What's the “future” of futures thinking?
2020 showed us the importance of futures thinking, how might we harness its power for the greater good?
2020 was a year full of hardship and showed us the consequences of ignoring the future firsthand. We couldn’t help but think about apocalyptic films and tv shows like The Walking Dead, or Contagion as we watched the world change quickly around us while we attempted to cope. Though we aren’t out of the woods yet, the beginning of 2021 has brought a light at the end of the tunnel. As businesses and organizations dust themselves off, they are shifting from reactive to proactive mode and considering how to plan and innovate their companies moving forward. Many organizations need help adjusting to the new normal, as well as fortifying themselves for future curveballs. One way to do that is through futures thinking.
What is “Futures Thinking?”
Futures thinking is an approach to strategic design that considers what is likely to change and stay the same in the future, as a means to be more reflective in strategic planning. It has existed in the realm of academia for a long time, but it’s rising to become a sought-after practice area in the design field.
Futures thinking provides a framework to talk about the current world, and how that world may look in the future. It examines what could happen as a result of decisions, actions, and issues happening today, and examines multiple future scenarios that are likely to happen. Futures thinking is not an effort to predict the future. It’s a practice that illuminates unexpected implications of present-day issues that empower individuals and organizations to actively design desirable futures. The emphasis isn’t on what will happen, but on what could happen, given various observed factors.
How might we use Futures Thinking?
Futures thinking is a mindset that an organization can use for long-term planning on any focused issue, for example:
· What is the future of our organization’s workforce in the year 2031?
· What does the future of in-patient mental health care look like for a local hospital network by 2029?
· What is the future of remote education for large universities by 2035?
Futures thinking is a way of getting new perspectives and context for present-day decisions, as well as for dealing with the dilemma at the heart of all strategic thinking; the future can’t be predicted, yet we have to make choices based on what is to come.
It can help organizations develop a vision for where they are headed. With that vision, organizations can align their teams and goals around this strong vision of the future. Though futures thinking is more of a mindset than a process, to engage with futures thinking, we have to ask the right foundational questions to gain an understanding of the issue:
· What is the history of the issue?
· What’s most likely to change in the near future based on what we see today?
· What assumptions are we making? How do we check those biases as a team?
· What are the alternate futures?
· What is the preferable future?
· How do we get there?
Asking these questions helps identify emerging trends and soft signals from across the world to better understand how these things might affect us. Using these data, organizations can identify and design alternate futures.
What Are the Possible Scenarios for the Future?
Through examining both emerging trends and the assumptions we have made, it is possible to create alternative future scenarios that depict where an organization could be headed. There are many methods used to create potential scenarios. One such method from futurist Steve Gould is to create four scenarios of the future, including:
· business as usual: assume no changes from the current practices are necessary
· worst case: assume the worst has happened, unpack the implications of that
· outlier: assume an unusual disruption has occurred that will lead down an entirely different path
· best case: envision the future where everything has gone perfectly
These scenarios can be fleshed out by writing “day in the life” narratives of stakeholders within these futures to help them come to life. Or by writing out the headlines we may see in magazines in these potential futures. Or by creating storyboards and images that show how this future might look or feel. As the godfather of futures thinking, Jim Dator said, “any useful statement about the future should at first appear ridiculous.” It’s important to note that these visions of the future might seem “ridiculous” or “unrealistic,” which is a good indication that you’re onto something!
How might we harness the power of Futures Thinking to create more equitable futures?
Traditionally, futures thinking has been a male-dominated practice — meaning that most well-known “futures thinkers” are cis-gender men, and the perspectives they provide often reflect this. Additionally, when we look to other visions of the future, like popular science fiction, or technological innovation from Silicon Valley, we see and hear mostly cis-gender male perspectives.
In the current moment, part of what’s making futures thinking a viable tool in strategic design is the recognition that effective futures thinking needs to include a diversity of perspectives. A design plan based on futures thinking should envision a more equitable future and consider the experiences of ALL stakeholders. For example, if a health organization is looking at how it will use telehealth appointments in the future, it should look at perspectives not only of clinicians and patients, but office staff, hospital IT staff, and patient families. Even further, the health organization should be considering who can’t access telehealth, due to their technical barriers, financial barriers, or time barriers. These stakeholders need to encompass the diverse perspectives of age, gender, religion, physical ability, race, ethnicity, and other factors that can result in differing experiences. The future should be co-created along with those who will be living in that future, which means stepping back as designers and strategists and admitting that we aren’t always the experts and that people are the experts of their own experiences.
Exploring a wide range of diverse perspectives allows for the co-creation of future scenarios that fit both the organization and the organization’s end users. When we think about the future, all of us have implicit biases whether we mean to or not, and we have to work with others to ensure that we are creating responsible futures. This is a unique opportunity for using futures thinking going forward — not only to prepare for uncertain futures but also to ensure that all plans are equitable and effective.
References:
Dator, Jim. 1995. What Futures Studies Is, And Is Not. Futures Hawaii. http://www.futures.hawaii.edu/publications/futures-studies/WhatFSis1995.pdf
Gould, S. 2014. Leading Through Futures Thinking: An introduction to using futures thinking questioning and methods and guideline on how to facilitate a basic ‘Strategic Foresight’ session. Sector Readiness and Workforce Capacity Initiative. NDS. Queensland.
Inayatullah, S. 2013. Futures Studies: Theories and Methods. OpenMind BBVA. https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/futures-studies-theories-and-methods/
