A tourist in Dublin asks a local resident for directions and gets this reply “ahh you can be getting there well enough, but I wouldn’t be starting from here”.
Matt Taylor, who invented the ‘DesignShop’ methodology (for more detail, see below), encourages ambitious change agents and innovators to “start from there, not from here”. In other words, get clear about the future before the doing the planning, problem-solving or design work. Solutions-focus consulting has a similar entry point.
A vision can be powerful – the whales returning to Sydney Harbour, a man on the moon, a boat of asylum seekers being welcomed by the Prime Minister.
The pathway into the future can only be tested once the destination is declared. Otherwise we are overwhelmed by choice, and are readily distracted. The danger of ‘starting from here’ is that the present is mixed in with all manner of constraints, contingencies and accidents. The present lacks clarity.
For Martin Heidegger, one of the defining characteristics of ‘being’, for humans, is an irresistible pitch toward the future. We are creatures who always, already situate ourselves in relation to a future. Yet, most people are poor at envisioning a distant future (and ‘distant’ might be just a few weeks away). The future is too far a country.
We are certainly poor at picturing a future much ‘bigger’ than our ready-made frames – home improvements, children’s education, retirement savings.
The future is an act of imagination. The present is already too full to entertain such focus and purity. We project our wishes and desires into this imaginary future space.
For some, this future is just an abstraction. Think of all those strategic plans with words like ‘building core capability’, ‘engaging communities’ and ‘strategic leadership’.
Some futures represent a failure of imagination. When we see the future as very much like the present, with a little bit of Jetsonian tinkering for the technologically inclined – a gridlocked road system, but with robot-driven cars; a boring corporate presentation with a holograph of dot points quivering in the air above the podium. Deeper underlying structures (eg organizational power hierarchies), are assumed, and just pitched into the long term by default.
The future is political. It can be contested, and fought over (think ‘two state solution’ in the middle east). It can be a place for political compromise. I worked with a Council who declined to show a visionary photo of a sustainable building because it would lead to disagreements about which developer was most pioneering. So we used a cartoon graphic instead, to ‘de-identify’ the future.
While a vision is difficult, it is necessary. So what is useful?
- First, create forums where dialogue about the future is possible.
- Then paint a picture of the desired future. Depending on the context, it can be useful to make this detailed and practical, for instance, naming specific results that are easy to understand (“Whales returning to Sydney Harbour” as the signal for a toxin free marine environment). If not appropriate, keep it in broad terms to sustain a sense of openness and possibility. But make it clear what a successful destination will look and feel like.
- Prompt for the bold and the different. Use creative stimuli to limber up people’s imagination. There are plenty of exercises for this: ‘postcards from the future’, ‘headlines from Time Magazine December 2020’. Drawing and collage can shift people away from the confining logic of mere words if they have no gift for poetry.
- Then develop the roadmap. At a global design firm doing multi million dollar civic construction projects, a senior staff member showed me one of their early design workshop artefacts, unfurling a long roll of brown paper along the floor, smattered with chalk drawings and crayon notes outlining the raw ideas that became the project plan. Fill in enough detail to be confident that each major step has been identified.
- Calibrate the action plans and project plans to suit the stakeholders. A roadmap that is too prescriptive can rob us of intelligence and will, foreclosing opportunities. Translating the future into a series of mechanical steps dowses motivation.I once worked with a volunteer group full of enthusiasm for a sustainability project. A couple of the engineers among us offered to help with a project plan. A week later we all received an email with our names on a long spreadsheet, in tiny nine-point font allocating us dozens of activities to complete. It killed the project. Many volunteers failed to turn up at the next meeting. The engineers were perplexed. I am sure the reason was that most of us were disheartened to find our passion had morphed into tiny data points on a giant spreadsheet.
Respect the paradox that is the relationship of the future to the present. There is enormous power in a driving purpose. But it needn’t overwhelm the present. A creative way to respect that paradox is to achieve a kind of balancing act between ‘purpose’ and ‘play’. Allow for some creativity within the context of clarity about the future. Sometimes the vision will be rewritten in an instant when an unexpected idea emerges. Be open to change, but on the case.
“You can’t get there from here but you can get here from there” – Matt Taylor
Ian Colley
Make Stuff Happen
Useful sources:
Matt Taylor notes:
http://www.mgtaylor.com/public/2001/axioms.html
My blog on a DesignShop project and related sources: