Making Futures Work

Chapter 4. The Futures Mindset

Have you ever tried explaining what you do for a living to a complete stranger? No matter what your occupation, there’s always a moment in which you have to pause to think about how you’re going to explain your job. As a designer and consultant, I’ve often had to teach a client about Design Thinking or explain what kind of futurist I am. I might start by asking if they’re familiar with the term Design Thinking and gauge their level of knowledge about structured, methodological inquiries that lead to the design of products and services. Then I might introduce the word futurist, but I would be very careful not to give the impression that I’m a science fiction writer. I might use the words innovation or strategy. Once I’m able to gauge how deep I can go with my explanation, I begin telling them more about what I do. In essence, I set the stage for the discussion; I prepare myself and them for a deeper conversation about what I do. There is a similar conversation that ensues when you begin futures work. In this chapter, I’ll discuss some tactics for priming your audience for futures—how to discuss key principles of futuring, show them examples, and assess whether they are ready for the real work that is ahead. I call this adopting a futures mindset.

A Mindset and an Attitude

After you have completed your initial diagnostic and are able to confidently understand who you are working with and why, it’s time for some additional preparation. Remember, we haven’t started the actual futures work yet; we are still in the early stages of planning how we want to work with our client or team. I’ve also mentioned Futures Literacy and how it could enable people to grapple with future concepts and open their minds to embarking into ambiguous and uncertain environments. In this chapter I’ll discuss a similar concept called the futures mindset—a state of mind and attitude that will allow your audience to prepare for the process and journey mentally and emotionally. Adopting and living with a futures mindset not only makes the job easier for everyone but also allows them to practice a sense of awareness of emerging patterns in the world at all times. Because it’s not just about understanding the principles; it’s about embodying an intuition and developing a muscle so that you can brave the world you want to explore. It allows you to scan for patterns around you, in front of you, and behind you, so that you can anticipate the future as it arrives. Without understanding and accepting some of these core principles, you run the risk of falling back into behaviors that can limit innovation and progress (the anchors holding the sailboat back). Ultimately, the futures mindset is a combination of awareness and attitude, and what you seek is to gain the trust of your audience by establishing the following:

A positive and optimistic attitude

This seems obvious, but having a positive attitude about everything you are about to do, no matter how bleak or dystopic your perspectives or ideas might be, will allow you to forge through some of the most difficult parts of the process. As your data and research grow, the process can become very overwhelming, so keeping everyone’s spirits up while you work through the analysis and prioritization will help you get to the end with a more collaborative and optimistic attitude.

A basic knowledge of core principles and stages of the process

As part of the mindset preparation, decide which theories, principles, or methods you want to expose now rather than later. Too much information in the beginning could be debilitating and could paralyze your audience before you even begin the hard work. But explaining that there is research, scenario planning, design, and strategy is certainly a good way to frame the stages of where you will be going. You can decide whether to talk about the activities in great detail; some leaders or teams may want that level of detail, while others may want you to just shepherd them through the process.

An acknowledgment of fears and a readiness for potential failures

Failure and fears are imminent. You will explore and postulate on many future possibilities that may scare your team. It’s natural for people to think negatively and to also become paralyzed by and complacent about threats that they cannot control or that could seem very bleak. Help them realize that the future is not always pretty; it takes no political stance and can breathe life or wreak havoc. To effectively assess all of this constructively, we need to be careful how we emotionally process this information. If we let our fears or fear of failure consume us or hinder us from thinking about the future, then this journey will be a lost cause before we even begin it.

A familiarity with different types of outputs

Futures can generate different types of outputs: trend cards, scenario stories, images, videos, speculative artifacts, and 10-year roadmaps. People who are not familiar with futures work might not understand what the end goal looks like and what their options are. Show them a range of examples, or an example of what they think they want, so they know what to expect and to get them excited.

Support and excitement to work with you and be led by you

As a leader and facilitator, you want people to be excited about the process and the outcomes, and about working with you as their spirit guide. Establish a positive rapport with people as early as possible to establish that trust and support system. This will improve collaboration, attentiveness, and advocacy when you need it.

Priming people to adopt a futures mindset can be tricky. We already discussed how using their vocabulary will help set the stage for what futures is (or isn’t). There are a few concepts and frameworks that you can begin introducing. You can show all of them or select what you believe will resonate the most. Here are a few places you can start:

• Explain the characteristics of a futurist

• The future is always VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous)

• The Futures Cone

• Analogies of a journey

• Recognize and embrace fears and failures

• The Futures Triangle

• Show relevant and appropriate examples

Explain the Characteristics of a Futurist

As the captain of the ship, you may want to begin by telling people a little more about yourself, your background, how long you’ve been practicing, or even some of your accomplishments. This will give some credibility to your skillset and allow you to share some stories about how you work, things that have happened in the past, and what to expect from your leadership along the way. If this is your first time using futures, you may not feel entirely comfortable calling yourself a futurist just yet, but don’t worry—in learning and using the process, you are inherently becoming a futurist, as well as training others how to be one. Still, it’s important to explain (and set some disclaimers about) what a modern-day futurist does. First and foremost, we are not wizards or oracles, and we don’t have a time machine or a telephone to call the future. We use our tools to reveal possibilities and facilitate strategies to optimize for the futures we want or don’t want.

Here are some additional qualities of futurists:

We don’t predict.

We don’t tell you the future; we offer possibilities. If you were in the business of predictions, you could end up backing yourself into a corner, where you’d have to defend yourself against things that you didn’t get precisely right. Inherent in our genes is the ability to anticipate changes and prepare for them. The best we can really do is visualize different outcomes and, through our analysis, describe the probabilities of certain events. It’s up to us to decide which ones we want to manifest or defend ourselves against. So instead of making a prediction, we use vocabulary that expresses the plurality of the future. We help people see the different alternatives so that we can make informed decisions about where we want to go (or don’t want to go).

We focus on patterns.

Our work doesn’t just come from having a wild imagination and watching and reading science fiction (though that is surely one type of inspiration). It comes from experience and from rigorous analysis of trends and other patterns we see emerging everywhere. We use research, quantitative and qualitative data, and anything else we can observe or get our hands on to see the similarities, differences, and forces that are changing the world.

We have an open mind and embrace uncertainty.

Being a futurist requires an ability to welcome the uncertainty and possibilities of the future. In the next section, we’ll talk about how the future is always VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous. Knowing and embracing VUCA allows us to look at the positive and negative sides of the future objectively, which in turn permits us to address anything with confidence, logic, and rigor.

We harness our imagination.

A good futurist draws on many sources of inspiration but also has the freedom and agency to harness their imagination by asking “What if?” questions. Imagination and creativity are key ingredients when trying to discover new ways to innovate in future worlds. Some organizations struggle to challenge the status quo and lack the courage to entertain new ideas. But only by nurturing the imagination can we really begin to move out of the shadow of doubt and competition and brave new worlds.

We look around us, backward and forward.

Futuring requires that you look backward into history as much as you look forward in time. If we forget the lessons of the past, then we are basically starting fresh every time, and that makes for pointless and useless work. There’s as much to learn about where we’ve been as there is about where we are going. There’s also a ton of data to mine from the past. Futurists aren’t just forward thinkers; they are students of history as well.

We are collaborative.

“Thinking about the future is a collaborative and highly communal affair,” says Marina Gorbis, executive director at Institute for the Future. “It requires a diversity of views. We need to involve experts from many different domains.” We futurists seek out multiple sources and perspectives to gather our intelligence, and we never work in a vacuum. Without diverse views, our ability to envision the future we desire may be limited. However, when we incorporate different perspectives, we take into account a broader range of viewpoints, reducing the prevalence of self-centric assumptions. Since the future is inherently complex, we must work together to build the world we want.

We are inclusive.

