Imagine having the power to look into the future of the water industry - sounds exciting, right? That's the journey we embark on with Dr. Graham Norris, an organizational psychologist who specializes in foresight and futures thinking. Our dialogue spins around understanding the importance of long-term thinking, especially in the water sector. We delve into the concept of controlling our attention and expanding our imagination to contemplate future possibilities and their implications. We also discuss how data-driven models can help us predict future scenarios and the role of predictability in water services.
With Dr. Norris, we untangle the complexities of future thinking. He brilliantly breaks it down into three facets - the predictable context, the unpredictable elements like socio-economic factors, and sculpting our desired future from our understanding of these aspects. The beauty of it all lies in envisioning multiple potential futures and making decisions with conviction. It's a fascinating exploration into the world of tomorrow, a world that we can shape with our thoughts and actions today.
Towards the end of our conversation, we consider the challenges and advantages of future thinking and the potential of technology in overcoming psychological barriers. We discuss how regularly creating new scenarios and shifting perspectives can enhance our understanding of the future. Stressing on the water sector, we contemplate the possible inequalities that could surface and the importance of having a vision for the future. We conclude with some thought-provoking insights on how the water industry, entrepreneurs, and water tech companies can adopt futures thinking, and our role in facilitating this transformation. So, are you ready to step into the future with us?
#water #WaterForesight #strategicforesight #foresight #futures @Aqualaurus
Imagine having the power to look into the future of the water industry - sounds exciting, right? That's the journey we embark on with Dr. Graham Norris, an organizational psychologist who specializes in foresight and futures thinking. Our dialogue spins around understanding the importance of long-term thinking, especially in the water sector. We delve into the concept of controlling our attention and expanding our imagination to contemplate future possibilities and their implications. We also discuss how data-driven models can help us predict future scenarios and the role of predictability in water services.
With Dr. Norris, we untangle the complexities of future thinking. He brilliantly breaks it down into three facets - the predictable context, the unpredictable elements like socio-economic factors, and sculpting our desired future from our understanding of these aspects. The beauty of it all lies in envisioning multiple potential futures and making decisions with conviction. It's a fascinating exploration into the world of tomorrow, a world that we can shape with our thoughts and actions today.
Towards the end of our conversation, we consider the challenges and advantages of future thinking and the potential of technology in overcoming psychological barriers. We discuss how regularly creating new scenarios and shifting perspectives can enhance our understanding of the future. Stressing on the water sector, we contemplate the possible inequalities that could surface and the importance of having a vision for the future. We conclude with some thought-provoking insights on how the water industry, entrepreneurs, and water tech companies can adopt futures thinking, and our role in facilitating this transformation. So, are you ready to step into the future with us?
#water #WaterForesight #strategicforesight #foresight #futures @Aqualaurus
Aqualars. This is the Water Foresight podcast powered by the Aqualars group, where we anticipate, frame and shape the future of water through strategic foresight. Today's guest is Dr Graham Norris, who is an organizational psychologist focusing on foresight and futures thinking. Dr Norris' passion is helping people cultivate a healthier attitude toward the future. Dr Norris, welcome to the Water Foresight podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much indeed, Matthew. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1:I have a particular notion, or maybe a bias, that people in the world of water tend to not fully understand the discipline of foresight and they are not that adept at thinking about the future the way that foresight practitioners think about it. And I'm glad you're here today because I think you're going to help us think about that a little bit better and maybe give us some ideas, tips, tools on how we in the world of water can perhaps begin to think a little better about the future of water, or I should say the futures of water, the possibilities, the probabilities, even things that may be preposterous. I think that is going to be very important to the future of water, am I correct? Is that something you think you can help us talk about, think about and work on today?
Speaker 2:I certainly hope so, matthew. I think it's not just the water industry where the discipline of foresight is absent. Most industries and most people don't normally think about the long-term future, and so it's a capacity or capability that we all have, but we underuse, we neglect to a large extent. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there to expand that capability, not just in the water industry, but pretty much everywhere.
Speaker 1:You wrote a really thoughtful piece called Mastering the Three Aspects of Future's Thinking and it really caught my attention. And is futures thinking a mindset and, if so, should leaders or organizations pursue and achieve a futures thinking mindset? Help us with that.
