Professor Profile: John Sweeney
Futures Interviews
I'm grateful people (like you!) read this newsletter, but its greatest benefits are to help me distill and organize my own thoughts and pursue ideas that interest me. I had a couple of experiences in the last few weeks that reinforced this fact. First, I came back to a couple of the newsletter issues I wrote this past semester to write a proposal for integration of futures practice at work; they had exactly what I needed and were much better organized than my class notes. Second, I had the privilege of interviewing my Intro professor for this issue and asking him the questions I found professionally interesting. My goal was to be different enough from the standard FuturePod questions1 that I wasn't just treading well-worn paths. Dr Sweeney was gracious enough to participate, and his answers are below; I modified some of the paragraphing but the answers are otherwise unchanged.
What about futures and foresight gets you the most excited? That is, why are you grateful you’re doing this work instead of another field?
There's a selfish answer and a more altruistic one. For the latter, I still get excited when people "get" futures and foresight for the first time. It's an amazing moment to share with someone--when they awaken to the idea that "the future" is a space of possibility and, ultimately, something that we can shape, which is to say that it becomes a lens to rethink what we do in the here and now. So, I suppose that it's all about agency and even hope2--sharing, and facilitating or curating, that space is quite a powerful experience, which is something that I cherish dearly and remain grateful for being able to support.
On the selfish side, I am a learning junkie, and I cannot believe that I get paid to learn. From water management in North Macedonia to the blue economy in Tonga to supporting the Red Cross in the Caribbean to Arctic Futures in Iceland, I've learned about, and also traveled to, places that would have seemed unimaginable to my younger self. Of course, some days are better than others, but I still get those "pinch me" moments when I think about all of the learning along the way.
What was your path to becoming a foresight professional?
A bit circuitous, if not lucky. I like to say that: "I won the lottery." When I was accepted to the Master's program in Religion at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I was dead set on going onward to the Philosophy department for a PhD in Comparative Philosophy, which was the focus of my undergraduate studies. But, as it turns out, I'm not a linguist! After trying to start over learning Chinese, I ultimately switched to Japanese, which has three alphabets…but no tones!
After graduation, I was a bit unsure about going to the Philosophy PhD program and decided to work for a year, which included teaching Introduction to World Religions at the local community college. By chance, a friend mentioned that she was reading something by this guy, Jim Dator, for a class called Futures. After hearing a few lines, my interests were peaked. I got his email, scheduled a meeting, and then started getting things together to apply.
The "winning the lottery" part comes with getting accepted and having a lot of time and attention from Jim Dator, who is one of the founders of the field of Futures Studies. Through Jim's generosity and connections, I was able to build a practice as a professional and started consulting before I finished my PhD. I suppose that I had an entrepreneurial mindset and willingness to move around, so I was available (and willing to jump) for opportunities as much as possible.
What do you like most about teaching foresight to students? What makes the Intro to Futures class unique among all the classes in the program? Is there anything you found particularly challenging about it?
I will start with the last one as it helps to frame my response to the other questions. The biggest challenge for teaching the Intro to Futures and Foresight class is figuring out what to include and how much time to spend with everything. Of course, methods such as scanning and scenarios are a must, but what counts as a "classic" in the field varies according to whom you ask, if not the various schools of thought and practice, which leads me to the second question.
What makes the Introduction to Futures and Foresight class unique, if not the Houston program as a whole, is the focus on having an academic foundation, so both theory and practice. As a practitioner, it's not that I recite theory in workshops or spout quotes to clients, but I truly think that having a broad knowledge base, which is somewhat conceptual, helps me as a practitioner. At times, it feels like a superpower to have an understanding of what others have done and why, so it becomes a basis for playing with approaches and methods, which is what I love to teach. I think that what makes the Intro class unique is that it basically serves as a space to introduce this dynamic in a way that feels like a grand tour through the major aspects / areas / approaches of the field. And, as it happens, this is also what I love about teaching futures and foresight, especially the Intro class, which I just taught this past semester.