Sometimes I reference the Overview Effect when discussing the responsibilities we have with futures work. The Overview Effect is a cognitive shift that affects some astronauts when they see Earth from space. Many say they no longer identify with a specific nationality or culture; instead, they see themselves and everyone on the planet as one people, living on one world. A good futurist honors that this world is made up of many living entities (humans, animals, and plants alike) and that our planet is our one home. Once you unlock the potential of Futures Thinking, it can inspire you to harness it for broader social and environmental impact. Unfortunately, there are some people or organizations that are not interested in inclusivity or sustainability. They might be interested only in revenue or in how to impact their bottom line. Futures Thinking is also inherently political and can be controlled by those who have the power, finances, and resources to create the futures that they want. It’s a constant negotiation and at times a war zone. There are always debates and conflicts and competing interests when it comes to what the future should or shouldn’t be. But don’t let that discourage you from advocating for the values you want in a project. Our responsibility is to guide. If you see opportunities to expand views, take them; if not, it’s not the end of the world (hopefully)—but continue to practice as a shepherd of the process. Much like in Design, we do our best to help our users by also doing the right thing for society and the environment; sometimes we get that chance, while at other times we solve for only a user-centric problem.

Describing our craft in terms that people understand while also accentuating some of the qualities that make us practitioners and experts in our field is just one way to introduce people to the futures mindset. We want to slowly introduce our audience to how we operate and open their eyes to the possibilities of the future. They don’t necessarily have to learn and embody all these things immediately, but it can help set the stage for how we will operate. This will allow them to feel more comfortable with the process so that they won’t be too surprised should any confusion occur along the way. That’s not to say that there won’t be any surprises—there always are! But at least they’ll be more prepared to welcome them and can hopefully use them to fuel the process rather than hinder it. Can you imagine being on a boat with someone who is terrified and skeptical of your ability to sail? They might eventually become a nuisance and could potentially spread fear to others. This is why it’s important for everyone to understand that it is a safe space to explore—that there’s a reward at the end and you can help them get there, but it takes a dedicated crew.

The Future Is Always VUCA

One of the first acronyms I introduce when priming for a futures mindset is VUCA. VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. The term was first introduced in US Army War College documents as far back as 1987 and was subsequently cited in several other War College documents relating to strategic visioning and strategic leadership. Futures practitioners use this term often when referring to the environment of the future. An ex-Navy colleague explained to me once that in a conflict environment, “Every step you take is a new VUCA environment, and you constantly need to reassess your situation.” It’s true. With each passing moment, new factors are emerging that could change the tides. A global pandemic or earthquake could occur at any time. Life in general can be complex and ambiguous. Similarly, in a business environment, a competitor could invent the next iPhone, or some TikTok influencer could go viral promoting a random product and disrupt an entire industry. That’s business! It’s volatile and uncertain. We don’t necessarily need to think about the future as a constant war zone, but for some it is just that, and for some it’s a matter of life or death for their business. The principle of VUCA can be used to acclimate people to the uncertainties of tomorrow. You can think of those uncertainties as dangers or as opportunities. But once you realize they exist and you can willingly and objectively embrace VUCA and tackle it with excitement and ease, then you are more prepared for anything that happens.

To recap the four elements of VUCA:

Volatility

Unexpected or unstable outcomes exist and may be of unknown duration, but they are not necessarily hard to understand; some knowledge might be available.

Uncertainty

Despite a lack of other information, the event’s basic cause and effect are unknown. Change is possible but not a given.

Complexity

The situation has many interconnected parts and variables. Some information is available or can be predicted, but the volume or nature of it can be overwhelming to process.

Ambiguity

Causal relationships are unclear. No precedents exist—you face unknown unknowns.

The Futures Cone

One of the first diagrams I show to people who are new to futures is the Futures Cone (Figure 4-1). Developed by Joseph Voros in 2003, this cone of possibilities describes time as an ever-expanding cone that can include alternate futures or realities. Many in the foresight and futures communities regularly use it to map out alternate scenarios that can play out over time. Often people tend to think of the future as a straight line; this is the default version of the future, which can look much like today, or “business as usual.” Voros calls this the Projected future. But the great silent joke within our community is that business as usual means that the future not only looks like today but also inherits the same problems, with no surprises or change. We all know the future isn’t always a carbon copy of today. It’s always different (and also looks different from different perspectives). Change is inevitable, be it slow or hidden on the periphery.

