framework foresight | Hinesight....for Foresight

by Andy Hines on November 25, 2015 Leave a Comment

Three Horizons of Work

I had the pleasure of participating on a panel exploring the future of work at the GAO for IFPTE Local 1921annual union meeting. We had ten or fifteen minutes to talk – quite a challenge given all the interesting things happening in the future of work. I decided to organize it around the Three Horizons Model (see Curry and Hodgson’s wonderful paper).

I selected three issues, going from the long-term to the short.

(Horizon Three) The transformation of work. Work is going through a transformation, as three driving forces — the rise of automation and machine intelligence, shifts in individual values, and the rise of a new economy – are challenging key assumptions about the role of work are being challenged: (1) work is central to individual’s identity (2) work structures daily life, and (3) work is the primary source of income.

(Horizon Two) Hey, that’s cheating: Augmentation in the workplace. Augmented or enhanced human characteristics will present challenges for organizations and individual talent. Significant technology advances, from mechanical implants to chemical, genetic, and nanotech-enabled approaches, are making human augmentation a reality.

(Horizon One) Fairness becomes impossible. The need to customize and personalize to attract talent will make across-the-board, same-for-everyone types of policies increasingly untenable. The high premium on getting the right talent shifts the bargaining power to them, and they will use it.

It was great fun to share and discuss, and to sneak in a very useful foresight framework. Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on November 11, 2014 Leave a Comment

Some thoughts on action learning

Action learning (and its family members) are an approach to solving complex problems that starts with the premise that every situation is unique. If there is a clear solution to a problem, you probably don’t need action learning. It’s more suited to messy, complex problems for which there isn’t a clear solution For me, working on a project to “fix” higher education, for example, is a complex problem without a ready solution that could benefit from the action learning approach. The expectation is that the team will understand the problem better and move it forward, but not necessarily solve it.

Last week in Alternative Perspectives class at Houston Foresight, one of our students, Mackenzie Dickson, shared an excellent review of his experience as an intern with action learning with UNESCO’s foresight group under the tutelage of futurist Riel Miller.

They are working on developing what they call Futures Literacy Knowledge Laboratories, which Riel as a process for creating knowledge using the collective intelligence that emerges from structured learning-by-doing conversations about the future of a particular topic that is meaningful to the participants. See this short video for more info.

A key objective of the approach is to build capacity in the groups they work with. A key element of the approach is to “make assumptions about the future visible,” which in turns opens up the group to generate alternative assumptions. They tap the group’s collective intelligence to generate ideas and use shared sense-making to interpret them.

There is a general framework with lots of rooms for different approaches within it. He mentioned that one group used Sohail Inayatullah’s Six Pillars approach.

One interesting aspect of the process, which might be a challenge for some clients, is that there is less emphasis on “deliverables.” In a sense the process and experience is the deliverable, although my colleague and dissertation advisor Jeff Gold notes that a successful action learning project generates commitments to action on the part of participants [see his overview video]. It’s perhaps less of a stretch than one might imagine, as traditional approach such as scenario planning often suggest that a key benefit is going through the process as opposed to simply reading a final report.

Mackenzie was struck by the tremendous energy and enthusiasm that the approach generated. In one three-day workshop in the Philippines, for example, there were about 100 participants from a wide range of functions that were enthusiastic participants.

My reflection is that action learning represents an ongoing shift in how foresight is evolving. There has been a long-term shift away from expert-driven content projects to more collaborative participatory approaches. This does not mean that we don’t need expertise, but that the expertise fits within the process rather than driving it. Nor does it suggest we don’t need content, just that there is a lot of content out there, and that the value add is in selecting what content to use and supplementing as needed. Jose Ramos has done some great writing on this subject (and was kind enough to visit with our class last year). Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on October 28, 2014 Leave a Comment

Another perspective on images of the future

We were fortunate to have futurist Wendy Schultz of Infinite Futures as a guest lecturer in “Intro to Foresight” class last night on the topic of “The image of the future.” She observed that science fiction was key influence on her interest in the future and that Marshall McLuhan’s work was influential as well.

She observed that since there are no future facts means, that we must rely on images of the future instead. She thinks it would be a neat project to do a content analysis on images [I agree, and think we could come up with a student project around this] She suggests that we don’t pay enough attention to the images of the future that area already out there today. Looking at past and present images can help us unpack our assumptions about the future. She suggests an interesting exercise would be to watch some broadcast television and look at the ads and see what images of the future are being suggested. Religions are typically based on an image of some sort. Political parties also, for instance Conservative often have some version of a “golden age of the past.” “We are actually swimming in a sea of images.” She observed that futurists are in essence “competing” with the existing images out there.