Speaker 2:Sure, I would say futures thinking. You could look at it as a mindset, but I would really call it a capacity or a capability to think into the long term. Humans, as we naturally developed, are good at thinking about the immediate term future. We are constantly trying to predict what's going to happen in the short term, and a lot of that is to do with staying alive, obviously, and that's how we've developed over hundreds of thousands of years. But we're increasingly required to think in a much longer term future and while we can do that, we're just not very good at it and it's not natural for us to do that.
Speaker 2:We are much more inclined to think about what we're going to have for dinner, how we're going to reply to these emails, how we're going to handle this phone call, what's going on on social media.
Speaker 2:All of those things give us immediate psychological responses that are quite pleasant, whereas we don't get that same kind of buzz from doing something that's going to benefit us five years down the road.
Speaker 2:We don't usually appreciate whatever it was we did five years ago that landed us in that good position. So I think it's really this capacity to think deeper into the future and there's a couple of elements of that. I think one is our attention, what we pay attention to. As I say, we normally were thinking in the immediate, short term future, but I think and this may sound a little bit woohoo, a bit Buddhist or whatever but being able to control our attention so that we can think clearly about what's happened in the past and to understand the implications of that for the future, be aware of what's happening to us in the present and then being able to transport ourselves and thinking into the future, to really think quite deeply about what could happen. And the other aspect is really imagination and so being able to consider different possibilities in the future and their implications. And that really requires stretching our imaginations much further than they would naturally go.
Speaker 1:I appreciate the use of the term predictability. I think there are many types of leaders and organizations in the world of water, and the utilities that provide drinking water or provide wastewater services are very much focused on that word predictability. People expect and demand water when they turn on the faucet or the shower. It needs to be abundant and it needs to be clean, and that level of predictability, I think, is woven throughout certain segments of the world of water, and so I think you hit the nail on the head there. Tell us more about this idea of futures thinking.
Speaker 2:Well, it's really about being able to think more productively about the future, which means really considering a wider range of possibilities and those implications with the aim of making better decisions. If we think about what we do, what we really do is make decisions, and all decisions are about the future. And even when we're executing those decisions, that's really just breaking down the big decisions into smaller ones, and so really being able to think more clearly in the longer term is really the definition there, and you're talking about predictability there, and, I think, a lot of people. If we look at what people think about when it's the future, we often try to resolve the uncertainty of the future by gathering information, and so there's one mindset that looks at thinking about the future as well. We'll just gather more data, we'll gather the big data, we'll crunch the numbers and continue to optimize that to create models and these kinds of things that can then forecast with increasing levels of accuracy what's going to happen in the future, and in many cases, that's possible.
Speaker 2:The insurance industry, for example, is based on that and I'm sure not being an expert in the water industry there's various aspects of the water industry where that works very, very well. However, when you get to sort of medium long term futures, and what constitutes medium and long term is quite subjective and changes in different situations, but maybe in the water industry it might be 10, 15, 20 years out. Those models tend to break down because of the unpredictability of what's going to happen, and so in those cases we can't rely on data. We then start to need to lean on our imaginations and our understanding of how emerging trends will develop, and that's really much more art than science, and it's not something that companies are really really good at and it's not something that's really naturally trained in us to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a couple of things I hear you saying, and you can correct me, but I think you would distinguish forecasting from, perhaps, the practice of foresight. You might say, matt, there are sectors, organizations, that are attempting to think about the future, but it's more of a quantitative activity than qualitative, and am I fair in framing it that way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd say so, and I think the real problem, you see, with thinking about the long term future is because it's a very qualitative exercise. There are no facts about the future and there's no data that we can get about the long term future. The problem is when it comes back to making decisions in the present. Our decision making capacity is all about probabilities, and so if we're going to make a decision, that's based on an understanding that we expect that decision to have some kind of result and that decision is going to do something in a particular future circumstance, and so that's the the real long term future.
Speaker 2:Issues such as climate change are very difficult to grapple with because it's very hard to say okay, 50 years, maybe this is going to be the situation. I'm going to make a decision now which has to be going to have some kind of implication in the future. Our minds just can't compute a probability about. Is that likely to work? Is it not likely to work? So we have that kind of that's really one of the biggest psychological challenges and overcoming the uncertainty of long term futures thinking.