Figure 4-1. The Futures Cone by Joseph Voros (source: adapted from an image in The Voroscope)

I sometimes like to explain it with a flashlight analogy. Imagine you are shining a flashlight into a dark room (Figure 4-2). You have no idea what is in there; it could be threatening or completely safe. The future is similar. We have no idea what the future holds at first, but we try to see into it using our tools. When we shine a flashlight into a dark room, it illuminates some areas of the room so that we can see what’s ahead. The brighter and wider the beam of the light, the more we see, and the safer we feel if no threats are visible. And if we do see something threatening, we can prepare. You can also use the analogy of traveling down a dark road or trail—but whether it’s a dark room or a dark road, we all would love to have a flashlight to see, wouldn’t we? However, there are always boundaries to the light. The beam’s reach stops at some point, and we can’t see anything in the area beyond it unless we move the light into that area, but there’s still always a dark edge somewhere.

The Futures Cone similarly categorizes these areas, with the brightest area (the center) as the Probable or Projected future, and moving outward to the Plausible (could happen), the Possible (might happen), and the Preposterous or impossible futures. Futures that lie within the Preposterous cone are ideas that just can’t exist because of some limitations—I sometimes use human teleportation or interstellar travel as an example of the preposterous (in our current year of 2024). These are fantastic ideas, but they are not achievable at present, and maybe not even within the next decade, with our current state of technology and understanding. But who knows—perhaps some new discovery or event could move one or the other idea into the Possible realm; until then, it lives in the darkness outside your cone of possibilities.

The cone isn’t necessarily a method (though it could be used as one); rather, it’s a principle that describes the multiple alternate possibilities that the future could bring. I introduce this idea very early when explaining futures to show that the future is not linear and that we have agency to imagine all types of scenarios and worlds. The future can be plural, wild, and exciting and is not prescribed by any one idea, roadmap, or destiny. Later we’ll see how we can lay the Futures Cone over the backcasting method to determine how different variations of a vision could play out over time. Once your audience can accept that the future truly is a wide-open canvas that presents endless possibilities, they will have begun their first steps toward adopting a futures mindset.

Figure 4-2. Futurology: shining a bright, broad beam of light into the darkness (source: adapted from an image in The Guardian)

Analogies of a Journey

I’ve already introduced the analogy of sailing a boat to an uncharted island. I also sometimes use the analogy of planning to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro. For people who have families, you could refer to planning a trip with your children to a theme park. In that last example, you definitely want to prepare for every potential circumstance or event that could put your child’s life (as well as your sanity) at risk. Depending on how you look at them, every one of these destinations would require a lot of planning—and in the case of Mt. Kilimanjaro, a bit of physical and mental training would be required as well. The same goes for futuring. No matter how much of the futures toolkit you plan to use, you will want to prepare everyone for the journey, and you’ll want to know as much about your destination as you can, given the resources you have at your disposal. We want people to feel comfortable and prepared for the activities, and we want to visualize the best picture of the destination (the future world) so that we can decide how we want to operate and survive there.

The great thing about an analogy is that it abstracts the process into something that people can easily relate to. Try to find an analogy that makes sense for your audience. Maybe you want to use a story that relates to their current product cycle? If you are working with a software company and have discovered during your diagnostic that the people at the company are not very open to change or find it hard to relate to certain abstract analogies, maybe you’ll want to talk about the process in terms of a one-year product roadmap. It is something they are likely very familiar with and will allow you to use the same language as them to get them on board faster.

