|
The Role of Plausible Reasoning in Futures Work |
|
|
|
|
Written by Joseph Coates
|
|
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. |
|
|
The 27 habits of highly successful futurists |
|
|
|
|
Written by John Mahaffie
|
|
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. |
|
|
Why Foresight? I Can Think of 316 Reasons |
|
|
|
|
Written by Andy Hines
|
|
Friday, 15 February 2008 |
|
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%)
|
| Scanning (16%) |
4. Understanding the context, in all its complexity, through establishing frameworks (5%)
5. Anticipating change and avoiding surprise (10%)
|
| Forecasting (22%) |
6. Producing more creative, broader, and deeper insights (16%)
7. Identifying a wider range of opportunities and options (5%)
|
| 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%)
|
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.
.
|
|
|
Social Media Primer for Business |
|
|
|
|
Written by Pam McConathy
|
|
Tuesday, 05 February 2008 |
|
The New Social Media Model Sounds Sexy,
But Will It Help You Tell Your Business Story?
By Pamela A. McConathy, Foresight Communications Group
Social Media*, Citizen Journalism, Peer-to-Peer Conversations, Word of Mouth or Viral Marketing, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 – call it what you want, communication today is whole new ballgame, personally and professionally. Thanks to the exploding use of the Internet and associated technologies, this basic tenant of human interaction is increasingly a transparent and candid dialogue – conversational, collaborative and community-centric. More and more of our communication takes place electronically and wirelessly and is increasingly global in nature. Quite literally, we are the world! Podcasting, vodcasting, blogging, vlogging, Internet forums, Webinars, online and email marketing, wikis, social bookmarking, user-generated content (such as MySpace and YouTube) are a few examples of Social Media making headlines and boasting large numbers of participants. You may have read about or even experimented with search engine marketing methods, search engine optimization, mobile marketing, and Web analytics. One of the most compelling examples of Social Media at work is the three-year old futuristic virtual online destination Second Life, where companies like Dell, IBM, Sun Microsystems and many more are “setting up shop” to sell to “residents” who number somewhere between hundreds of thousands to 3.3 million. (Many Second Life residents have multiple logins.) As of this juncture, Social Media tools are being used most successfully in BtoC communication, but fewer have taken firm root in the BtoB space.
Naturally, these online models are impacting the way we communicate and market to customers, prospects, employees, partners and all of our audiences. Traditional communication channels – newspapers, radio, television, etc. – are being forced to evolve or give way to new forms and tools. As public relations and marketing professionals, this challenges us to constantly evaluate our methods, and research new tools and practices offering a potential “better way” to get our messages to intended audiences with measurable ROI. (Yes, we feel the pressure, but are embracing it!)
*(For the purposes of this paper we will be referring to all of the tools above generically as “Social Media.”)
Ultimately, the tools and practices of Social Media are just that – tools and practices; updated versions of current media channels and methodologies. During the transition period, be cautious about jumping in with both feet. These tools and practices may or may not live up to the hype, but they do warrant review and consideration. Here are some guidelines to use as you evaluate the viability of adding Social Media tactics to your marketing mix.
Start at the beginning by focusing on your objectives and target audiences. All communications strategy, regardless of method or tools, starts with your business objectives. What do you want to accomplish? How can marketing and public relations help you get there? Next, identify, in detail, your target audiences – their attributes, demographics, behaviors, needs, wants, pain points, strengths, challenges, opportunities, threats, etc. How are they using the web? By carefully analyzing this data, you can more effectively chose the marketing methods and practices to bring the best ROI.
Don’t skip fundamental blocking and tackling. In your zest to explore Social Media, don’t forget what you know about effective communication. Your brand messages must still communicate what makes your company, product or service unique; they also must resonate directly and meaningfully with your target audiences. This means segmenting and focusing your messages and marketing efforts, and tapping the most appropriate media channel to reach each audience.
Fix or update your most obvious Social Media tool first – your Web site. Web site usability and basic functionality is a must today. Be sure your Web site is attractive to visitors, functions effectively, and is easy to read and navigate. Be brief with content, make your text large enough to read easily and limit scrolling. Your brand should be front and center on your Web site. Above all, your Web site should not annoy prospects and visitors who come there looking for information and/or to buy from you. Make it simple and effortless. With today’s proliferation of Web designers, there’s no excuse not to have a great, basic Web site.
A Web site is a great place to “test the Social Media waters.” If you can create and keep a functional, attractive website (which requires persistent updating to keep it current), you are likely ready to try more advanced tactics like blogs, podcasts, or Web marketing.
Consider offering a podcast of a presentation or speech from your Web site. Inform customers and prospects about the podcast via a direct mail campaign or an email announcement. Then, analyze the response. You may also consider creating a user community on a protected section of your site where customers and employees can discuss updated products, tips and training, or current needs and requests online. Measuring the effectiveness of your Web site reaches far beyond tracking hits. You should be gathering customer and prospect behavior data to carefully analyze for a forecast on trends, new needs and challenges. Use your Web site, and the data it can provide, to help build and retain strong relationships with key customers and prospects – content and credibility is your goal here.
Traditional media meets Social Media. Make sure your PR staff is monitoring blogs that comment on your industry, your company and/or your competitors. In addition, your PR staff should be pitching to top-tier bloggers and reporter-bloggers that are covering your space, including vertical markets you are targeting. Understand that markets and audience segments are getting smaller. A forward-thinking firm will also recommend Social Media ideas to consider and explore, and can likely suggest expert vendor partners that specialize in Social Media technologies. Also, be aware that the Web has had a direct impact on the news release, in style, content and format. Consumers can now access your news releases at the same time journalists do.
