Three Tomorrows for planning in uncertainty.
Video Transcript
“Planning for impact and future growth in times of uncertainty is challenging.
More than ever today, everything is changing at an accelerating pace on a variety of scales: social, political, cultural, technological and environmental.
In particular we are seeing changes happen, not as isolated events, but rather as far-reaching, rapid and simultaneous changes that are connected and interconnected. The result is increasing uncertainty about what the future will bring and how we are best able to position ourselves and our organisations to respond to uncertain futures.
Susan Scott in her book Fierce Conversations says:
“No plan survives its collision with reality, and reality has a habit of shifting…”
The futures we must deal with are shifting faster and faster.
A critical question that we must get used to dealing with is how we produce plans, make decisions and grow our organisations in the face of futures full of complexity, uncertainty, contradictions and chaos.
Three Tomorrows framework.
The Three Tomorrows method by Sardar and Sweeney in their 2015 article “The Three Tomorrows of Postnormal Times” provides a useful framework to start understanding the trends, issues, and futures that we might consider when planning and making decisions that will impact over the next 20 plus years.
Let’s take a look at the methodology.
Sardar and Sweeney start with a modified version of the futures cone which shows futures expanding from the present.
The first tomorrow is called the Extended Present. The Extended Present is what most people mean when they talk about “the future”. It’s populated with global, regional and local trends, emerging issues and weak signals that are visible today and we can, to some degree, expand and extend them from now into the future over the next 5-10 years.
We don’t have perfect knowledge, or any predictive powers in the Extended Present however the development of many of the trends, issues and signals we can see today are foreseeable. An example of this in action is artificial intelligence, it exists now and we can be fairly confident it will have some form of impact over the next 5-10 years.
In Sardar and Sweeneys model each tomorrow has a degree of uncertainty and a degree of ignorance associated with it. Uncertainty is the feeling that comes when we are not completely confident or sure of something. Ignorance is our lack of knowledge and information.
In the Extended Present the degree of uncertainty is classified as “surface uncertainty”. Here, we have a limited set of possible futures, one of which will appear. Our ignorance level is classed as “simple ignorance” in that it exists however we can access tools to reduce it like learning, research, appreciating the views of others and asking the right questions.
The next tomorrow is “Familiar Futures” which can extend into 10-20 years from today. Here we can envisage futures that seem familiar because of images and imaging’s of futures from science fiction, data driven projections, advertising, corporate visions, futurists, books, films and television. The best example of this is to reflect on how many technologies from Star Trek and Star Wars are already in everyday use or in early stages of development. The projection of possible futures in these shows gives us a sense of familiarity with them when they arrive.
In “Familiar Futures” our degree of uncertainty increases to “Shallow Uncertainty” when we don’t even know what questions to ask, and even if we did know the questions, the answers lie just beyond our current point of view. Our level of ignorance here is classed as “Vincible Ignorance” as it cannot be overcome today through learning as there is nothing to learn but it does allow us an awareness of what we do not know and must learn in the future. An example here would be that today we are unsure of what the impact of genetically modified food will be on the food chain in the future however we know that we will need to get that knowledge at some stage.
“Unthought Futures” is the third tomorrow which extends beyond 20 years from today. Here there is infinite alterative futures. We might be able to use some demographic or economic projections to conceptualise possible futures however the reality is there are no models that can provide us with adequate foresight into this tomorrow. Our degree of uncertainty here is “Deep Uncertainty” where we are unaware of the direction, dimension and impact of change and do not have the tools to improve our awareness. Our level of ignorance is “Invincible Ignorance” where we simply don’t know what we don’t know.
An understanding of Sardar and Sweeneys model can help our organisational planning for impact and future growth.
If you are making decisions for impact and future growth you must bring foresight thinking into play. In doing so you will dramatically improve your organisation’s ability to grow and thrive in the face of futures full of complexity, uncertainty, contradictions and chaos.
I hope you found this overview of Sardar and Sweeneys Three Tomorrows methodology interesting. If you want to keep the conversation going message me directly or visit insight & foresight.
Have a great day.”
References
Sardar, Ziauddin & Sweeney, John. (2015). The Three Tomorrows of Postnormal Times. Futures. 75. 10.1016/j.futures.2015.10.004.
Scott, Susan. (2002) Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time. New York, N.Y: Viking.
