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Rebecca Ryan and I have a lot in common, but we are different in many ways, too. We learned foresight at a university or on the job. We also studied economics, or psychology and sociology. We bring Zen training and leadership skills to bear on our work or gamification. Our preferred writing style for scenarios or favorite moments in the foresight process are different, too. The list goes on.

But here is what’s more important — we leverage our differences as a source of strength and creativity. It helps us tailor the strategic foresight process to each client while keeping it relevant, practical, engaging, and fun. Here are some of the shared principles we use in our work:

Assign history an intentional role in a strategic foresight process.

A strategic foresight project can start anywhere from “ignore the past and start from a blank slate” to “start with today to give a little background on how we got here in the first place” to “let’s start with a substantive analysis of the history of the domain.” Between the two of us, we have experience in all of these. Which approach we use depends on the goals of the client project. What are they trying to do? Is it important for them to acknowledge and understand the past before turning forward, or do the participants already know the history?

In any case, we don’t throw the past out wholesale. At a minimum, if a client asks us to start from a blank slate because they just want to move forward and think about the future, we acknowledge that wish and then do our research and meet with them privately to understand their system and history, e.g.,

• Tell us your community or organization’s story; what is the story it tells itself?
• Where does an exploration of the future stand in historical context?

We do this because, in our experience, the past establishes a posture that can influence the success of a new plan. For example, imagine an organization with a paternalistic culture where the executives are the “parents” and employees are “children.” The implied culture is that all employees will be looked after “like family.” That may work well in a command and control system where all the information is held only at the top. But even the U.S. military recognizes the need for distributed leadership and networked intelligence.

So if a brighter future demands a more decentralized and collaborative dance among employees, where everyone feels like a co-equal part of a team, the paternalistic disposition will be an impediment to the future. A successful new strategic plan accounts for these cultural dynamics.

Here is a different example of integrating culture into a foresight process.

In a project with Sauk County, Wisconsin and the Ho-Chunk Nation, we had one representative from each organization open every meeting. The Ho-Chunk always started by thanking their ancestors. At our final workshop, they hosted the entire group at their event center and led a ritual fire and a smoke ceremony. We learned that the Ho-Chunk automatically think and plan intergenerationally, in 50-year futures, among many other things. The Ho-Chunk brought a process and cultural lens to each meeting that deepened and enriched the entire project.

Use a clear process to translate long-range goals into bite-sized, near-term “implementables” next actions.

Ever had a book hangover? It is a feeling you might get after finishing a great story, and you’re left grieving the end of it and questioning the meaning of the rest of your life. The end of a strategic foresight process brings up similar feelings. “We came up with these visionary goals, but how do we get started?”

This is why the fourth phase in our strategic foresight process is “Doing.” Our clients can’t stay stuck at the “60,000-foot view.” They have to do something. Hence, the “Doing” phase in our process is about translating bold long-range goals into actionable next steps. The most dynamic frameworks we have used in this phase are Franklin Covey’s The 4 Disciplines of Execution methodology and Strategic Doing, an approach to strategy that comes out of Purdue University.

Leverage diversity to strengthen the strategic foresight process and results.

Like we see in our own team, more diverse perspectives and content reap better discussions and outputs. We always ask clients to include a broad mix of participants in our projects. This can be generational, years of experience, gender, workgroup, or authority levels. We recommend doing signals and sensemaking with a team because we all pick up different signals from different domains, enriching discussion and sensemaking. In trends research, we use the STEEP framework (society, technology, economics, environment, politics) to make sure we take a broad look at what’s coming. In scenario development, we use the Aspirational Futures approach (more on that in this article) to explore a broad range of plausible futures, not just what’s most expectable. Red Teaming is another technique that increases diversity and strengthens the results.

Keep it rhythmic and fun.

Strategic foresight is a “slow thinking” approach to planning for the future. It helps us create mindful and robust plans for the future rather than intuitive or top-of-mind plans. A futures exploration that concludes in a new strategic plan can take 6 or more months to execute and complete, depending on stakeholder engagement needs. So we use tactics like these:

• Use a rhythm that keeps things doable for participants without letting them fall out of the discussion.
• Start workshops with “Review, Preview, Big View,” summarizing what we have done so far, what it means, what’s on tap today, how it all adds up, and what new opportunities the activity provides.
• Deploy multiple facilitators, digital tools, and a “remote-first” approach to run effective and engaging hybrid meetings.
• Use visual tools like Mural or Mentimeter to facilitate collaborative brainstorming and input.
• Inject and welcome fun. For example, when we teach red teaming, we send our clients red bandanas or ask them to get a red coffee cup or a red clown nose..we even had a client whose kid brought in a red devil mask for him to wear during a red teaming portion. He’s the CEO of a utility now!

Strategic foresight doesn’t need to take years or be overly complex. For example, in this article on scenario planning for anxious times Rebecca offers a simple 6-step process to get clear and get ready for the future.

Wait, there is more.

As these principles and our background differences demonstrate, strategic foresight is a mindset, a set of techniques, and in our case a process in which a lot of flexibility and creativity is possible. There is a strategic foresight process for everyone. The key is to start by listening and getting clear on the purpose of your project and then reverse-engineering the process. What are you trying to achieve? What does an ideal outcome look like?

In the bigger picture, the practices and principles we use with our clients reflect our deeper shared values for how to future: balance, diversity, impact, trust, collaboration, and engagement. By putting these values into action with our clients, we are pursuing our ultimate goal, to leave the world better for future generations.

What about you? Where and how do your practices and principles reflect your goals for a brighter future? How can you envision using foresight to help you discover and create even brighter futures?

This article is based on the following Futures Friday discussion:

Why we future this way was originally published in NEXT Generation Consulting, Inc. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article was originally published earlier in 2021 on our own blog. To keep up with us and get notified about the latest and greatest, please sign up for our newsletter here and bookmark our blog here.

We are living between two worlds: the familiar pre-COVID world and the unfamiliar, still-emerging post-COVID world. This can be unsettling for folks who prefer stability. Which is all of us.

Read on, fair friend. There’s no reason to feel stuck or disheveled. In this three-part series, Yasemin and I will introduce you to

• Part 1 — The Three Horizons model, a way to understand what’s changing
• Part 2 — Best practices to build a high performing team of change makers
• Part 3 — How to choose kick-ass pilot projects to test your ideas for a brighter future.

But first, let’s start by acknowledging that we’ve already made the pivot. (High five!) The bandaid has been torn off. Now we can focus on rebuilding.