We could use an analytic framework for this. Images involve hopes, fears, extrapolation and imagination. They do not have to be just visual; they can be stories, songs, poems, artifacts, etc. At the individual level, they are part of our interior landscape – the “left-hand side” of the integral matrix. Look at images and analyze them, using criteria like timeframe degree of distance from the past, etc. One possibility is using the Integral matrix. She noted how artists often produce images in the upper left (individual interior quadrant). She suggested Integral quadrants and CLA’s levels. Sensemaker from Dave Snowden could be used for this. It has people tell a story (about their image) and then respond in their words to some questions analyzing what they shared.

Referenced the work of Anton Nelisson at Rutgers in working with communities in which he shows the community what it looked like before, what it looks like now, and then asks what they would like it to look like in the future. He’s been doing it for thirty years and a pattern has emerged to things like walking distance [AH: what we might call “livable communities]

She feels there are about 5-7 generic stories about the future, building off of Dator’s four archetypes.

She notes that provocative images can be a way to critique the present (as we discuss in Alternative Perspectives class).

We are seeing more collapse images – still see some grand-design tech-driven images and sustainability ones. Digital art is providing great visual images that can be used to stretch people’s thinking

She shared some of her key points from Polak’s work, citing it as one of the most influential works in futures. She noted a difference in the US and European foresight traditions. Europeans have tended to be more interested in the rational (more reliance on reasoning) compared to the empirical tradition in America. Thus, Europeans have tended to be more interest in the idea of the image than in the US. Polak researched how images influenced the dynamism of a society. Those societies that believed changed was good (essence positive) and that people could influence change (influence positive) [discussed in a recent post] were most likely to have a dynamic guiding image. He believed at the time that Western civilization lacked a dynamic guiding image and wrote the book as a call to develop one. In terms of Polak’s challenge, she does not see that a cultural or civilizational scale image has emerged – does see some possibilities around images relating to sustainability, but in general notes that in the US, for example, there is an extreme polarization of views trying to come up with a replacement for the American Dream. She is a bit alarmed by the rise of fundamentalist images that suggest a preferred outcome of a constrained or highly controlled future.

Wendy’s insights were a terrific addition to our class and given the timing of my recent posting on the topic, I thought this would be a great way to keep the conversation going. Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on September 9, 2014 Leave a Comment

Concluding the Future of Knowledge Work

Knowledge work is emerging as the central focus of developed economies, with emerging markets making forays into it as well. The research began by describing knowledge work in a domain map and a breakdown of key activities. They provide a framework for the analysis. Seventeen catalysts, or key drivers of change, emerged from combining trends that populated the domain map. Different outcomes for these catalysts were projected using a framework of four common archetypes of change—continuation, collapse, new equilibrium, and transformation—that resulted in the four scenarios for the future of knowledge work. The four scenarios provide a range of different views of how knowledge work may evolve over the next decade (the original research took place about 3-4 years ago, so the time frame of the scenarios was 2020, now just six years out).

The scenarios suggest a range of plausible outcomes for knowledge work out to 2020:

Virtual Teams Collaborating suggests a future most similar to today, where present trends continue and strengthen and enable a quite manageable transition to a greater reliance on knowledge work.
Back to Basics, on the other hand, presents a plausible picture of how a greater reliance on knowledge work is not a given, as tough economic times and security concerns compel a retreat to a world of work more like the past than the present.
Socially Centric Work also presents a series of challenges to knowledge work, but in this scenario they are successfully resolved, relying on a much greater integration of social networking tools to manage the transition to the world of knowledge work that goes deeper than Virtual Teams Collaborating.
Personalized Professions presents a more provocative view of knowledge work that has a transformative effect on how work is done, leading to a future in which all workers are thought of as knowledge workers.

Summarizing key implications

The table below highlights the key implications of each scenarios for the six key activities of knowledge work.

Human resources professionals, organizational leaders, or anyone interested in the future of work can use these scenarios, and the analyses on which they are derived, to expand their perspective and evaluate their long-term strategies against a range of plausible outcomes. In reality, the future will likely include elements of all four of the scenarios described here. As such, using these scenarios as a strategic tool will be better prepared to thrive regardless of the exact nature of knowledge work in 2020 and beyond. Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on June 30, 2014 Leave a Comment

Future Knowledge Work Drivers: Spaces

The research & scanning for the “Future of Knowledge led to the identification of more than 120 trends that were in turn synthesized into 17 drivers. The drivers are organized by how they flow out of the domain map. Let’s start with those emerging from “spaces.”

My Space. The new knowledge economy provides workers and consumers alike with increasing opportunities to customize and personalize their workspaces, the tech tools they use, and even where, when, and how they work. The BYOD (bring your own device) trend is changing the tools and devices that knowledge workers use on the job.

