Good Futures Work | Hinesight....for Foresight

The Houston Foresight Program is having its annual Spring Gathering this weekend on the theme of “Good Futures Work.” I chaired a “Professionalization” effort for APF in which we developed a plan for building a case for professionalization. At the same time, and this is really important, the effort gave us an opportunity to develop and tell our story as a field. Who are we, what do we do, and how do we do it? Some find this to be navel-gazing and just want to get on with it. That’s fine, please do, we need people out there doing good work. For those of us taking the long view (and shouldn’t futurists be doing this), these questions are important.

Especially to me, as a teacher of aspiring futurists, it is important to first get a handle on what is considered futures work – before we can evaluate the work. One of the first projects carried out by the Professionalization Task Force, after doing the overall plan, we to do develop a competency model. What are the key things we all agree are the common competencies (knowledge, skills, and abilities) to doing foresight work? I really enjoyed working with the Competency Model team to come up with it. A publication highlighting the effort is on the Department of Labor site, but we are working on a detaield piece about it for World Futures Review.

So, the next step is standards and professional development. With agreement on competencies, we can explore deeper what good work involving those competencies looks like. Certainly, some of this work has already been going on. Richard Slaughter had been chronicling the state of futures work for years. Colleague Terry Grim developed the Foresight Maturity Model that evaluates the state of organizational development in six competencies.

The development of competencies and standards, thus, sets the stage for fine-tuning professional development. Again, this work can go on now. It has gone on to some degree in the past. It’s a matter of continuing to develop and mature as a field.

This weekend in Houston we want to sort of kick that off by sharing among ourselves the good futures work we are doing. — Andy Hines

About Andy Hines

Dr. Andy Hines is Program Coordinator at the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight, bringing together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist. He is also speaking, workshopping, and consulting through his firm Hinesight.

Before that, he was Managing Director of Social Technologies/Innovaro, and served as an Adjunct Professor with the university since 2004. Hines enjoyed earlier careers as a consulting and organizational futurist. He was a partner with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a think tank and consulting firm that specialized in the study of the future. He was also Futurist & Senior Ideation Leader at Dow Chemical with a mission of using futures tools and knowledge to turn ideas into new business opportunities. Before that, Hines established and ran the Global Trends Program for the Kellogg Company.

Hines is motivated by a professional hunger to make foresight practical and useful, and he believes that foresight can help deliver the insight that is so needed in today’s organizations and the world. His goal, he says, is to infect as many change agents as possible with this message. Thus, he has honed a skill set designed to make foresight more actionable in organizations.

In this pursuit, he has authored five books: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape (No Limits Publishing, 2011); Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (Social Technologies, 2007); 2025: Science and Technology Reshapes US and Global Society (Oak Hill, 1997); and Managing Your Future as an Association (ASAE, 1994) and has another in the hands of publishers: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education. He has also authored dozens of articles, speeches, and workshops, including the 2003 Emerald Literati Awards’ Outstanding Paper accolade for best article published in Foresight for “An Audit for Organizational Futurists” and the 2008 award for “Scenarios: The State of the Art.” He has appeared on several radio and television programs, PBS Houston, KRIV-26 News, and the CBS “Early Show.” He also co-founded and is former Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists.

About Andy Hines

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply