this exercise by using three separate sheets of paper. On the first page, cover the situation today, by making a list of 25 to 30 sentences. On a separate second page, list forces and factors driving for change. Fifteen to thirty drivers would be a good start. On the third page, list the changes in the topic you selected, 25 years in the future, nominally 2035, based on the interactions of page one and page two. Twenty or more items on your third list would be a good start. Thirty would be better.
You will have just finished an exercise in plausible reasoning, and should be surprised and gratified by what you’ve come up with.
The editor and I would welcome your observations on plausible reasoning. |
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The 27 habits of highly successful futurists |
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Essays and Ideas
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Written by John Mahaffie
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Tuesday, 08 April 2008 |
My thoughts on how to make foresight a habit, and to do it well[note: With these, I usually offer a link to a relevent post on my blog Foresight Culture, where you can read more about these principles and share your comments. There aren't really 27, I blew past number that a while ago]1. Decide what it means [link] 2. Pay it forward [link] 3. Talk to the frog [link] 4. Find the anti-you 5. Get out from behind the mouse [link] 6. Go visual [link] 7. Bring a camera [link] 8. See the world with different eyes [link] 9. Read outside the box 10. Switch on a second radar screen [link] 11. Assume you are not normal 12. Look at the story 13. Keep the future on the agenda [link] 14. Play the futurist in your organization 15. Help people be at play in the future [link] 16. Use data 17. Get away from data 18. Use lessons from the past [link] 19. Learn to communicate about the future 20. Get everyone's assumptions out [link] 21. Reject linearity 22. Listen to the dissidents and lone voices 23. Exaggerate for understanding [link] 24. Know you are exaggerating [link] 25. Go negative [link] 26. Globalize all questions [link] 27. It's ok to be wrong [link] 28. Don't just analyze, speculate 29. Don't hate the present [link] 30. Bring along a friend [link] 31. Never stop [link] This is an evolving list, and I'd be pleased to hear your suggestions and additions. |
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Why Foresight? I Can Think of 316 Reasons |
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Books and Articles
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Written by Andy Hines
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Friday, 15 February 2008 |
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Why Foresight? I Can Think of 316 Reasons!
The Futurist’s Toolbox
By Andy Hines
My colleague at the University of Houston, Peter Bishop, and I recently co-authored Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight, a book that culls the wisdom of three dozen leading futurists from around the globe. Our question to these futurists was: What are the best ways to do foresight? Their answers yielded 115 guidelines which we feel concisely capture how executives and analysts can successfully apply foresight.
We then organized the guidelines into six steps fundamental to application (see The Foresight Framework). Our goal was to provide a handy reference guide to what professionals should be thinking and doing to effectively apply foresight. We also asked our contributors to explain the key benefits of the 115 guidelines. This yielded 316 benefit statements, highlighting the multiple ways organizations can benefit from
Making the case: What’s in it for me?
My next column will focus on how to apply foresight, but for this Premiere Issue of Change)Waves I will address the benefits of foresight. Something I like to call: “What’s in it for me?” To illuminate this point I did a cluster analysis on the benefit statements—tying similar benefits together until themes emerged. (Yes, this took awhile!) Ultimately the process produced a dozen themes, which sorted nicely into the six steps of
the foresight framework (see list below).
1. Framing: Scoping the project
2. Scanning: Gathering relevant information
3. Forecasting: Describing most likely and alternative futures
4. Visioning: Choosing a preferred future
5. Planning: Organizing to achieve the vision
6. Acting: Implementing the plan
I ask you: Who wouldn’t want to do these things for their company?
What it all means
Space doesn’t permit me to list all 316 benefit statements, so a few high-level observations are in order.
- What pops out is the high percentage of benefits attributed to the “bookends” of the foresight framework—Framing and Acting. Great news! From my experience in the field in the last 20 years, two common criticisms are that foresight is either too vague or not action-oriented enough. Clearly, the field has learned its lesson, prioritized, and delivered the goods.
- Similarly, we see less emphasis on Visioning and Planning. These activities were reengineered, or drastically reduced, in the 1980s and early 1990s. Again, foresight reinvented itself to serve the needs of today’s organizations.
- This “reinvention” is amply demonstrated by the single highest-scored benefit: “More creative, broader, deeper insights.” Organizations today see foresight as a vital approach to stretch their thinking—about consumer behavior, new product and service development, where technology is headed… in short, about what they need to do today to thrive tomorrow.
This brief analysis highlights the benefits of foresight and puts some data behind them. My hope is that every businessperson and analyst will take advantage of the opportunity that foresight, with its unique blend of rigor and creativity, offers to help make organizations more effective. So if anyone ever asks you: “Why should we think about the future?” you now have a dozen answers—or if you’d like, we can send you all 316!
The Benefits of Foresight
| Foresight activity |
Benefits |
| Framing (22%) |
1. Thinking more diverse, open, balanced, and non-biased (9%)
2. Focusing on the right questions and problems more clearly (7%)
3. Being aware of, and influencing, assumptions and mental models (6%)
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| Scanning (16%) |
4. Understanding the context, in all its complexity, through establishing frameworks (5%)
5. Anticipating change and avoiding surprise (10%)
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| Forecasting (22%) |
6. Producing more creative, broader, and deeper insights (16%)
7. Identifying a wider range of opportunities and options (5%)
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| Visioning (10%) |
8. Prioritizing and making better and more robust decisions (10%) |
| Planning (7%) |
9. Constructing pathways from the present to the future that enable rehearsing for the future (7%) |
| Acting (23%) |
10. Catalyzing action and change (7%)
11. Building alignment, commitment, and confidence (14%)
12. Building a learning organization (2%)
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Note: The number in parenthesis shows each item as a percentage of overall benefits. Thus, 22% of the benefits statements related to framing, 9% related to “Thinking more diverse….” etc.
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Perspective 