Email marketing, done right, continues to be an online staple that delivers. Despite the avalanche of spam that floods our inboxes, email content that educates or informs can be effective if distributed to subscribers and targeted prospects, and integrated with other marketing activities. One key to success is to ensure your company has a good in-house database contact list of customers, prospects and friends. To make this tool work for you and your company:
Encourage feedback from recipients via online surveys or focus groups.
Make subscribing (and unsubscribing) easy.
Partner with an email service provider to avoid pitfalls and purge email lists regularly.
Get extra mileage from your email newsletter by posting it on your Web site, printing it and handing it out at trade shows or with other marketing collateral, and pitching it to industry publications or to secure an interview for a feature story.
When determining frequency, ask your subscribers when they opt-in how often they want to receive email content.
Do your homework and ask the right questions. Conduct research on all these tools. Read about them, talk to colleagues about them, or give this task to a staffer or consultant to prepare an overview and make recommendations. You need to know what’s going on, even if it is from a high level. Consider: Are your competitors using this technology? What companies are offering this service in your area? What are the costs involved? What about ROI? What and how should you measure your success? Do you have a staffer or department to handle this or will it entail hiring a firm or more employees to pull it off effectively? Which tactics would work best for your company to get the attention and engagement of your target audiences?
Learn about the tools and approaches of Social Media. This means getting in there and “experiencing” it yourself. Create a MySpace page. Check out some videos on YouTube. Read some blogs and offer comments. Join an online forum or community in an area that you enjoy. Ask, does this have implications for my business? How can we use this technology to market products and services to prospects or communicate regularly with customers and partners? It may be a good idea to hold a staff brainstorm on the topic to generate ideas and discussions about using Social Media.
Online meetings, demos and conferences offer viable options. If your Web site is strong, and you have appropriate information to communicate, consider hosting an online event or Webcast. This tool may best be used to build relationships, generate prospects and shorten the BtoB sales cycle. Webcasts may also be effective in surveying or polling prospects. Some guidelines here include:
Keep presentations brief and to the point, and closely targeted to audience need
Select qualified and respected speakers or panelists as presenters
Aim to educate and entertain attendees
Promote and integrate this activity with your other marketing functions such as email newsletter, podcasts, online video
Offer incentives for attendees to browse other areas of your Web site
Test new methods that make sense for your business. Some Social Media tools are fairly easy to produce and use. According to BtoB’s Interactive Marketing Guide, more than 90,000 podcast programs are listed on search engine PodNova. Podcasts have become a standard companion to Webcasts which are increasingly becoming mainstream for many technology companies. In addition, busy decision-makers enjoy the convenience of taking portable content with them. Podcasts that include presentations, demo content or video are fairly inexpensive to produce and can be posted to your Web site, included in email newsletters or added to iPods/MP3 players given away at trade shows or conferences, or sent to high-level prospects as part of a direct-mail campaign.
Blogs are a great tool for transmitting information, but involve a significant time commitment to write the blog and engage in discussions with responders. Some companies are experimenting with group blogs where several staffers take turns writing and posting content. Another option is to create a weekly blog where you post one entry each week. Measuring the return on these activities can be tricky, but your Web site hosting company is the first place to start. Some Web analytic tools go beyond impressions and conversions and measure customer behavior, both online and off. Your goal here is to find the most effective approach to reach customers and prospects with products and offers that meet their needs. A qualified marketing consultant may be able to help you determine which behaviors should be measured, what turns a browser into a buyer and how to convert customers to repeat buyers. Invest and use these tools wisely.
Know the risks, weigh the costs. Some companies have tried Social Media tools such as blogs, email and online advertising and have not fared well. Companies venturing into Social Media waters must understand the playing field and respect it. Be sensitive to users and don’t fill their inboxes with offers they have not requested; be strategic with your email newsletters and only send something when you have something significant to say. Test an email service provider before deploying. Understand that the online world worships transparency and authenticity; if you stick your product or service out there in full view, prepare to hear all the negative opinions. Be informal, humble and responsive. Don’t “sell.” Just as great reviews about your product or service can spread like wild fire via the Web, so too can bad product reviews or missteps using Social Media tools.
Do what you know will work. Trust your gut and proceed strategically. The larger take-away of the Social Media model is that increasingly, people around the world are immersing themselves in readily available information via the Web, creating content themselves and sharing it with each other. Keeping your finger on the pulse of how Social Media tools evolve or engaging a PR/marketing firm to do this for you is an excellent first step. Timing is everything.
“Technology may rearrange the furniture, but the same people live there.”1 Communication between humans has always ebbed and flowed around methodologies, institutions and technologies. Access to information has virtually defined the story of civilization. Good public relations and marketing, no matter the medium or model, tells a compelling story about a product, a service, a company, a leader, or a brand. In business, as one expert notes, “whoever tells the best story wins.”
Pam McConathy joined Pierpont in 1998 and has more than 23 years experience in planning and implementing award-winning public relations programs. Her clients have included Sprint PCS, Verizon Wireless, Aramco Services Company, Shell Chemical, Chevron, Reliant Energy, Halliburton, Loomis Fargo, the Houston Technology Center and more. She currently serves as 2006-07 President of the Houston chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators and is a Student Member of the Association of Professional Futurists. Pam earned a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Michigan State University and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Futures Studies in the College of Technology at the University of Houston.
Waiting for Your Cat to Bark by Byran & Jeffrey Eisenberg
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Perspective 