Walk us through a recent day that’s representative of the kind of work you do as a foresight professional (and an educator, ideally). What’s it like to be a futurist in the mold of John Sweeney?
Wednesday, May 17
As this was a “home” day, I slept in as late as possible, which translates as long enough to be able to make a Turkish coffee and complete my morning workout before hopping into my first call of the day, which was with a relatively new client, a global peace institute, who is looking to add more futures and foresight work to their portfolio of engagement approaches following a successful two-day, on-site event in the Caucasus region.
My next call was with a student from the University of Houston program, who had yet to be my student actually, but who was keen to connect after hearing my presentation at the Spring Gathering. He was working to develop an approach to foresight that integrated social innovation, and I was impressed with what he was developing. Overall, I have been the beneficiary of the kindness of more experienced futurists, so I am always up for a chat, especially if someone is keen to give it a go in the futures and foresight field.
A few hours break was spent mostly answering emails and then a bit of prep for my next meeting. This was also my time to do some scanning, which, at least for today, had a “climate financing” and “peace and security” focus, so perhaps “seeking” is a more appropriate term.
My next Zoom was a working session for an upcoming learning journey focused on global peace and security, and we spent time covering not only the design but shortlisting mentors for the program, which were from both futures and foresight as well as our focal area. I love this project and have been learning a lot about both the content area, which is one where I have done some work already, and how to structure such engagements. Of course, it helps that I am part of a truly fantastic team to pull this together.
The last meeting of the day was with an Abu Dhabi-based Think Tank in relation to a proposal on climate futures. They are looking to bring more futures and foresight into their work, which centers mostly on geopolitical risk and translating relevant policy content into Arabic. Given that the next COP will be held in the UAE, this project has a lot riding on it.
Calls wrap up after this as I had to catch a flight to Dubai that evening. While I have some meetings while I will be there, this trip is actually a birthday present for my 7-year old son, so less foresight and more Pokemon.
Based on your unique experience, what are some of the synergies or areas of overlap you see between foresight and the study of religion? How can insights from religion engage futures practice, and vice versa?
At the end of the day, religion and foresight are about people. What is important to us and what we want. Both are also about the limits of what we know, about ourselves, the world, and what is possible.
Studying religion, especially traditions that were different from the one with which I was raised, helped me see life, and how we give it purpose, from different, even divergent, perspectives. I think that my work as a futurist has done the same, and I hope that it has done this for those participating in the engagements themselves.
With that said, I think that the same “leap,” to paraphrase Kierkegaard, that defines faith can be found in taking futures and foresight as a vocation, which is a rather convoluted way of saying that an insight gleaned from studying religion and “doing” futures and foresight has been the necessity of belief--that such a mode of thinking, and I would argue being-in-the-world, has value for self and others.
Although it is certainly the case that some futures are more plausible and probable than others, I take it as a metaphysical absolute that there are, at any given moment, a range of possible futures, some of which will always defy the limits of our comprehension and imagination.
And yet, we endure.
In sum, I suppose the greatest shared insight between religion and foresight is on how we might come to peace with uncertainty.
Again, I’m grateful to Dr Sweeney not only for the wonderful introduction to Foresight through the Intro class but also for taking the time to answer these questions.
These questions are, roughly, what's your biographical sketch including your entry to futures and foresight, describe a tool/method/framework that's important to your practice, how are you currently making sense of emerging futures, how do you explain what you do to someone who doesn't understand, and an open invitation to bring up anything else you think is relevant.
This “agency and hope” framing is similar to my “imagination and agency” summary I shared in my discussion of the final assignment in my course wrap-up summary article a few weeks ago. As a bonus if you haven’t seen it already, that post contains my thoughts on why Dr Sweeney was so impressive as a teacher for the Intro class, including the love of learning he mentions here.