Integration of Virtual and Real. New technologies, including virtual-world applications and contextual and semantic resource software, allow knowledge workers to automate many support tasks and optimize their communications. This compels companies to develop new frameworks for assigning workflows that seamlessly integrate the virtual and real and minimize information overload.

Rise of the Cloud. The move to cloud computing—data storage, applications, platforms, computing power, and managed services being delivered over the Internet rather than hosted on personal computers—is under way.

Dharma by Design. The design of office space and general working conditions increasingly takes into account such issues as environmental sustainability, energy efficiency, and worker comfort as the relationship between environment and productivity becomes easier to measure and optimize. Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on June 17, 2014 Leave a Comment

And the data rolls in: after the early opportunity has passed

In our work as futurists, it is routine to have our forecasts, findings, and recommendations questioned, particularly when they are “early.” I have been teaching that this is normal and to be expected – we shouldn’t be surprised when our work, suggesting a different future(s) with disruptive consequences to our clients is “resisted.” Accepting this doesn’t always make it easier, but hopefully it enables us to move more quickly to the next step of working with that resistance and helping our clients to see it, challenge it, and “open it up.”

I was just reading a marketing pitch for an annual survey of sustainability-related values with several teasers highlighting how the data is now showing, well, what many of us were saying years ago: there is “green” in going green. Really juicy stuff that would have made our life so much easier if we had it 15 or 20 years ago. If we flash back to the initial cases we made, we had to rely on our qualitative tool kits to make the inferences that green and sustainability would one day be mainstream — I remember doing a pitch on sustainability addressing a topic along the lines of “Is Green for Real?” using the CLA framework. I think this one “worked,” because it wasn’t particularly early and there were enough signals/data that it wasn’t really a big leap.

But when it’s really early, and one might argue that this is when we are most useful, many clients asked for “the data,” which was of course anecdotal at the time. It’s not there yet. And this is this space – the opportunity space – where organization can bring their strategic thinking and make some early moves or investments to align with the emerging future. I’m thinking more and more on how to better make our cases without the data – in a world of big data. Or maybe Big Data will help us in this delicate space? Hmmm. Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on June 13, 2014 Leave a Comment

Milestones in the Development of Knowledge Work

This is the second in a series of posts about the future of the knowledge work. They are based on an article I did with Chris Carbone that was published in the Spring 2013 issue of Employment Relations Today. Last time, we talked about how we scoped knowledge work using a domain map.

This time, to help ground readers in the topic and to provide context to how we arrived at where we are today, key milestones in the development of knowledge work are highlighted below. We’re going back further than a typical project. A rule of thumb is one ought to look back as far as one is looking forward. In this case, we chose to go back a bit further – to the roots!

Although the concept was introduced as early as 1959, key enabling developments such as telecommuting and personal computing kick off in the 1970s. Outsourcing was a key development of the 1980s. The launch of the web was the most significant development of the 1990s, although several other important developments that hit their stride in the 2000s begin in the 1990s: smart devices, E-commerce, and virtual collaboration. The emergence of various social media stands out as a key development in knowledge work over the last decade.

Milestones in the Development of Knowledge Work

Industrial Revolution

Late 18th and early 19th centuries: Work meant “going to work”; the Industrial Revolution created the clear separation between work and home.

Knowledge Workers

1959: Peter Drucker coined the term knowledge workers. “Knowledge workers require that the demands be made on them by knowledge rather than by people. They require a performance-oriented organization rather than an authority-oriented organization….”[i]

Telecommuting

1970: Jack Niles coined the term telecommuting in response to the realization that the world’s fossil fuels were finite and that energy conservation was necessary.
1990: Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 required nation’s most polluted regions to reduce the number of single-occupant vehicles by up to 13%.
2000: Number of US workers teleworking more than eight hours per week hit 6 million.
2009: Number of US workers teleworking more than eight hours per week hit 14 million.

Personal Computing

1977: Release of Apple II.
1981: Release of IBM PC “5150” and MS-DOS.
1987: Release of PowerPoint.
1992: Release of IBM ThinkPad 700 laptop.

1993: Release of Intel’s Pentium chip processor.

Outsourcing

Thomas Friedman noted that, “The PC, the Internet, and fiber-optic cable had created the possibility of a whole new form of collaboration and horizontal value creation: outsourcing.” [ii]

1980s: Outsourcing started with blue-collar jobs.

1990s: Outsourcing expanded to white-collar jobs.
World Wide Web

1990: Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web.
1994: Release of Mosaic Netscape browser.
1994: AOL 2.0 featured USENET and Web access.

Smart Devices

1996: Palm popularized “PDAs.”
1999: Release of BlackBerry handheld e-mail device.
2007: Release of first iPhone.
2008: Release of code for and first phone based on the Android open-source mobile software platform.
2010: Release of first iPad.

E-Commerce

1995: EBay was founded.
2001: Napster was shut down, ending “free” music.
2003: Amazon posted first net profit.
2003: iTunes store opened.

Virtual Collaboration

1990s: Development of Groupware (e.g., Lotus Notes) applications.
2004: Release of web-based project management tools (e.g., Basecamp).
2006: Cisco’s Telepresence linked two separate physical rooms.
2007: Second Life membership reached 10 million.
2011: IBM’s Smarter Computing framework and Apple’s iCloud were launched.

Social Media

2003: Release of del.icio.us for social bookmarking.
2003: Launch of LinkedIn for professional networking
2004: Launch of Flickr for image sharing.
2004: Launch of Facebook.
2006: Launch of Twitter.
2011: 156 million public blogs in existence.

Andy Hines

[i] Drucker, P. (1959). The landmarks of tomorrow. New York: Harper & Brothers.

[ii] Friedman, T. (2005). The world is flat. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

by Andy Hines on December 9, 2013 Leave a Comment

APF Most Significant Futures Work Nomination: Think Like a Futurist

I am very pleased to have nominated “Think Like a Futurist” by Cecily Sommers for an APF Most Significant Futures Work Award for 2014 in the Category of “Methods and Practice.” You may know Cecily as a futurist and member or APF or from her earlier incarnation as the driving force behind the very successful PUSH movement and conference. We’re fortunate she has turned her attention to capturing lessons learned from working in the field, as well as sharing how she does it.

Cecily bridges the worlds of foresight and innovation in this immensely handy book published by Jossey-Bass in 2012. This is a great book to hand to clients before an engagement, as it lays out foresight concepts and tools in a way that the non-futurist can readily grasp. It is a great example of translating foresight work to reach a general audience. The book is organized around a series of frameworks and models that are designed for memorability.

Her work emphasizes tying the application of foresight to concerns of great value to clients. Cecily emphasizes the use of foresight for solving problems — relating to the future but tied back to the present. The link between foresight and innovation is particularly promising and the case is well made for it here. She provides a handy, readable account that provides a useful framework for doing foresight work as well as a good example of how to write for a general audience. In addition, the work is chock full of insights that any professional futurist practitioner should find themselves jotting down as a “keepers.”

The APF MSFW program, which annually reviews and recognized outstanding foresight work, both to recognize authors as well as promote examples of outstanding foresight work. Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on September 11, 2013 Leave a Comment

Understanding, mapping, and influencing the future

In our Teaching about the Future book, we noted that our curriculum is roughly organized into Understanding, Mapping, and Influencing the Future, and organized the book along those categories. It’s not only useful to organizing a curriculum, but it’s a useful way to approach to what you need to know as a student, prospective or practicing futurist.

Understanding is about grasping conceptual backdrop to thinking about the future. Key concepts such as understanding change, alternative futures, and the cone of plausibility, and theoretical underpinnings such as systems thinking, theories of social change, and integral futures

Mapping describes how to construct forecasts of potential future outcomes or alternative futures, drawing on framing and scanning. We also refer to this as describing inbound change–the change that happens to people. It comes at us from the “outside” world. Our Framework Forecast process produces baseline and alternative futures, but there are a whole host of ways to produce forecasts and scenarios. Mapping covers the first three activities of the Framework graphic below.

Influencing, explores how to take action to shape the future. We often refer to this as outbound change — the change that people bring about and effect on the world. It answers the “so what” question — once the future has been mapped, then what? Our response is that we study the future in order to influence it–to help create a better future. Influencing covers the first second three activities of the Framework graphic below.

Next, where is the value-add of futures in understanding, mapping, and influencing the future? Andy Hines

by Andy Hines on July 1, 2013 Leave a Comment

Making the Future Happen for AALL

I’m excited about my upcoming presentation, “Making the Future Happen,” at the AALL (American Assn of Law Libraries) “Rethink Your Value” conference in Seattle on July 16th. It’s quite an impressive conference, really well designed and planned. I have worked with the AALL before and they are thinking hard about their future. In this talk, as the title suggests, the focus is on action. I’ll share my lessons and experience in bring the future to life. I’ve noticed a great deal more emphasis on the “acting” end of the spectrum in my recent work, both consulting and in teaching and training. Clients are really eager to apply — we might call this a “good thing.”

Just a few years ago, I wondered if foresight was going to be able to make a real impact on “acting.” Shouldn’t we just stay on the left-hand side of the framework (framing, scanning, forecasting) where we futurists clearly (at least to me) have a unique value proposition? Are we really all that differentiated on the right-hand side? It’s always fun to find a new area to explore. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about the right-hand side, — playing with new ideas, new techniques, new ways to teach, and new ways to help clients. Several years ago, I might have been uncomfortable doing a “make the future happen” talk, but today I’m really excited about it….Andy Hines

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