Whatever analogy you choose, try to make it easy to explain so that you can link key facets of the process to ideas they know. Don’t worry about holes in the story; just focus on the ideas. Sure, Mt. Kilimanjaro is not completely uncharted, and people have been there before, but there are still uncertainties around the weather, the wildlife, and even your own resilience on the hike. But that’s not the point. The point is that it’s a foreign territory full of surprises—much like the future!

Recognize and Embrace Fears and Failures

Failure in life is imminent. It will happen, but we must sail on nonetheless, or else we sink. In many organizations, fear manifests itself in many ways, such as fear of failure, fear of competition, fear of the CEO, or fear of losing funding, just to name a few varieties. All are valid fears, but they can become obstacles to transformation and innovation. Try to understand where the fear lies during your diagnostic and find a way to quell that fear immediately, if possible. Controlling and managing fears is always a little difficult to plan for. Futures is not a precise science; this is why we try not to predict. Yes, we can be wrong! Think about how you might introduce the idea that failure is acceptable. Should you discuss how the process could fail (perhaps during a premortem)?

We don’t necessarily set out to fail, but we should be open to the fact that we can and probably will fail at some things or be inaccurate somewhere along the way. And that is OK! In fact, design is rooted in failure. Our imperative is to build, test, fail, learn, and build again. Everything we have and own today is the result of improved failures. So yes, this process, as rigorous as it can be, can result in failures. This is a tough concept to sell at times. Some organizations don’t like to be too negative or pessimistic because they don’t want to expose uncomfortable uncertainties. Some consulting firms get paid millions of dollars to deliver the “correct” answer. And they sure do work hard to sound confident. Confidence can sell anything (if you’re good at it). But the reality is that you sometimes must balance between optimism and cautious optimism (if you want to frame it that way). It makes sense that too much pessimism can spread fear and doubt. But you can’t simply ignore potential threats to a system. One way is to reframe them with a different word like “challenges” or even invert them as “opportunities to address gaps.” If we looked only at the positive opportunities and never addressed the threats, then we would be blindsided every day and would continue to waste time and money recovering from threats we never planned for. We don’t necessarily like surprises either. We want to be as prepared as possible, and we want to do anything we can to control our world. So, by thinking about failures and fears with a problem-solving mindset, we can be more effective when we do fail. If we establish that we equally welcome opportunities and failures, we can decide how to deal with them more effectively by creating safety nets so that we don’t fall as hard when we do fail. A safety net could be a conversation about what we will do if something isn’t correct or fails, or it might be a contingency plan with some invested resources, procedures, and policy to recover from a failure, should one happen. Again, we do this every day when we plan out our daily lives. Some fears we can repress without deterring our entire plan, and others we have to really think strategically about and figure out how to deal with them in a constructive and optimistic way.

The Futures Triangle

Another common framework used in futures work is the Futures Triangle, which was developed by Sohail Inayatullah in 2008. It describes three forces that are always acting on us at any point in time (Figure 4-3). The three points of the triangle represent the weight of the past, the pull of the future, and the push of the present.

Figure 4-3. The Futures Triangle

In an article on the KnowledgeWorks website, Maria Crabtree, director of Strategic Foresight projects for KnowledgeWorks, promotes the use of the Futures Triangle to “organize the possibilities ahead” without “succumb[ing] to the urgency of addressing current events,” explaining that the Futures Triangle

helps us grapple with the convergence of drivers of change anchoring the past, developing the present and shaping the future. These drivers of change include forces in addition to...major societal changes [happening today].... The juxtaposition of different combinations of these drivers of change results in multiple futures for us to consider and prepare for.

The Weight of the Past

All the things that hold us back (the anchors of the boat) can be considered the weight of the past. Those who refuse or are reluctant to try new ideas or explore new ways of doing things might be encumbered by legacy systems, mandates, or their own strict viewpoints—these also represent the weight of the past. These views anchor people to a history that they don’t necessarily want to change. They might be used to doing business as usual and are OK with that (also known as the “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” attitude). This attitude isn’t necessarily wrong, but if you are trying to innovate or transform your operation, strategy, or products, something will have to give. Being stuck too far at this end of the triangle or being too influenced or driven by the past will create an uphill battle when you are trying to introduce new processes or ideas.

