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We don’t need to say this or that will happen in the future (we’ll leave that to the predictors and soothsayers). When we come across a signal of change, we don’t need to decide whether it’s going to happen.
When you are scanning, if you take a position on how the signal will turn out, you may find yourself to starting to focus on evidence that suggests you are right about how it will turn out. If you take a position on a signal on a client projection, you may put yourself in a confrontational position with your client. You say X and client says Y and you’ve created an unnecessary potential conflict or confrontation. They may be hesitant to share their views, fearing that they be corrected about the “right” answer.
Our job is to present a range of possibilities, not what we think will happen. I strongly resist the temptation to tell them what will happen, even when they ask! The caveat to this is when we get to the recommendations phase of a project, it is fair game to provide your views here.
So we say, hold your views about the future very loosely. It keeps you open to adjusting your understanding. It keeps you actively searching for more information, whatever that information might be telling you. For example, when you find a weak signal, there is no need to either promote it as the next great thing, or dismiss it as way out there. In today’s vernacular, “hold space” for the signal in a neutral fashion, and watch and learn. When clients have reacted against a signal we’ve found, we don’t fight for the signal, we trust and fight for the process that identified the signal, and ask them to keep the signal in play even if they don’t believe it.
For the fans of After Capitalism, I might suggest we don’t need to pick which guiding image is the right one. We can “hold space” for all three as we imagine the future After Capitalism. As noted above however, when we are ready for action, we do need to choose a path (keeping open contingencies and remaining agile and ready to adapt), – Andy Hines
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