We discussed different foresight methodologies, the particular challenges and opportunities in working on futures with trade unions, and, inevitably, COVID-19, but our conversation began with Aída’s sporting career, and the lessons it taught her about coping with turbulence and uncertainty.
Matt:
What was your journey to becoming a foresight practitioner? You were a lawyer, and a competitive open-water swimmer – how did that lead you to work on foresight, and how did it prepare you for the role?
Aída:
In many ways I saw myself as a swimmer first and everything else second! I studied and practiced law, completed a doctorate. As an open water swimmer I competed at international level, also racing in Open Water World Cups. Read more →
I find Ravetz’s approach thought-provoking, pragmatic, and deeply relevant to the present moment. It attends to questions of uncertainty and emphasises that science itself is situated within complex social, political, cultural, and economic contexts. Especially when we find ourselves being told that, for example, decisions on quarantine and lockdown measures are being “guided by the science” under contested circumstances, it’s worth getting your head around the idea of “post-normal science.”
Today, I want to go through some of the key points articulated in Ravetz’s 2006 No-Nonsense Guide to Science and the updated 2020 version of his landmark 1993 essay with Silvio O. Funtowicz, “Science for the Post-Normal Age“. Check those texts out, if you want to go deeper.
Post-normal science is a way of rethinking science for situations – and eras – in which facts are uncertain, values are in dispute, the stakes are high, and decisions are urgent. It recognises that the social and political dimensions of science cannot be sidelined, isolated, or ignored.
The increasingly complex systems of today’s world are threatened by environmental catastrophe, pollution, and other incidents, like the COVID-19 outbreak, which are exacerbated by the technologies sustaining our way of life.
Science must therefore find new ways to cope with contradiction, uncertainty, and an ever-wider political conversation featuring a wide range of perspectives. It must now address the problems of a global system which itself was based on science.
I recently had the opportunity to speak with Steve Thomas of the American library podcast Circulating Ideas and Ian Anstice of the UK’s Public Libraries News. Both conversations were released online this week.
Ian asked me some questions about the COVID-19 pandemic, libraries’ response to it, and what might be on the horizon for our societies and the institutions that serve them.
Like any good foresight practitioner, I sought to offer questions of my own, and provocations more than prophecy. We discussed resilience, anticipation, and both the dangers and opportunities that organisations face during a prolonged, indefinite season of turbulence and uncertainty. I think the points will be useful for people outside of the library and information sector. You can read our conversation at the Public Libraries News site.
Great piece on library futures @DrMattFinch Yes! Let's "find new ways to measure and communicate the difference libraries make to their communities and…(enable) previously marginalized voices and communities to be heard and recognized." https://t.co/8GYzPBw5NV
Last week, I put together this one-hour video session for America’s Engaging Local Government Leaders network, ELGL.
It’s a straightforward foresight and strategy starter pack, no nonsense, no jargon, helping to answer the questions “Where are we going?” and “What should we do?”
The session is aimed at US local government leaders, but should work for a wide range of institutions, communities, and settings.
To keep the conversation moving forward, Katherine and I had a short discussion about libraries’ experience of crisis over the past year.
Matt: In terms of our interest in coping with crises and turbulent situations, in understanding the part libraries have to play in these huge upsets: what has been learned?
Katherine:
So much has happened, both personally and professionally, and is continuing to happen, and taking a breath to look back is almost overwhelming.
The fiction of normality has just been exposed by the coronavirus pandemic, so why are we constantly talking of a New Normal?
Normality was only ever a comfort blanket, and one which didn’t even stretch to cover all of those in our society who needed it.
How will we change through, and allow ourselves to be changed by, the crises of 2020 – and those future crises that surely await?
I’m so grateful to Spain’s Ministry of Culture and Sport, and the “Laboratorios Bibliotecarios” team, for hosting this discussion, and tolerating my imperfect Spanish in a really lively debate with Laia Sánchez Casals, Alicia Sellés Carot, Diego Gracia Sancho, and Javier Perez Iglesias.
‘Never assume the future will be an extension of the past’ Scenario planning in the Age of COVID-19
Matt Finch sat down with Trudi Lang, a senior fellow in management practice at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. Lang is a researcher and strategist with particular expertise in scenario planning, a foresight methodology that seeks not to predict the future but to usefully challenge our assumptions about what’s coming next.
“The key challenge of government is to prepare for a future in which we will be surprised time and again,” said Peter Ho, then Singapore’s top civil servant, in 2009.
Few people at the start of 2020 would have anticipated an enormous symmetric shock affecting the entire world, demanding drastic interventions from the state — yet experts had been warning of a pandemic for considerable time. Indeed, as the New York Times reported in March, the US federal government had rehearsed for a pandemic three times over the last four years.
With the world plunged into uncertainty, how do we navigate the turmoil of the current pandemic and look beyond the crisis, into a future that is hard to picture clearly? Read more →
The Great Wave off Kanagawa, by Katsushika Hokusai
It’s the first ever virtual #LocalGovCamp, and in my workshop, we’ll consider the distinction between risk and uncertainty, explore straightforward ways to identify our strategic blindspots, and try out a range of tools intended to help an organisation and its stakeholders have richer, smarter conversations about their future decisions, on or offline.
We’ll refer to some practical case studies, and have time for questions and discussion of what it means to plan your way through the current pandemic and beyond.
Join us on Tuesday 12 May, 11.15am – 12 noon British Summer Time.
Late last year, I joined Alex Glennie of the UK-based innovation foundation Nesta on a short project in Helsinki.
Alex & I were supporting the Finnish innovation agency, Business Finland, as they explored the concept of “mission-oriented innovation”, where innovation policy is linked to societal missions.
Using ‘fast facilitation’ methods to swiftly elicit key ideas and pressing challenges, we asked participants to consider their mission in terms of the value created by their relationships with stakeholders in the innovation ecosystem.
How are you spending your days under lockdown or restricted movement? Which parts of your routine have changed? What’s working for you and what’s not?
How do you perceive time – have days begun to run into one?
Are work and home life still easy to separate? Do you have to fit your job around childcare and homeschooling? Do you notice when the weekends arrive?
Draw Your Day is a short activity using a pen, paper, and some basic shapes to help you examine and rethink the ways you’re spending time during lockdown.
It’s based on a tried and tested activity from workshops I’ve run around the world, derived in turn from a task set for students by the comics scholar Nick Sousanis. It’s quick, and it’s fun.
If you’ve got something to make a mark with, and something to make a mark on, and you’re curious about your relationship to time during lockdown, you can watch the activity and take part on YouTube; the whole thing takes about half an hour.
matt finch / mechanical dolphin 
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