The Pull of the Future

The pull of the future can be represented as the vision of the island you want to sail to. The pull is your aspirations, dreams, goals, or desires; it’s the ideas that exist in the future that make you want to chase after them. There is always a pull, a place that you want to go to but may not know how to get to yet. These forces make us want to move forward and seek change or transformation. One of the first steps for any organization that is taking on futures work is to recognize that there is a future it wants and that it wants help getting there. Recognizing that is one thing, but wanting to do something about it is another. Many organizations might see that there is a future that is threatening or opportunistic but don’t believe enough in a process to strategize around it. Those organizations may just want to “wait and see.” In such cases, you may just need to wait and see also—you’ll have to wait for them to call you when they are ready.

The Push of the Present

The pull of the future and the push of the present may seem similar conceptually. To determine the push, you’ll have to distinguish between what drives you forward today and what is more of a vision or dream in the future. Some forces are the gas in the engine moving the business down the road. What trends, policies, technologies, or resources do you see and feel around you that are propelling your business or life forward? For some it is a will to keep the lights on (i.e., keep the business afloat). For others it’s an obligation or expectation set by someone else. We do our job because it pays the bills and someone tells us to do it. It’s part of the machine that we are sitting in that is naturally moving through time, as opposed to the pull of the future, which is something we conceive or dream that we want—a technology, a new policy, a more lucrative product, an easier job.

You may have noticed that there are similar concepts embedded in many of these examples. The Sailboat Exercise is similar to the Futures Triangle, which has some similar theories to Bill Sharpe’s Three Horizons (which is discussed in Chapter 7)—all are intended to detail forces of change or existing barriers and complexities. How you illustrate these concepts for others will determine what people comprehend and accept. Any of these can be used as a way to explain Futures Thinking or as a discussion tool during the diagnostic. Consider how each of these examples is framed, and think about what’s necessary to show and how to explain it. It can be a slow discovery for some, but eventually people will understand and walk the path with you.

Show Relevant and Appropriate Examples

As you become more invested in futures work, it’s a good idea to keep a library of futures examples: speculative vision videos, articles, reports, roadmaps, process artifacts—anything and everything to represent futures that might come in handy one day. In my discussion of the diagnostic phase in Chapter 3, I talked about understanding how people think about the future today. Do they describe the future in terms of technology, culture, or the environment? Everyone’s future can look and feel different, so it’s necessary to get a baseline of how your audience sees the future today so that you can decide what’s appropriate to show them from your example library. Some examples might be too sci-fi or too conceptual. Others might look and feel exactly like their products today or focus on the same issues they focus on (such as AI-driven trends). If you show them something that is overly academic or conceptual, you could lose them quickly. But if you start with something they know and can relate to, you can then slowly expose them to other kinds of futures work. If it’s a software company, maybe you show them future visions of software first. Then show them a physical product to explain different formats of futures design. Eventually they will be able to read between the lines and see how it’s not necessarily the thing of the future but the process for how that thing was imagined that counts. And an investment and belief in the process is where you want to go by showing them different examples that resonate with them so that they can imagine what their end product could look like. You’ll know that they get it when you see their excitement in what you show them.

In 2015, Microsoft’s futures division released a six-minute video called Productivity Future Vision (Figure 4-4) that shows a future of Microsoft touchscreens, wearables, and other speculative technologies. It walks us through different environments, from a classroom and a corporate boardroom to a retail store and a science lab, and highlights how various transparent and interactive interfaces will play an important role in our work and lifestyles. This can be an effective video to show people, even though there definitely is technology that is on the edge of the cone of possibility, such as 3D holographic displays (Figure 4-5). It serves as an aspirational vision of where Microsoft as a company could be headed with its software, hardware, and operating systems. People also will recognize the Microsoft brand, so it can immediately add a level of credibility to the story.

Figure 4-4. An image from Microsoft’s Productivity Future Vision: an executive views data on a transparent touchscreen wall

Figure 4-5. An image from Microsoft’s Productivity Future Vision: a researcher analyzes data on a 3D holographic display

Let’s say you’re working with a startup software company that builds an app for booking flights. The company may already have a vision and roadmap for the next two years, and the app has an impressive set of features that have been synthesized from numerous user interviews. But the company knows it wants to be more innovative and become the top booking platform in the next three to five years. Its current vision might be entirely influenced by its current roadmap, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you want to use Futures Thinking to open up more possibilities, you might need to show the company what an alternate future could look like. You could play it safe and show other examples of similar airline booking platforms with different features that this company’s app doesn’t have. But that would just be a competitive analysis. Or you could show the company something a little more provocative, something that challenges its ideas of what a platform could do, and other things it could focus on that address emerging technologies, shifting trends, demographics and cultures, climate change—ideas that push the company outside of a commerce platform and make it think about social/cultural opportunities, new economic models, and challenging current policy frameworks. With that you are likely to find more disruptive opportunities. First ask yourself: is this an audience that would benefit and become inspired by a different kind of example? Or do you need to slowly wean them onto more provocative ideas? If you have primed them well and have opened their minds to uncertainties and new possibilities, then maybe you can start to push their imagination outside of their comfort or knowledge zone. Futures projects can be tricky that way. Some people really want to be provocative and innovative but in the end are simply too risk averse (this may be due to their organizational, cultural, or team environment, or a result of top-down directives and constraints).

The examples you use can really shape the way a company thinks about the future and what is possible with Futures Thinking. But you have to choose carefully. That’s why the diagnostic is so important. Knowing how far you can push your audience and how willing they are to entertain provocative notions can allow you to sail them into exciting (and sometimes uncomfortable) territory. The reward could be lucrative. And taking these kinds of calculated risks and succeeding is where innovation can really thrive.

Another example I like to use is a vision video created in 2018 by GE Transportation, a GE business unit responsible for manufacturing locomotives and freight trains (Figure 4-6). An innovation team led by Ryan Leveille, then Head of Experience Design and Digital Innovation, used Futures Thinking and emerging technologies like virtual reality to help the company imagine a 10-year roadmap for its freight division. Among the deliverables was an animated video about how GE could leverage predictive analytics, drones, and other software tools to optimize its operation and respond to emerging threats that many freight companies were facing at the time amid the rise of online shopping and shipping. The technology presented in the video was not necessarily revolutionary for that time, but its application in an industrial setting was. The concepts the video presented were logical and accessible and didn’t feel too far out of reach for the stakeholders. These characteristics are important for demystifying futures and for showing how practical futures can be realized. It isn’t all science fiction.

Figure 4-6. A still from GE Transportation’s Future of Freight vision video

Some futures work can be pretty visceral and may not represent a future someone wants, but it might represent an important conversation that needs to happen when discussing future trends and implications. A more provocative (and sometimes uncomfortable) example that I sometimes show is by Agi Haines, from her project Transfigurations at the Royal College of Art in London. I’ve used this example for years to represent a practice called Critical Design (also referred to as Speculative and Critical Design), which I’ll discuss in more detail in Chapter 9. For her exhibit she fabricated several designer babies, each one with modifications tailored for different purposes. Figure 4-7 shows a baby with extra folds on its head, which will allow it to work longer hours in hotter temperatures. Haines was fascinated with the manipulation of the human body and did extensive research into how we have been trying to change our physical form to adapt or adhere to cultural traditions over decades (Figure 4-8). In her artist’s statement for Transfigurations, Haines observed that “[the] human body consists of practicable elements that can be easily manipulated and engineered. Through surgical procedures our bodies can be stretched, shifted and sewn, yet still be functional. What then would stop us searching for a higher level of function than we have now? Especially if it may have the potential to benefit the younger, more vulnerable and more malleable generation?”

