Framing a Futures Project
Futures Research, Week 1
Last Wednesday was the first meeting for my Fall class1, Futures Research. It’s taught by Dr Andy Hines, who was a student in the Houston Program in 1988-1990 and is now the head of graduate studies for the program. It’s largely due to Andy’s influence and leadership that the Houston program has a canonical method that it teaches, a flexible framework for foresight projects transparently named Framework Foresight, or, informally, the Houston Method. Futures Research is a methods course focusing on learning the method by practicing it, so it’s exciting to be taught by the originator of the program.
The main text for the class, Thinking About the Future (TATF), which Andy wrote along with previous Houston program leader Peter Bishop, is a phenomenal reference guide for doing foresight work: it takes the 6 professional competencies identified by the Association of Professional Futurists (Framing, Scanning, Futuring, Visioning, Designing, Adapting, which are conveniently an ordered, high-level view of a generic futures project), and lists detailed guidelines for each, with specific steps, an explanation of the benefits of following the guideline, a real-world example of the importance of the guideline, and suggestions for further reading. Rinse and repeat over 100 times, and add a chapter showing how Framework Foresight is a specific way to apply these guidelines, and you’ve got an invaluable manual for doing Futures work.
However, there’s too much to do this semester for the first week to just be an overview, so we jumped directly into Framing. Framing an issue effectively by crisply defining the plan for the futures project is useful not only as a communication tool early in an engagement with a client, but also as a way to prevent yourself from drifting off course as exciting distractions arise; the frame essentially serves as a contract and guiding document2.
A fully articulated framing of a futures project is essentially a who/what/where/when/why problem. First, deeply understand the client and their mental map of their organization and their place in the larger context (industry, etc), what things are considered taboo, and how far you can effectively stretch them to consider the future without it starting to sound like useless science fiction. Also, within the organization, find a small, diverse team of individuals to make up the core of the project, ideally 100% dedicated to the work and providing just enough disagreement to be provocative and productive.
Second, map out a basic understanding and definition of the objectives and the domain. Futures projects may be driven by pre-defined strategic needs or questions, such as knowing whether and where to build a new hospital, or they may be a more open-ended exploration of possible futures in order to reveal strategic opportunities.3 The relevant elements and sub-elements of the domain can be sketched out based on the best understanding at the time - this will clarify what you’ll be looking for and what’s outside the scope4. The list of deliverables should also be established5.
Third, establish a geographic boundary identifying the region that will be “in bounds”. Depending on the client, this might be a country, a region, or maybe even a neighborhood.
Fourth, set the time horizons for the work. One well-developed way to think about this is using the Three Horizons model from Curry and Hodgson. In the first horizon, the current systems and ideas are playing out the end of their usefulness. In the third horizon, many competing visions of the future exist and can be found in small pockets in the present; the work here is finding relevant weak signals. The second horizon is where the conflict between these visions and the present system play out, and is the realm where drivers can be used to sketch out plausible scenarios, forming the main area of focus for the project. Thus, the ideal timeframe for the end of the second horizon is about one “generation” of change, which might be a few years for consumer products and a few decades for things based on big physical infrastructure (hospitals, oil rigs, roads) or human demographics. The end of the first horizon can be set to about half that length. That is, we give specific years as an anchor, but they serve mostly as symbols of the amount of change.
Last, there’s a bit of attitude advice in TATF. Humans have a natural bias toward negative futures6, so it’s important to put extra effort into the creation of positive visions of the future that can create a pull7. In addition, take responsibility for the future, to create a sense that doing foresight work matters because it increases our ability to affect it - essentially moving people both up and to the right in the Polak Game.
Over the course of the semester, we’ll be doing a practice futures project using Framework Foresight. Part of the work of week 1 has been to choose a topic, and then frame it. I chose the future of religion in the United States, especially the future of religious identification and practice. My interest in this was sparked largely by things like Ryan Burge’s observations about “evangelical” becoming more a social/political marker than a religious one, as well as the way The Great Re-Sorting is changing the makeup of communities and their social capital. If you’re interested in the details, here is my domain description and map for this topic. I’m worried the topic will end up too broad (and maybe cover too long a timespan) but I’m excited to see how it goes. Over the course of the semester, feel free to comment on my posts with any interesting signals you’re seeing on the subject.
I went back and forth this Spring about whether I wanted to take multiple classes at once to try to finish the program earlier, but I decided that in order to keep all my other commitments (like paying the mortgage, staying happily married, and having my kids remember what I look like), I would take things slow and accept that it may take me 5 years to finish. As a side benefit, it will give me longer to incubate my skills and expand my network.
Of course, as things progress and you learn more, it may make sense to change the framing, but this should be a negotiation with the client associated with an explicit change to documentation, rather than just a slow drift.
In addition, there’s often an educational component on the side, using a vehicle like a newsletter to plant and nurture seeds of futures thinking in the organization.
It also makes sense to include contextual factors relevant to the domain using something like STEEP.
Over the rest of the semester, I expect to gain a better sense of what these might be, and ideally share some examples.
The balance of tone in popular films about the future seem like sufficient evidence for this; for every Arrival, there’s a Terminator, a Blade Runner, and a Hunger Games.
I discuss how Nesta does this through community participation in week 15 of Intro.