Here’s a tool that can help.

Three Horizons Framework

The Three Horizons framework is based on entropy, the notion that things naturally proceed through birth, growth, maturity, decline, and death. Thus, the three horizons are sine waves:

• Horizon 1 (H1): The system has peaked and is now declining. This is the horizon that requires “management.”
• Horizon 3 (H3): The system that is trying to emerge/seeds of growth. This horizon is populated by “visionaries.”
• Horizon 2 (H2): “The messy middle” between H1 and H3, the province of “entrepreneurs.”

The Three Horizons process at-a-glance:

1. Identify your domain, e.g., “K-12 Education” or “Membership Associations” or “My community.”
2. Considering your domain, look at Horizon 1 and ask: What’s declining, expiring, or losing relevance? Who is most affected by these changes? What values are present in H1?
3. Now look at Horizon 3 and ask: What new ideas or disruptions are emerging and showing signs of life? Who is most affected by these changes? What values are present in H3?

Let’s talk about values

The shift from Horizon 1 to Horizon 3 has a narrative arc. At the beginning of the change, those leading Horizon 1 are seen as captains of industry, talking sense to the deranged upstarts who don’t understand the market. But as H3 grows and H1 declines, the values of H3 supplant those of H1, e.g., the heroes are disrupting the market and taking power from crusty old-timers who don’t understand the new rules. Within this narrative shift is embedded a competition for values.

Please pay attention. If you want to successfully make the leap from H1 to H3, you must acknowledge the shift in values from H1 to H3, or reframe the issue so that both sets of values can mutually coexist.

Here’s an example, for decades, oil and gas companies sowed doubt about climate change and dissed renewables. This was Horizon 1 trying to hang on and keep a lid on change. The values of Horizon 1 were “the earth is ours to use.”

Over time, renewables gained popularity, and the next-gen and their parents became more vocal about climate change. The values of H3 were “the earth is ours to protect.”

Today, oil and gas companies have stopped speaking against climate change and launched sustainability initiatives, showing how they’re now aligning with H3 values.

How can I use the Three Horizons?

We strongly recommend the Three Horizons framework for anyone: novice, amateur, or foresight pro who is desperate to talk about how their domain is changing.

• Download the toolkit. We’ve used this one. Others are available here and here.
• Host a half-day workshop with your Board or leadership team, to map how your domain is changing. In two and a half hours, you can have a very robust discussion that will leave everyone with a different vocabulary for change. At the end of the workshop, ask, “What does this information tell us about our own market position, what we should start doing, stop doing, or keep doing?”
• Use it as a prequel to strategic planning.
• Use it to refresh your current strategic plan.

Why does Three Horizons work?

• It’s easy to understand. Nearly everyone can talk about what is dying or losing relevance in their domain, or what new ideas are starting to disrupt the field.
• It gives people a language for change. When you ask people to name what’s declining or emerging in their field, it helps them process what’s happening. This is invaluable. In daily life, we have rituals and language to grieve those who die and celebrate a new birth. To process change, we need tools to grieve and note what’s declining as Horizon 1 fades and get excited by the new ideas and growth in Horizon 3.
• It helps bridge the space between H1 and H3. Putting people together to talk about all three horizons helps them see how we can make a responsible transition.

Let us know if you’ve used Three Horizons and what your experience is!

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Navigating the Messy Middle with Three Horizons was originally published in NEXT Generation Consulting, Inc. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article was originally published earlier in 2021 on our own blog here. To keep up with us and get notified about the latest and greatest, please sign up for our newsletter here and bookmark our blog here.

Growing up I had a persistent feeling that I would die young.

It wasn’t a scary feeling, but it did create a sense of urgency, like “whatever-I-do-has-to-make-a-difference.”

I’ve outlived the “young” part of life, but I enjoy the persistent urgency to live like it matters. I write my own obituary, track and invest more in my “first ring” relationships, keep a time confetti list, and do other stuff that would make strangers slowly walk backwards.

You will die

Pat Perry, host of the Success Wave podcast asks all of the guests:

“If you had a billboard that everyone in the world could see at exactly the same time, what would you put on that billboard?”

My response: “You will die.”

Confronting our mortality is powerful and clarifying. You will die. So how can you live like it matters? Of all the techniques I’ve tried over the years, spending time answering these 5 questions helps me most:

The 5 Questions

1. If I only had one week to live, how would I spend my time?
2. If I only had one month to live, how would I spend my time?
3. If I only had one year to live, how would I spend my time?
4. If I only had five years to live, how would I spend my time?
5. If I only had one lifetime to live, how would I spend my time?

I double-dog dare you to invest the time to answer these questions, and would love to hear what you learn.

In my experience:

• Answers to questions 1–3 bring clarity to how I spend my days and weeks. I’ve cut out a lot of bullshit, resigned from Boards, stopped arguing with my wife over petty crap, and dramatically shifted how much time I spend outdoors.
• Question 4 gives direction to the arc of my life. I’m writing more. Sharing more. Editing myself less. Spending less time doing email and more time traveling for pleasure and doing deep work.
• The 5th question is a wink. We don’t know how long “one lifetime” is, do we?

Livin’ like I’m dyin’,

~ Rebecca

…

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5 questions reveal what matters was originally published in NEXT Generation Consulting, Inc. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article was originally published earlier in 2021 on our own blog here. To keep up with us and get notified about the latest and greatest, please sign up for our newsletter here and bookmark our blog here.

Got only 8 minutes? Watch this video: “What is Foresight” with Rebecca Ryan, APF

The most common question I’m asked is, “You’re a futurist? What is that?” Here’s my attempt to break it down in everyday terms. If you still have questions, contact us!

What do futurists do?

Professional futurists think deeply about what’s coming to help clients prepare for multiple, plausible futures. Ultimately, we help clients shape the future they want. “Strategic foresight” is a formal term for this work, looking into the future and figuring out what’s coming, so you can be ready.

Most of our clients think in 10-year horizons. Some more, some less.

Wait, you said futures with an ‘s’ as the end, plural?

Yes, professional futurists speak in terms of futures. There is no one single future, not for you and not for me. No one can predict the future. Anyone who tells you that is not, IMHO, a professional futurist.

Every person, organization, and system has multiple, plausible futures. Futures are a dynamic blend of “outside forces” (things you can’t control that happen to you, like a hurricane, an economic collapse, or a rare health diagnosis) and “inside forces” (things you can control that will also shape your future, like how well you take care of yourself and how you use your time.)