Modern plastic surgery provides us the ability to modify our skin, augment limbs, and even reassign our genders. So the technology exists, but its application to children is not ethically accepted (at least not today). While these babies are not real, they raise important questions about what we could do with technology if we had the abilities and desires. Is this the future we want? Or do we need to ask ourselves how to steer humanity away from this path? The baby, as a discourse, becomes a signal and an artifact from a potential future that provokes the viewer to investigate the implications of how design could play a role in our children’s lives.

Figure 4-7. Agi Haines, Thermal Epidermiplasty, from her exhibit Transfigurations: “‘Transfigurations’ depicts designs for potential body enhancements that have been surgically implemented. Each modification is put in place to imagine how these techniques could ‘solve’ a potential future problem for the baby, ranging from medical to environmental to social mobility issues, but at what physical, mental, social and economic cost?”

Figure 4-8. Agi Haines, Podiaectomy, from her exhibit Transfigurations: “A high incidence of asthma can be prevented by the removal of the central phalange. Leaving the soft fleshy skin exposed for the potential contraction of a hookworm, a parasite known for reducing allergic responses.”

Throughout the book, I’ll reference more examples that could be useful in different situations. Some of these will be final designs, while others might be process outputs. Maybe you want to show process artifacts such as a scenario card or trend card, a backcasting map, or a Futures Wheel (we’ll discuss these in detail in the following chapters) to describe how exercises are structured and how they can eventually lead to a more polished vision. Be careful, however, about showing low-fidelity artifacts too early. While they may be legitimate output from workshops, artifacts that are sketches or unrefined drawings of ideas could give people the wrong idea of what “final” output looks like. On the other hand, showing them something of low fidelity could lower their anxiety about having to be perfect or polished within their ideation or co-creation activities. Treat these situations on a case-by-case basis. Showing something that doesn’t look polished could create skepticism, thus countering your efforts to impress and gain buy-in and trust. Not to say that a low-fidelity output is bad, but make sure your audience understands what it means before you show it. In the end, it will be partially up to your gut instinct as to whether an example is too risky or is just the right one to get their attention or teach them something. Your diagnostic and conversations should tell you what to do. And you can always just ask someone on the team if they think an example is appropriate to show or if it’s too conceptual or confusing.

Regardless of which models, examples, or diagrams you use to prime your audience for futures work, you ultimately want them to be curious and excited to embark on this journey. You might even want to do a quick pulse check periodically to make sure they are still with you and still on board with the process. Is there any confusion or skepticism about the principles, methods, or outcomes? Do you have new allies and champions? Even if you can get people only half the way there (eager enough to step into the boat with you and set sail), you’re in a much better place than if you had no support or belief at all. Belief systems are important. We use them every day; we take the knowledge and memories we collect and place our trust in them so that we can make educated decisions about a system. But if that trust is broken, a bad memory is created. You could lose the team that you need to complete the journey. And sometimes it’s hard to recover that trust based on the event or experience the team has with you. Use these examples to ignite that curiosity and desire for futures, and if you still aren’t getting people on board, ask them what more they need to build that trust.

In Closing

These are just a few examples that you can use to help your audience understand the possibilities that Futures Thinking can generate and to help them adopt a futures mindset. Try to use your diagnostic research to tailor your conversation to their culture, vocabulary, and needs, and use this stage of priming to inspire and stimulate excitement for the journey ahead. In essence, what you want to accomplish is:

• Getting them more familiar with the process and concept of futuring

• Helping them understand the multiple forces acting upon us

• Introducing them to the different lenses we use to look at the future

• Preparing them for potentially scary, complex, and uncertain environments

• Motivating them to get excited about futuring with you

Remember, it takes experience, trust, faith, and a willingness to collaborate to see the future. You may not convince everyone, but that’s OK; you just need to convince enough people to move the project forward and reduce the number of headaches and the skepticism (and potential mutiny) you might encounter along the way. This doesn’t mean you’ll have smooth sailing the whole way. You may have to rekindle excitement again at some point. And that just comes with the responsibility of caring for your crew as you sail into the unknown.