Why you should hope: The future we want grows from a collective act of imagination
In my recent letter I wrote: Now is the time to hope because the darker it gets the brighter hope shines. Hope is spreading right now; through the virality of kindness, the organisation of communities and the generosity of strangers.
Ground your hope in gratitude, feed it with determination and test it, every day, against reality. If you do this, your hope will never be naïve. It can be the most infectious force we know. We are being taught the lesson that we all have the responsibility to hope.
If we trust in the power of hope, we will find a path to where we need to go.
I am often asked if I am optimistic or pessimistic about the future — even more since the corona virus has taken hold.
I am an optimist, but this is born from feeling responsible for envisaging a positive future rather than a rational argument that one will come about. I take my cue from Vaclav Havel who famously said: “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
Being an optimist makes sense, regardless of how things might turn out. This idea is, interestingly, supported by modern-day systems thinking.
An early lesson of systems thinking is that, generally, we are far too confident in our ability to predict (and hence plan for) the future. We believe we understand the behaviour of the systems within which we live and can therefore design interventions that will bring about certain outcomes. In reality, complex systems are so sensitive to even tiny changes in circumstances, that much of our faith is mis-placed[1].
This might sound like an excuse for inaction, an abdication of responsibility or an invitation to do whatever takes our fancy, but it is nothing of the kind. It simply means we must do things differently.
If we can’t design interventions that will bring about the future we seek, then the alternative is to fall back on trial and error — an entirely scientific approach. If you have the humility to accept that you can’t understand the complex systems you are part of, then the rational way to behave is to launch experiments — small ones, at first — to see what happens; then scale what works and adapt what doesn’t[2].
Assessing whether something “works” means understanding if it moves the system towards or away from the state that we intend. A clear and positive view of the future is, however, surprisingly important for other reasons too, as a related systems thinking discipline of teaches us: Appreciative inquiry emerged in the mid-1980s as an alternative to “problem solving”. Rather than focusing on problems, David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva argue it is better to envisage collectively a positive and motivating future — and how we can build on our strengths to get there. This approach has gained popularity as a tool for organisational transformations.
The real insight of appreciative inquiry is that a compelling vision of the future is not only a necessary guiding light, it also makes this future more likely to occur. Having conversations about a better future can inspire (consciously or not) constructive actions (i.e. experiments) in the present and so the future we want grows from our collective imagination.
Optimism is such an important responsibility for everyone because it is not a naïve belief that everything will be ok, but rather the realisation that our vision of the future helps determine what will happen.
Grounding this future in reality is an important first step of appreciative inquiry, which starts with honest conversations about the strengths we have (as an individual, organisation or community)[3]. If this assessment is not realistic, the future you envisage will not stand the test of time. We also need to engage with the realities of all; because we are all connected, the future we envisage has to work for everyone or it will work for no one.
Our desire to get to this better future — our intention — guides us along the way. It is the yardstick for evaluating our experiments as we feel our way, as if with our eyes closed, through the complexities of the systems we live in.
There is also another set of guides that nudge and cajole and direct not only our day to day behaviours but even the future we imagine together in the first place. These are the shared values that shape our individual, organisational, economic and social lives. We hold many of them unconsciously but they surface in the dreams we dream, the decisions we take and the stories we tell each other — they influence everything.
Currently, many of our shared values are not aligned with bringing about a future that can work for all. This makes imagining a shared vision of the future that will work less likely; and even if we do, we will often be nudged off-course.
I have often spoken about the need to renew the values that govern our economy and the management of our organisations. It seems like an impossible task. But I am encouraged by the psychologist Shalom Schwartz’s finding that values are like muscles; the more you use them, the stronger they get[4]. This means we are dealing with an amplifying feedback loop in which change is exponential. If we get the change started, it will scale much more quickly than we can ever imagine.
Like I said, I am an optimist.
We invite you to share your thoughts and join our discussion on Linkedin.
This is the third of four follow up blogs to my letter: A Moment of Purpose. The first two were:
- Why you should care: Hard-nosed business teaches us that we can insulate ourselves from others. Hard-nosed science disagrees and
- Why you should face up to reality: the insight buried in disparate management practices
Stay tuned for the final article in the series!
[1] It stems from a Newtonian world view of physics, that has influenced the development of traditional economics and management.
[2] I’m indebted to Martin Sandbrook of the Schumacher Institute for this insight.
[3] This kind of review of strengths is not a million miles away from a practice of gratitude: What can I be grateful for, upon which I can build my future?
[4] I’m grateful to Kate Raworth for including this in her book Doughnut Economics.