What’s more, strategic foresight is not a crystal ball or a woo-woo process. Done right, strategic foresight has guts. And data. (Lots of data). And heart. And meat. And creativity. And compelling calls to action.

Spoiler: when people learn how rigorous strategic foresight is, some freak out. “I don’t have the time do to this!” Let me push back and ask, “You don’t have the time to prepare for the future? You’d rather just do what you’ve always done, and hope for the best?”

Okay, so how does a futurist do what they do?

Many futurists use a set of tried-and-true tools (like sensemaking and scenarios). Some futurists specialize in one sector (my firm has a niche in the public sector), and some develop deep expertise in one or two foresight techniques.

My team structures our work around four phases (see image below). Each phase asks important questions to help clients see what’s coming (Sensing); how their organization might look in the future as a result of what’s coming (Imagining); what they can do to shape their preferred future (Defining); and how to develop momentum to work on their future in the midst of all the “regular work” (Doing). For an audiovisual deeper dive into these phases, check out this episode of Futures Friday here.

My organization does strategic planning. Is this the same thing?

Not quite. Strategic planning and strategic foresight are different in several important ways:

• Strategic planning starts with today (usually a SWOT analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats). Foresight starts with the future — what’s coming? My team generally uses a STEEP trend analysis: what social, technology, economic, environmental, and political trends will shape your future? (Sensing)
• Strategic planning focuses on near-term plans of three or five years. Foresight looks at 10-year and 20-year horizons (sometimes longer!) before developing plans. (Sensing, Imagining)
• Strategic planning focuses on one hoped-for future. Foresight considers several plausible futures ranging from challenging to surprisingly successful. (Imagining)
• Those in the C-suite generally do strategic planning with a trained facilitator. My team recommends using a blend of leaders plus Red Teams who respectfully ask tough questions.

How do organizations use strategic foresight?

In my experience:

• During disruptions, organizations use foresight to anticipate what changes may still be looming and adjust their strategic plans accordingly.
• Communities use strategic foresight as a community-wide visioning process.
• Cities use foresight before they start their 10-year comprehensive planning process.
• Organizations use the foresight process to develop their 10-year or 20-year vision and then build their five-year plan based on the vision.
• Organizations use strategic foresight and include different voices (or all employees) instead of traditional strategic planning to change things up.

Here are some characteristics of future-ready organizations and communities. Do you live or work in a place like this?

> Their leaders are visionary and sometimes seen as “weird” or unusual because they don’t have a herd mentality. They’re willing to look farther into the horizon and ask tough questions (Is what we’re doing working?)

> They can make adjustments. They’re not so attached to how things are, and they can roll with the punches.

> They are constantly investing. In people. In training. In technology. There’s a certain “eustress” (positive stress) in future-ready places, a certain unease with the status quo. That’s because these people are restless about complacency. They know that “watch and wait” is not a viable strategy.

> They are genuinely interested in different points of view, because they know that having multiple perspectives is valuable and “group think” stinks of complacency.

This sounds kind of exciting. How should I get started?

Woohoo! I’m glad you’re intrigued. Below are some of my favorite resources. I also recommend practicing some techniques to soften your mind and begin thinking like a futurist, by practicing noticing and setting up a signals and sensemaking practice.

Resources for the Foresight-Curious

• Futures Friday is a free, live, one-hour webinar about futures. No prior experience is needed (usually). Check out the schedule and watch past recordings here.
• Our blog offers ideas, techniques, and deep dives on foresight and leadership. Check it out here.
• Futurist Camp is designed to help you hone your futurist skills. Learn more here.
• Institute for the Future’s “Ready, Set, Future” online course via Coursera. Learn more here.
• Speaking of IFTF, their Executive Director (and my spirit animal), Marina Gorbis, wrote a great article, Five Principles for Thinking Like a Futurist here.
• If you are serious about using foresight with your team or organization, let’s find a time to talk.
• To find a professional futurist near you, check out the APF Directory.
• My newsletter is for those in the trenches trying to make the world better for future generations. Sign up or read one of the most popular recent issues.

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New to foresight? Start here. was originally published in NEXT Generation Consulting, Inc. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article was originally published earlier in 2021 on our own blog here. To keep up with us and get notified about the latest and greatest, please sign up for our newsletter here and bookmark our blog here.

There was a lot of good energy coming into 2021 fueled by a new year, new vaccines, and high hopes for an end to quarantine. I read a lot about the need to pivot.

{clears throat}

Let’s slow-think this.

“Pivot” means making a sharp turn from one direction to another.

In my pro basketball days (that’s me in the photo above with the red circle around my head), I was a master pivoter. On offense, I would pivot to throw my opponent off-balance and create opportunities for myself or teammates to score. Pivoting on offense was part of a well-practiced and intentional set of plays designed to win ballgames.

When you hear “pivot” today, do you get the sense that leaders have a playbook, know where they’re headed, or have a vision of what “winning” looks like?

I don’t.

At WASTECON (best conference name ever!) I asked:

Is your team more focused on the sidewalk (near-term) or the horizon (longer-term)?

Twenty-to-one (roughly), attendees said “Sidewalk.” That mirrors nearly every conversation I’ve had since the start of the year.

No one knows where they’re going. They’re just trying to muddle through. Or worse, they’re trying to get “back” to a broken future.

These are not the conditions in which to pivot. If you pivot while looking down at the sidewalk you may lose your balance or hurt yourself.

2021 is not the year to pivot. We’ve already made the pivot.

Covid forced us to pivot from schools and offices to homes and Zoom. It forced us to categorize workers who were “essential” and set women back three decades. George Floyd forced us to pivot. Divisive national politics are forcing a pivot. And the Pandemic Wall is making us pivot: to reach deeper than we ever have for resources we never realized.

We have lost so much and there’s no going back. We have already pivoted.

So if 2021 is not the year to “pivot”, what are we going to do?

I’m drawing inspiration from the ox. In the Chinese calendar, 2021 is the Year of the Ox. Oxen are known for their persistent, powerful (even stubborn) forward movement. Oxen don’t pivot. 2021 is a year to outline our vision for a better future and then develop a new rhythm of steady, persistent progress towards that vision.

What does this mean for you, change-makers?

