Back to the Future — Looking at the future as if it has already happened
Our construct about the future is always evolving based on the decisions we are taking today.
If you have seen ‘Back to the Future’, Marty McFly struggles to keep the future consistent due to intentional as well as unintentional interventions during his time traveling. For me as a kid, it was an impressionable scene where Marty’s brother and sister are vanishing from the future family photo, he kept with himself on his time voyage. And this happens due to his present actions.
The depiction of multiple possibilities beyond the present, and only one of them emerging as ‘the future’ based on the choices we make today is thought-provoking and highly contextual in current times.
Proactively thinking about our decisions today for a desirable Future, is increasingly important.
In the post-pandemic era, everything is going through a major transformation. From world order at a macro level to daily choices of mere mortals is continuously and irrevocably evolving. Everyone is increasingly worried about how will things pan out going forward. People, businesses, organizations, governments, institutions, and communities are all looking for ways to be better prepared. Although no one has a clear view into the proverbial crystal ball, everyone is looking for clarity into the best possible responses with an element of certainty. This sheer gravity of getting the right idea about the future forces people to look for a feeling of certainty supported by trends and numbers. Completely relying on this approach leads us to be reactive. All the effort leads to choices that are self-professing the future we have already defined with so much effort. In short, we get attached to an idea of the future and make decisions to achieve it. It works in short term with fewer variables but falls apart in the long term where the ambiguity is high and out of our influence.
What if we are more intentional and proactive about our impact on the future. After all, we have borrowed it from our future generations!
Instead of trying to shape ‘A definitive future’, what if our focus is on creating a space to question our choices today? What if we allow ourselves to prove our idea of the future wrong? What if we explore more than one possibility?
It seems to be a fuzzy space and for sure uncomfortable for most of the people who are accountable for taking a difficult decision in the present. But I think, by adopting this approach one could explore and proactively unfold a set of possibilities along with a space to debate the assumptions we are making. And in turn, be better prepared with answers to questions like…
- Are these assumptions responsible, ethical, and inclusive?
- Are these possibilities sustainable across generations?
- What are the cultural, social, and political implications due to a certain set of choices? As the famous saying goes… “With every ship originates a possibility of a shipwreck?” Is it responsible for us to create another possibility of a shipwreck?
There are a large set of bright people exploring how to work towards adopting this mindset? Back in 2010, I was first introduced to this mindset during my brief interaction with this amazing creative leader Julian Bleeker. At that time I could not wrap my head around it, but it left me interested. I am still trying to make sense of it and find ways to practice it, and I do thank him for the introduction.
There are a few approaches I have come across in the same space with slight variations.
This visualization by Elliott P. Montgomery provides a broader perspective about a few approaches in the space of “Exploring Futures”.
The oldest one in practice, since the 1970s is “Shell Scenarios”. These are explorations of future possibilities to answer ‘what-if’ questions. Today the same approach has morphed into Strategic Foresight and Future Thinking. These days it is used by governments, institutions, think tanks, and non-profit org for influencing public policy planning. It is also described as a combination of scanning, connecting, and imagining possibilities over a time horizon.
Institute for the Future (IFTF) has been doing a lot of inspirational work in this space. They also offer a set of concise, well-structured courses. I took one of their course facilitated by Jacques Barcia, Ferdinando Buscema, and Dylan Hendricks and would recommend it to anyone who wants to get themselves eased into the space with some instructions.
Foresight in the Present and articles by Maree Conway are other sources I found helpful in building a deeper understanding of this space. In one of the recent articles, she talked about the following 3 key things…
- We all have a time frame in which we operate, things beyond it will seem irrational or absurd, acknowledging it helps us be conscious of the self-imposed boundaries on our thinking.
- It is therefore also important to be aware of the biases and assumptions we carry with us.
- Our construct about the future is always evolving and we should be open to giving it a new form as it emerges.
And of course, if we are talking about Future Thinking or Strategic Foresight, we cannot move forward without mentioning Amy Webb.
Speculative Design is another popular approach advocating the importance of multiple futures but with a designer frame of reference. Anthony Dunne & Fiona Raby, in their book Speculative Design, explain the powerful concept of the ‘Cone of Preferable Futures’. Explaining how a preferable future is a range oscillating over the edge of being probable or plausible.
And then more recently, HBR wrote about the concept of ‘Design Fiction’ in their article — “Using Fiction to Find Your Strategy”. It talks about the importance of Design Fiction in proactively looking for ways to make an informed decision today to be better prepared for the unknown future. Design Fiction brings multiple possibilities of what lies ahead through a combination of methods used in design, cinematic art, and fiction. Julian Bleeker, first wrote about it in 2009 in an essay — Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Science, Fact and Fiction.
It is daunting, confusing, and at times disorienting, but I wrapped my head around it by breaking it down into 3 main building blocks.
According to me, at the bare minimum, all the approaches in this space distill down to proactively exploring the plural possibilities, giving them a tangible form, and creating a safe space for debating the pros and cons associated with them. To clearly articulate the three building blocks…
First, proactively listening to things happening around us and reflecting on them. This is a continuous activity and is the foundational layer.
Second, giving our interpretations a tangible form as if the future has already happened. Now this can take various forms, it could be a story from or in the future, a news article talking about the future, an object giving clues as if the the future has happened in the past. The list is endless and the way it can be rendered is equally nuanced
Third, creating a safe space for debating assumptions we are making while giving our interpretations a tangible form.. To me this is a delicate bridge connecting the future possiblities we are imagining to the decisions we are taking today. It demands intentionality in the way we structure these conversations.
I would love to hear your thoughts!!
All kinds of points of view are welcome. Please do leave a comment or message me, if you are either an active practitioner in this space or exploring it. I would love to know more about your experiences.
