Observing the different future horizons
A way to practice critical thinking every day
Critical thinking is highlighted by many business organisations including the World Economic Forum, as being one of the most important attributes for leaders of the future. I find critical thinking is very much a practice. It’s something that improves if you find ways to do it every single day. Being able to ‘see’ what’s in front of you with an impartial and critical eye means suspending your own views and feelings to get an objective view. It’s also helpful to have tools that can help you practice. The Three Horizons model is one of those very useful tools.
At any time when we look around us there are three different horizons of the future present in our lives. Practising observing these different horizons every day is an enormously helpful exercise for anyone involved in innovation, transformation, change, or even new product development. It’s an essential skill for anyone who wants to be part of designing the ‘future we want’ rather than the future we are currently creating.
Every day there are opportunities to train your mind to see these different horizons, and develop your capacity for critical thinking. This morning when I looked at the front pages of the UK newspapers, there was a brilliant example.
But first let’s take a quick review of the Three Horizons model designed by Bill Sharpe. I call Bill’s three different horizons Business As Usual (Horizon 1), The Future We Design (Horizon 3) and Disruptive Innovation (Horizon 2). Economist Kate Raworth made a quick intro video last year which helps to understand how it works.
Each morning I give a quick scan to newspaper headlines in the UK. They give a very accurate feed of the different narratives that are being told about any single situation or event in the UK. Most print media is owned by someone with a world view that is promogulated through their media — whether that’s the Daily Mail or the BBC which is supposed to be impartial but doesn’t always achieve that. Here are today’s headlines.
The Future We Design: well, hopefully not. National treasure and environmental icon David Attenborough shares a stark warning. If governments don’t get behind the Paris Climate Agreement and act to keep carbon in the ground (no more oil or coal coming out) and stop increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, we have zero chance of staying below 2C warming.
The Future We Design — a regenerative economy which renews the human spirit and balance to the biosphere — speaks with the voice of the visionary. This voice can join the disparate dots it sees — whether these are science based facts or intuition or creative thinking — and can imagine what’s coming and expresses it in images and stories.
Disruptive Innovation: Extinction Rebellion is a non-violent activist movement which was born in the UK and this week declared International Rebellion Week. The movement has been staging a series of events across the world to carry the very same message as David A. We are in danger of extinction as a species, and we’ll take a lot of other life with us if we don’t pay attention. People from all walks of life and ages have come together to pressurise governments and councils to take action; from blocking bridges and streets to glueing ourselves to trains and vehicles. Disruptive Innovation speaks with the voice of the entrepreneur — can we please find a way to do this differently? It doesn’t have to be this way.
In the case of Extinction Rebellion, we could ask ourselves whether it has been captured by H1 behaviour patterns and is not going to lead to the Future We Want to Design. Is this kind of activism a form of business as usual or is it truly innovative? My personal jury is out on that one, because I can observe by taking a step back and looking at myself through a camera lens (a Theory U practice to develop generative listening) that my emotions are too engaged here to be objective. I believe that even if this form of activism reminds me of the Greenham Common women, that it is necessary right now. This kind of action is similar to being confronted unexpectedly with mortality — it’s a moment of shock in which you are given the possibility to think differently or see something differently.
Business As Usual: can be seen in the response to Extinction Rebellion. BAU is represented in the narrative around ER’s action. It is disrupting systems; the systems of transport, business and work. Vital services which deliver the economy, salaries and of course profits. Money is being lost which mustn’t happen. The divisive, degenerative economy kicks in; the police aren’t doing anything, the Mayor must act, the movement must be stopped. Business As Usual speaks with the voice of management today, which is tasked with keeping the lights on — no matter what.
Alongside the narrative about climate change, we have a glimpse of disruptive innovation in the medical world with the story of pigs brains being rekindled to life after their heads have been chopped off in a slaughter house. This is a story that makes my blood run quite cold. It is disruptive innovation that has been captured by the moral values and lack of compassion exhibited in our current Business As Usual model.
Scientists were allegedly so worried that in bringing the brains back to life, consciousness ‘might’ be revived that they heavily sedated the brains before carrying out the experiments. Even having had family members who have suffered from Alzheimers disease, is this what we want to be doing to other living creatures? It isn’t the future I want to design.
And finally we see Business As Usual in the story that 1% of the population owns most of England in The Guardian’s exposure of land management. How we use available land in the future is critical to the process of climate change. We urgently need to work out a global distribution between people (where they will live), agriculture (how we grow our food), energy (the land needed for our best energy option, solar) and the biodiversity and beauty that sustains our fragile biosphere (forests for oxygen, biodiversity to stabilise ecosystems from bees to wolves to elephants).
As one of the largest contributors to emissions after transport, we need to urgently transform industrial agricultural systems to a more regenerative model. We also need to look at expanding the ‘best’ model for energy in the future — solar — which is going to need more surface than is currently available. Land owners may cling on for dear life to the power and control that land ownership gives them, but we have to find an economically feasible model to redistribute and use land.
Not everyone wants to look at newspapers today. We are all pretty aware that many news outlets are maniuplated and managed by ‘business as usual’ so they aren’t objective in the first place. Where can you find opportune ways to practice critical thinking? Where could you apply the Three Horizons model quickly and easily to help you make ‘see’ more clearly whether your actions are part of business as usual, disruptive or leading to the future we want to design? Enjoy!