• If you lead an institution or department, it means getting crystal clear on why you exist. What current human need do you fill? And in the new conditions, what does excellence look like?
• It means you’ll have to once-and-for-all let go of some things that just don’t work anymore so you can create space for ideas, experiments, processes, or people that are better suited to the times. If you’re a long-time leader or experienced manager, maybe this is the moment that you step out of the limelight and become a mentor to the next rising stars.
• It means you’ll have to take some risks and run some experiments. “Let’s try it and see what happens” will be the motto for pilot projects and innovation teams, measuring as they go.
• It means you’ll start working with different people in new configurations to leverage cognitive diversity and tackle new and better questions.

My friends, we’ve already made the pivot. We’ve turned away from What Was. Now it’s time to build new scaffolding for What Can Be.

Let’s do this.

P.S. This post was edited from a January 2021 e-newsletter. You can be the first to read these posts and learn about the Futures Friday lineup by subscribing below.

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Oxen don’t pivot — why 2021 is the year for steady, strategic progress was originally published in NEXT Generation Consulting, Inc. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Howdy readers!

We post our articles first on our own blog and eventually repost them on Medium. To keep up with us and get notified about the latest and greatest, please:

1. Sign up for our newsletter here and
2. Bookmark our blog here.

Thank you and enjoy!

Howdy readers! was originally published in NEXT Generation Consulting, Inc. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This article is coauthored by Rebecca Ryan, APF and was originally published earlier in 2021 on our own blog. To keep up with us and get notified about the latest and greatest, please sign up for our newsletter here and bookmark our blog here.

Cognitive biases are widely known to skew judgment, and some have particularly pernicious effects on forecasting. They lead people to follow the crowd, to look for information that confirms their views, and to strive to prove just how right they are.”

– Paul J.H. Shoemaker and Philip E. Fetlock, Harvard Business Review, May 2016

Humans have two ways of thinking: fast and slow. In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman refers to them as System 1 and System 2 (see the visual above).

We tend to rely on “fast thinking” to navigate our world. Fast thinking is on and operating whenever we’re awake. It is a nearly automatic thought process based upon intuition and pattern recognition. Fast thinking enables us to determine where sounds are coming from, helps detect hostility in someone’s voice, allows us to read billboards and do simple math, understand simple sentences, and drive a car on an empty road.

Fast thinking, which Kahneman calls System 1 thinking, is our highly efficient standard mental operating system.

By contrast, System 2 thinking is slow and deliberate. It demands focused attention and a lot of calories. The focused, deliberate thinking of System 2 takes time and energy, which is why it’s reserved for big projects and ignored during simple processing tasks. After a day of slow thinking — like doing strategic planning or driving on the other side of the road in a foreign city — you feel brain dead. Because you are. System 2 thinking is hard work.

System 1 and System 2 thinking easily coexist, but System 1 is usually running the show. System 2 is lying low, available when called upon. All of this works very well most of the time. But, we run into trouble when System 1 creeps in and takes over where System 2 thinking would be more useful.

Watch for cognitive biases

Let’s start with two System 1 shortcuts our brains use in thinking about the future:

Confirmation bias

We all tend to see what confirms our beliefs rather than challenge them. For example, we tend to tune into different news sources based on our political beliefs. When we over-rely on that sliver of overlap between all the objective facts and the set of facts that happen to confirm our beliefs, then we are struggling with “confirmation bias.”

Even when we are shown data or information that contradicts our view, we can still interpret it in a way that reinforces our current perspective. We may, for example, react by questioning only their set of assumptions, sources, and research, rather than also our own. You must be wrong because I am right.

In foresight, confirmation bias can manifest as:

• Thinking we remain “right” based on what was true yesterday rather than notice new possibilities and adapt to change in a timely manner.
• Creating scenarios that fail to be meaningfully different from each other and challenge critical assumptions held today. They sound like variations on today or relatively minor variations of each other.
• Oversimplifying forces and their potential impacts as either all “good” or “bad.” Relatedly, failing to consider unintended side-effects.
• Having only one idea of what “success” means, looks, and feels like in the future and how to get there.
• Overusing a particular perspective to identify, understand, and anticipate changes, challenges, and opportunities. You might know this as having a “hobbyhorse,” “strong opinion,” or the analogy of using a hammer on anything that even vaguely looks like a nail. Contrast these tendencies with the following, which are part of the mindset of a “superforecaster” according to Phillip Tetlock and Dan Gardner: seeing beliefs as not being wedded to any one idea or agenda (pragmatic), hypotheses to be tested (open-minded), and blending diverse views into one’s own (synthesizing).

Availability bias

Availability is a mental shortcut that causes us to over-rely on information that’s easily available in our recollection rather than the whole universe of relevant information. If I can recall it, it must be important or more important than alternative ideas that I cannot remember as readily.

For example, in a transcript titled, “Availability Heuristic: Examples and Definition,” psychologist Sarah Lavoie asks: “What is more likely to kill you, your dog or your couch?” Most people answer “my dog” because of availability. We’ve all seen stories of a dog attack. But you’ve probably never seen a news story about someone falling off her couch to her death. Lavoie continues: “In actuality, you are nearly 30 times more likely to die from falling off furniture in your own house than you are to be killed by a dog! This may seem unrealistic, but statistics show this is true.”

Here are some examples of how availability bias can manifest in foresight:

• Thinking we already know all the relevant and most critical facts about the future to guide decision-making.
• Considering trends and research only in the topics that are commonly discussed in an organization or the news.
• Rating a challenging future as more probable (and therefore possibly taking it more seriously) than other types of plausible scenarios, because of one’s own negative experiences or after consuming information that focuses more on what is going on wrong and less on what is going right.
• Perceiving a potential opportunity as more or less risky based on a recent experience or discussion.
• Imagining a visionary or surprisingly successful future for 2040 that sounds and feels more like something that can plausibly come true in the next 3–5 years. For example, it was easier (at least initially) to imagine a smaller, sleeker phone or a healthier, faster horse than it was to imagine a smartphone or automobile.

And more

Confirmation bias and availability bias are only two examples of System 1 thinking shortcuts. Below is a poster of additional ones that can shape our ideas, hopes, visions, and plans for the future. Where and how have you experienced any of these in yourself or others?

Hacks to overcome cognitive bias

You: Okay, I get it. If I don’t pay attention to my thought process, I will not be a good futurist. But what can I do about it?

Glad you asked! Here are some ideas for how to prevent System 1 from creeping in and taking over, and instead use more System 2 thinking to imagine, explore, and create futures:

1. Give it more time to think it through more slowly. Don’t rush ideas, decisions, or plans out the door. For example, use the Overton Window framework to notice and reflect on what is changing and its implications for plans and actions. Push and expand your initial set of ideas of what surprising success might look, feel, and sound like. Or, when you have no idea what your future will be, you can use this 6-step process to get clear and get ready.
2. Invite more diverse perspectives into your thinking and decision-making process. For example, review and diversify your sources of information, leverage Red Teaming, and consider a signals & sensemaking panel.

On a larger scale, the strategic foresight process is essentially a hack, a System 2 approach to “slow, think” the future and leverage diverse perspectives.

Hungry for more? Here is a 38-minute video on cognitive bias from our Futures Fridays series.

Think like a Futurist: Understanding bias in futuring was originally published in NEXT Generation Consulting, Inc. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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Penguin molting is not graceful, nor comfortable. The idea is simple; out with the old (or current) and in with the new. This is easier said than done. While most birds molt a few feathers at a time, akin to incremental change, penguins go through “catastrophic molting.” That is, they shed and renew almost all at once, akin to disruptive change. Or exploding pillows.

In some ways, this demonstrates the Three Horizons Framework, where the first wave of change (Horizon 1) represents current paradigms, assumptions, data, and infrastructure that are on their way out. In contrast, the third wave of change (Horizon 3) challenges Horizon 1 and represents emerging paradigms, ideas, and innovations. Horizon 2 refers to a wave of change marked by incremental adjustments and transformation experiments that shift us from Horizon 1 and Horizon 3.

Behold Rebecca Ryan’s craft project visualizing this framework:

Horizon 2 can happen to you by inaction or force. Molting, for example, is not voluntary or uncertain. Periodically nature says it’s time and penguins get it done in certain ways.

Luckily, you are not a penguin. You can choose to shape Horizon 2, when and how it happens. The second horizon is an opportunity to discard the old and take practical steps to create something new using emerging changes as building blocks. This is the time for intra- and entrepreneurship. Rebecca and I call it the “messy middle” because much of it takes hard work, experimenting, and room for learning.

A general process to drive Horizon 2

One way to get through the messy middle is to brainstorm, choose, and successfully execute a series of kick-ass projects like domino pieces that help you challenge Horizon 1, establish a basis for scaling up tested and proposed changes, and build a path to Horizon 3.

Here are the steps you can use, heavily inspired by the Strategic Doing approach I shared previously:

1. Develop a generative question that speaks to Horizon 3 of your chosen domain (more on this below).
2. Identify your existing and emerging assets that could help answer that question.
3. Brainstorm many ideas that combine 2+ assets and answer that question. If you have ever looked into your fridge, assessed the inventory, and made a meal from your available ingredients, then you’ve done this step.
4. Pick the top 3–4 ideas and identify the “Big Easy” among them (the idea that your team thinks has the highest impact AND is the easiest to accomplish).
5. Confirm the winning idea based on your energy and excitement for it. If it doesn’t elicit a “Hell, YES!” reaction, then find one that does.
6. Flesh out the idea into a simple, one-page actionable plan for a pilot project. Consider this project the first in a series of dominos.
7. Pursue a series of Big Easy projects that build on each other and keep your effort growing in impact, scale, and support.

The first of these steps takes some practice and work. Let’s dive deeper into it.

What’s a generative question?

A generative question stimulates new knowledge and creative thinking. What does such a question look and feel like? According to Strategic Doing, it has all three of these features:

The question is tailored to the issue you’re trying to address AND accepts a wide range of answers.

For example, what do you get when you combine two pieces of bread with some slices of meat? Presumably, most people would answer with “a sandwich,” and we can typically think of only one answer to this question.

Now try this question instead: What combination of things results in a sandwich?

• This question does not define the number or types of sandwich components, so it doesn’t give you a hint on what and how to assemble it.
• It does keep the question tailored to my original outcome of interest (a sandwich). It does not overly broaden the question with something like “what combination of things results in something edible?”
• Because of this re-write, this question allows us to define what the outcome itself exactly looks like (e.g., is it open-faced or a lettuce sandwich? Hot or cold? Sweet or savory? Vegetarian or meat?). As long as it’s something that looks and feels like a sandwich, we’re successful. So it’s easy to think of a wide range of answers to this question

The question focuses on strengths, possibilities, and successes.

The default problem-solving approach tends to ask questions like these: What’s wrong? Why’s it hurting? How can I make it better? Who can help?

Compare it with this alternative approach: Can you shift your legs? Would you like to hold my hand and have me support your back? Can you push yourself into a sitting position? Are you ready to stand up?

Can you tell the difference? The former set is generally deficit- or problem-oriented. Questions like that are useful. They create clarity. They save lives. There is a time and place for them.

The latter, however, focuses on existing assets and opportunities to figure out what we could do to get more of what we want. It takes a positive and appreciative approach, also known as appreciative inquiry. This kind of question is not well-suited for the emergency room or issues that have known, effective solutions (I just need a piece of chocolate and a hug, okay?!). But it is useful when, for example, you’re looking to nurture collaboration, excitement, resourceful thinking, and a shared sense of ownership of the outcomes.

The question invites curiosity and engagement.

Even if you think your question is the most interesting one on the planet, you need to make sure or tweak it so that your brainstorming partners feel similarly excited about it. Luckily, it is often possible to approach an issue from multiple perspectives; pick one that resonates the most with you and your fellow brainstormers. Here is a TED talk demonstrating how to, for example, redesign math questions so that they still fulfill their objective (practice reasoning) and become more attractive, meaningful, and engaging to students.

From strategic priority to generative question

My typical challenge is to convert strategic priorities into generative questions that meet all of the characteristics above. In the strategic foresight process, this is how teams can shift from planning for the future to creating it. You, yourself, might be starting from a different point, maybe a problem-oriented question, a general topic, or a blank page.

In any case, writing a generative question involves experimenting with alternative phrasings and word choices, and collecting feedback from others. This is not a simple or straightforward process like using a boxed cake mix or paint-by-numbers. I recommend that you keep every iteration of your question; you might wish to adopt parts of them in later iterations. It’s also useful to record the question evolution if people wonder why and how your chosen generative question is related to the original issue.

Still, experimentation can be structured. What follows is a list of steps you can remix, use and adapt to draft and refine your own generative question for brainstorming. How do you know when you’re done? It’s a bit of an “I’ll know it when I see it” situation. I’ll use multiple examples to demonstrate different rewriting needs. Just keep in mind, there is no single right answer for each step.

Step 1: Pick the domain you wish to address. What’s your vision for it?

Write a single sentence — not a question yet — that spells out 1) a domain and 2) a vision for it. What is it that you’re trying to create? Phrase it like a To-Do list item. This sentence represents something positive in Horizon 3.

Here are three examples that specify a domain and a vision for it:

• Leverage technological advances to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and reach of our services. In this example, the domain is “our services,” and the vision is “efficient, effective, and accessible services.”
• Support equitable access and use of multi-modal forms of transportation. The domain is “multi-modal transportation,” and the vision is “equitable access and use of it.”
• Invest in our employees’ professional development for succession planning. The domain is “succession planning” or “employee professional development” (depends on what exactly you want to focus on), and the implied vision is “successful successions.”

Step 2: Define the start and the end.

Choose one of the following three options and fill in the blank using your sentence from Step 1:

• Imagine that_________________________. What would that look like?
• What if______________________________. What would that look like?
• How might we________________________. What would that look like?

For example:

• Imagine that technological advances increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and reach of our services. What would that look like?
• What if access and use of multi-modal forms of transportation were equitable? What would that look like?
• How might we invest in our employees’ professional development for succession planning? What would that look like?

In the remaining steps, we’re going to revise the first half of each example. The second half (“What would that look like?” or “WWTLL” for short) will not change and is part of your finalized question.

Step 3: Eliminate solutions embedded into the question and focus on desired outcomes.

You’re going to remove those, right? Look for phrases that seem to dictate already how to achieve the outcome. Rewrite your sentence to eliminate those embedded answers to the “how” and instead focus on the “what” you want to have more of (desired outcomes). Otherwise, you’ll have what’s known as a suggestive question — the kind that limits your solution space or answer options. After all, if you already know how to do it, why are you writing a generative question for brainstorming?

Example 1:

• Before: Imagine that technological advances increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and reach of our services. WWTLL?
• After: Imagine that our services were efficient, effective, and reached everyone. WWTLL?

I removed “technological advances increase” because it suggests how to achieve the desired outcome, which is efficient, effective services accessible to all.

Example 2:

• [no change] What if access and use of multi-modal forms of transportation were equitable? WWTLL?

I made no changes to this one because it does not specify how to achieve the desired outcome, equitable access and use.

Example 3:

• Before: How might we invest in our employees’ professional development for succession planning? WWTLL?
• After: How might our employees consistently succeed in succession planning? WWTLL?

I removed “invest in employees’ professional development” because it specifies how to achieve the desired outcome, which is successful successions.

Step 4: Write from the perspective of the beneficiaries.

Whose perspective do you represent in your question? Did you write it from a top-down view, as a manager or administrator? Or did you take a bottom-up perspective, as the people whose lives you’re trying to improve? I recommend the latter, to make the question more relatable and meaningful. Put yourself into their shoes and repeatedly ask “so what?” about the original sentence to help you rewrite the question.

In some cases, it took me several iterations to arrive at the “after” examples below. I’ll show you my intermediate drafts as well so you can follow the conversion more closely.

Example 1:

• Before: Imagine that our services were efficient, effective, and reached everyone. WWTLL?
• Intermediate: Imagine that finding and using our services felt efficient, effective, and accessible to users. WWTLL?
• After: Imagine that finding and using relevant services was helpful and straightforward for all. WWTLL?

In the ‘Before’ version, words like “efficient,” “effective,” and “reach” to me suggest the perspective of a service provider with metrics focused on the process. In my revision, I tried to use words that together convey similar ideas about the desired outcome but sound more like words that potential service users/beneficiaries would use.

Example 2:

• Before: What if access and use of multi-modal forms of transportation were equitable? WWTLL?
• Intermediate: What if access and use of multi-modal forms of transportation felt fair and inclusive? WWTLL?
• Intermediate: What if everyone found it easy to access and use multi-modal transportation? WWTLL?
• Intermediate: What if access and use of mobility options were equitable? WWTLL?
• Intermediate: What if everyone found it easy to get to where they needed and wanted to go? WWTLL?
• After: What if exploring and getting across town was easy for all? WWTLL?

“Multimodal transportation” is cool stuff. It’s also abstract and formal and the “Before” question is centered on the technology. With this rewrite, I focused on outcomes from the perspective of everyday people who would use whatever means of transportation.

Example 3:

• Before: How might our employees consistently succeed in succession planning? WWTLL?
• After: How might current and future staff successfully take on new roles and responsibilities? WWTLL?

To me, “succession planning” seems abstract and formal and the question is written from the top-down (“our employees”). In my rewrite, I minimize a sense of hierarchy or ownership.

Step 5: Bring in the feels and inspo.

Look for opportunities to push your draft question further in terms of how open and inspiring it feels. What phrases and analogies can you use to inspire greater creativity and imagination?

Example 1:

• Before: Imagine that finding and using relevant services was helpful and straightforward for all. WWTLL?
• After: Imagine that finding and using relevant services inspired joy and empowerment for all. WWTLL?

Example 2:

• Before: What if exploring and getting across town was easy for all? WWTLL?
• After: What if exploring and getting across town was as seamless as transferring data from one iOS device to another, for all? WWTLL?

Note: The analogy here gives an idea of what the experience is like, not directly describing the solution itself. I recently went through this technology experience and was wowed by how simple and easy and fast it was, so to me this analogy is meaningful.

Example 3:

• Before: How might current and future staff successfully take on new roles and responsibilities? WWTLL?
• After: How might we nurture leadership skills and caring for our firm’s future among all our staff? WWTLL?

To do this fifth step, you may need to step away and come back with fresh eyes. Maybe you’ll find it helpful to read or listen to a good piece of oratory to get linguistic inspiration. Or take your draft question to a friend or colleague who is a closet poet.

Tadaa

To recap, here is where I started and ended with this process of transforming a strategic priority into an example generative question. The ‘After’ examples are tailored to the original domain and accept a wide range of answers. They also focus on strengths, possibilities, and successes, and invite curiosity and engagement. Are these the best possible, finalized generative questions for these examples? That depends on the individuals you’re inviting to brainstorm together.

Example 1:

• Before (Strategic Priority): Leverage technological advances to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and reach of our services.
• After (Example Generative Question): Imagine that finding and using relevant services inspired joy and empowerment for all. What would that look like?

Example 2:

• Before: Support equitable access and use of multi-modal forms of transportation.
• After: What if exploring and getting across town was as seamless as transferring data from one iOS device to another, for all? What would that look like?

Example 3:

• Before: Invest in our employees’ professional development for succession planning.
• After: How might we nurture leadership skills and caring for our firm’s future among all our staff? What would that look like?

The bigger picture

Getting through the messy middle — Horizon 2 of the Three Horizons Framework — is much more than a To-Do list or a strategic plan, or a series of metaphorical domino pieces. Perhaps the best way to think about what it is and how to get through it is articulated by IFTF’s Marina Gorbis in “Five Principles for Thinking Like a Futurist”:

“Moving from the old to the new curve requires one to behave like an immigrant. I am an immigrant to this country, and I strongly believe that we are all immigrants to the future. We are all moving somewhere new, so it is good to have the mindset of an immigrant. When you’re an immigrant, you must learn a new language, a new culture, a new way of doing things. These are exactly the attitudes and skills we need to bring to thinking about and shaping our future. We must be open to learning a new language, a new culture, a new way of doing things.”

The messy middle offers us the challenge and the opportunity to use the skills of intra- and entre-preneurs to immigrate into the future. You can go about this using generative questions and Strategic Doing, and many other ways. How ever you do it, start with a vision or question that feels inviting to potential allies, leverage existing and emerging resources and strengths, and take a cue from Hamilton, the musical: It’s time to take a shot, and I am not throwin’ away my shot.

Recording:

This article is based on Part 3 of the Futures Friday Navigating the Messy Middle series. The recording is available at https://youtu.be/pfS5jbFJdOo.

Getting through the ‘Messy Middle’ was originally published in NEXT Generation Consulting, Inc. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Are you guilty of being a “doer” or “fixer”? I sure am. Tell me you’re hungry within an earshot and I will immediately think about what to do about it. Being able to just listen and acknowledge is just as important, but the problem solver in me is a deeply ingrained part of how my mind works.

That might be why one of my favorite parts of the foresight process is the shift from creating scenarios to actually using them, from exploring alternative futures to deciding what should happen to pursue a preferred future. After asking “What could happen?” it’s now “What are you going to do about it?”

The answers in this new phase are strategies that are “crossover levers” — meaning, they make sense in multiple futures, increase your resilience, and help you not just survive but thrive in a range of circumstances.

What’s a lever in foresight?

In the futures process, a “lever” in a story or scenario is:

• A factor that you can control or influence.
• Like a dial on a radio. You can turn up your response and be proactive or you can turn down your response and be mute.
• A thing that will influence the severity or impact of disruptions on your future.

The specific lever depends on whose perspective you’re using (i.e., you, your organization, your community).

For instance, you may be seeing increasingly severe and/or frequent extreme weather now and even more so in the future. Of course, you can’t control or influence weather patterns, so that’s not a lever. However, you can influence or even control to some degree what people do to prepare for weather-related emergencies — that’s a lever. In this case, the lever could be articulated as “increasing the capability of my loved ones/residents/clients/members to anticipate and recover from weather-related emergencies.”

As this example illustrates, levers may focus on preventing, reducing, or avoiding negative outcomes, and on doing well despite challenging forces or circumstances. Levers may also focus on assuring or even accelerating positive developments. For example — in a story describing successful grassroots efforts that increase voter turnout, a lever might be to identify and support such activities today.

What about levers to address forces that function like double-edged swords? Such forces include:

• Advances in social media that facilitate as well as harm our sense of connection and community; and
• Applications of artificial intelligence that improve services as well as put people out of work.

In situations like these, levers don’t have to focus on stopping or accelerating the trend itself but rather focus on mediating its impacts, and minimizing harm while supporting benefits. Levers dealing with the two examples above may include:

• Helping users learn and apply practices that help them use social media in ways that protect their privacy and increase their mental health; and
• Using automation to improve job satisfaction and offering job training opportunities for displaced workers.

When a lever helps you thrive in multiple futures across different circumstances, then you have what’s called a “crossover lever” — a type of strategy that is robust and supports your resilience. Once you have a list of crossover levers, you can unpack and translate them into action-oriented and collaborative plans using an approach like Strategic Doing.

How can I identify such levers?

I recommend using this approach:

• Review one story or scenario and assume it comes true as described.

If it helps, wear a different outfit while reading each story, sit in a different location, listen to a different background tune — whatever helps you “step into” that future and temporarily accept it as reality.

Also, if you’re the (co-)author of one of the scenarios, read and analyze your own scenario last.

• Write down as many levers as you can for that scenario. What would you or your organization or your community do in that future, to survive and even thrive?

Articulate levers in the following way: [verb] + [factor]. For example, “affordable housing” is a popular problem to solve in communities across the world, but it’s not a lever. If you have any influence or control over supply, your lever might be to “increase affordable housing options.” You can also get more specific than that, such as to “increase affordable housing options for residents earning up to $25,000 per year.” If you work in consumer financial services, your lever is going to look a little different — for example, to“increase equitable access to home loans.” If you’re a health care professional, a lever might be to “direct low-income patients who suffer from health conditions exacerbated by poor housing to a trusted partner who can assist them.”

1/11/21 Edit: In their book, How to Future: Leading and Sense-making in an Age of Hyperchange (2020), Smith and Ashby offer a range of questions you may also find helpful in this step. Here are some: What kind of talent or skills would be needed to get the most out of this scenario or minimize the risk presented by it? What kind of information, data, insights or experience would this scenario require? What technology, processes, platforms or other kinds of tools would this scenario require? What regulations, frameworks, rule sets or other guiding frameworks would this scenario require? What partnerships, ecosystems or alliances would this scenario require?

• Repeat with the next scenario, creating a separate list of levers for each scenario.
• After you have a list of levers for each scenario, look across these lists for shared levers or themes and articulate those groupings.

What does it look like with four scenarios?

Let’s demonstrate levers with a set of mini-scenarios. The Venn diagram at the top of this article compares four different scenarios: a bank robbery, church service, dance club, and a parent helping a child take off a sweater. Here is the visual again for your reference:

There are a range of possible actions within any one of these scenarios, but the overlaps between scenarios are referred to as shared levers. This diagram focuses on a particular type of lever — you can control or influence what you say or the instructions you give.

For example, imagine you are a DJ at a dance party or a robber inside a bank. Saying “everyone on the floor” makes sense in either circumstance. You can decide on the volume, frequency, and timing of this instruction; and it helps you influence the outcome. So “tell everyone to get on the floor” is a lever. It alone is unlikely to guarantee your success, but it’s part of a package of useful actions to prioritize.

If you’re the preacher or the parent, telling everyone to “get on the floor” is a possibility, but it won’t assure the desired outcome in both situations. However, using explicit or implicit verbal threats could assist with this. So, “tell everyone that ‘if you don’t listen to me there will be severe consequences’” is the shared lever between these two scenarios. Presumably bank robbers don’t use this language verbatim, but the gist of this lever is also relevant to their aims. As such, a shared lever among all three scenarios could be to “convey how compliance is in their best interest” and/or to “convey how noncompliance has negative consequences.”

Continuing with this fun example, the equivalent of a crossover lever sits in the middle of the figure (i.e. “tell everyone to put their hands in the air”), because it makes sense to say in 3–4 of the scenarios and it would help you pursue a preferred future (“preferred” here is defined by whichever role you play). Another crossover lever that isn’t listed in the figure but is relevant to 3–4 scenarios is the one I suggested in the previous paragraph about compliance.

12/17/20 Edit: Check out the original meme with just three scenarios. And here is an even more elaborated version with five scenarios.

For a more serious application of crossover levers, you can check out the Public Health 2030 scenarios by the Institute for Alternative Futures. When you download that report and open it, you’ll see a list of strategy recommendations on pages 41 through 48. Those are beefy crossover levers to advance public health in the U.S. over the years to 2030, developed with the help of dozens of leaders and experts in public health. That report was published in 2014 and those levers continue to make a whole lot of sense.

The bigger picture

Using scenarios to identify crossover levers is valuable in more ways than one. Yes, you can use those levers to clarify, change, or affirm your strategic priorities. But what’s more, the broader process itself — exploring alternative futures and identifying crossover levers — enables you to integrate a variety of perspectives and build a community with a shared understanding and ownership of what the priorities are and why. The conversations you have internally and externally on strategy, tactics, and changes can be guided by the future (what’s coming), rather than solely the past (because this is how we’ve been doing it).

Guess who talks like that? Visionary leaders. But instead of limiting visionary leadership to one or the few at the top, it can become a broadly shared responsibility and practice. Now that’s a crossover lever.

Finding The Way Forward Among Alternative Futures was originally published in NEXT Generation Consulting, Inc. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

^^That photo up there? It’s the largest radio telescope ever built, more than 30 football fields large. Why am I showing you this signal-hunting device with 5–10X more potential to discover alien civilizations? Because I have a question:

What signals are you picking up?

Your ability to detect signals is critical to making sense of what’s going on around you.

And your ability to make sense is critical to anticipating and imagining better futures.

And that’s your job as a futurist, visionary, leader, and change agent.

How do you do develop your radar?

We’ll get to that. First, let’s remember what a signal is because that’s what our radar is trying to pick up.

“[…] signals of the future are all around us. Often these are things or developments that are on the margins. They may look weird or strange. They are the kind of things that grab your attention and make you ask: ‘Why is this happening? What is going on here?’ A signal can be anything. It could be a technology, an application, a product/service/experience, an anecdote or personal observation, a research project or prototype, a news story, or even simply a piece of data that shows something different.”

~Marina Gorbis (a personal hero), Institute for the Future
“Five Principles for Thinking Like a Futurist”

Three questions to locate signals

1. What’s happening on the margins of your domain or community?
2. What strikes you as odd?
3. What’s grabbing your attention and making you ask, “What’s going on here?”

Three capabilities to refine your radar

1. Read widely and deeply. Preferably, not the news. Here’s the list of resources we recommended to our 2020 Futurist Campers (notice the breadth), and here was their first reading assignment (notice the depth.) The point? Use your big, beautiful brain to think more widely and more deeply.
2. Talk frequently with folks who are younger than you, older than you, different from you. Don’t talk about the weather. Ask, “What are you noticing?” or “What are you excited about?”
3. Put your phone down. Learn to keep your phone in your pocket or out of sight. Take yourself (or your kids or dogs) on longer walks without your earbuds in. Be present to what’s happening around you. Just notice. Stay with it. This allows your beta waves to come online and make connections. Humans have good ideas in the shower because they’re alone in there.

How do futurists use signals?

In my experience, signals — like delicious meals — are best shared. I regularly gather with local government nerds for two rounds of discussion:

Round 1: Everyone shares a couple of signals they’ve picked up since the last time we met. We track our signals in a google doc.

Round 2: Everyone takes a turn riffing off each other's signals to connect the dots, anticipate what the signals may be telling us, and ask deeper questions.

This is one of the most valuable meetings I have each week because my viewpoint is always expanded. It’s simple enough that everyone reading this can build it into their lives.

Here’s a sample of signals my group shared in fall 2020:

• Local governments across the U.S. will experience up to 40% loss in revenue due to COVID-19. Implication: in previous recessions, “nonessential” services like parks and recreation are cut first, followed by cuts to education and public health.
• There has been a 39% increase in the percent of uninsured, the largest increase ever recorded. Also, returning workers may bring drug and alcohol problems back with them to work. Source: Business Insurance magazine (subscription required)
• Curing addiction? Researchers have figured out how to “erase” memories that lead to drug relapse. Implication: We may never win the war on drugs, but maybe science can help users get clean and sober.
• Cities, local hospitals, and school districts declare racism a public health issue. This is already backed by the public health and medical communities, paving the way for policy reform.
• Former Fed Chairs Bernanke and Yellen advise investments in public health as an economic balm. Will public health finally get the funding it deserves?
• Big banks are setting aside billions of dollars, anticipating loan defaults. Also, most economists are now anticipating a Q1 2021 mortgage meltdown.
• Cyber mercenaries-for-hire are hijacking routers and disrupting websites and online services at record-setting rates. Implication: arms race in cybersecurity.
• Australian university discovers a blood test that can detect COVID-19 in 20 minutes. No more waiting 5–10 days for test results!

Other examples of sensemaking

• Make Me Smart with Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood. Each reporter brings one or two media stories and discusses them together. On Fridays, they meet while drinking a beer. (Nice touch, you two.)
• A well-run panel — where participants disagree with each other, but the conversation is generative, not destructive — can be good examples of sensemaking. The acid test is “Did anyone learn anything from the conversation?” If YES, congratulations. If NO, this was probably an unfulfilling rehash of everyone’s talking points.

Pssst. Sometimes my signals group meets live on Zoom so you can watch and join. See the schedule here. And if you liked this post, you’ll like my fortnightly newsletter. Sign up here. Thanks for spending some time with me. ~ Rebecca Ryan, APF

Signals and Sensemaking was originally published in NEXT Generation Consulting, Inc. on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.