Speaker 1:It might be fair to say that our demand for control, predictability, consistency may discount the qualitative side of life, where our imagination may envision certain possible futures that leaders may say well, there may not be hard data on that or the data are questionable and we'll just dismiss that because it's too speculative, too far out there. We need data that helps us with our quarterly challenges or annual challenges. Do you find and I don't mean to, I'm not trying to dump on the water sector, but do you find that there are particular sectors out there that are quite good at the things that you are discussing? Imagination and the qualitative side.
Speaker 2:Sure, I think some industries are naturally more forward looking.
Speaker 2:If you look at Elon Musk, obviously as someone who has a clearly quite a vivid imagination, he imagines a very different future from the one we're living in at the moment.
Speaker 2:And so if you're working for SpaceX or maybe OpenAI or one of these kinds of companies, you're probably naturally going to be looking more into the future, thinking about the possibilities and also their implications and trying to work around that, whereas other industries, obviously they just simply move more slowly.
Speaker 2:The risks appear on the surface to be more manageable and understandable, and so there isn't such a demand or a desire to think so much into the future, and those industries and I imagine the water industry will be one of them is going to be a little bit more myopic, because that's where the issues are. Whether that's a healthy way to do it or not is the question, because even in some very well-established companies and industries sometimes the wind can change quite quickly and if they've not paid attention to the climate and what's happening, then they can get caught out. And so you can see I'm sure people have looked at the risks facing the water industry in the United States and elsewhere, but also the opportunities with technological developments as well, and so whether the people in certain industries are, as you say, have the mindset or be mentally prepared to accept those opportunities and challenges is the real question.
Speaker 1:How, when we talk about mindset, how do we connect that to your scholarship on the three aspects of future thinking? It seems that you're encouraging people to change their mindset or open up their mindset to futures thinking. What are the three aspects of futures thinking?
Speaker 2:Well, it is an academic discipline foresight and there's a lot of great thinking there that often stays as good thoughts because it can get quite complex and it doesn't always connect that well with the way people really think.
Speaker 2:So I'm always trying to find ways to simplify and to make it less of a psychological burden to do what is psychologically challenge, which is think about the long-term future.
Speaker 2:So I wrote that article and I talked about the three aspects of futures thinking, which borrow us from many ideas from big thinkers in the foresight world, and so we look at what the first one is really the context of the future.
Speaker 2:So when we look at the future, there are elements of the future that are very predictable going a long way out. And so if you look at the cosmological aspects so the earth going around the sun and the way the moon interacts with the earth and the tides and when the sun rises and everything else these are predictable to a very high degree of accuracy a very long time out into the future. And we can also see things such as demographics. We know roughly, with a good degree of confidence, how many people are going to be living on the earth in five years time or 10 years time roughly where they can live and these kinds of things. So demographics is another aspect of the future that we can see, frames the environment. We don't have any control over those things, but we can put some reasonably confident numbers against them.
Speaker 1:That's tough. That's tough when you talk about control and predictability. Those things sometimes work against each other.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. Sometimes. They're sometimes the opposite, yeah, and so every industry will have elements of that. Sometimes people are in very calcified regulatory environments that are unlikely to change in the long term, or whatever else, the situation they find themselves in. So that's the context of the future. And then, having analyzed that, then there's the unpredictable elements of the future, and we usually use steep or pest or pestle.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of different frameworks to look at sociological, technological, economic, environmental, political, legal and so on. So, looking at the whole range of issues that could influence whatever it is we're working in, so social issues that can change people's preferences for conservation or whatever it is, technology is obviously a really big one, environment obviously increasingly at the top of people's minds now. Political environment changes quite a lot. The regulatory environment can make a huge difference to certain industries, including the water industry, and so a lot of those also. We might think, well, there's too much going on there. I don't have much control over that either, which is true, but it's within this area of the unpredictable future where we make our decisions and where we can influence not necessarily control, but influence things. And so if we're a corporation, for example, okay, so what you know, if we're interested in influencing society's views, then you know we can run public relations campaigns.
Speaker 2:If we are interested in technology, then we can produce or invest in certain technologies. There's certain regulatory influences on our industry. We can try to influence those as well. And if there's economic aspects, then obviously we have a little bit more control over our economic influence as well.
Speaker 2:And so it's really in that realm where we try to identify the trends, try to extrapolate them out into the future, understand how to synthesize them and what they're going to mean when they work together, and then what kind of decisions we can make within that which then leads on to that final element. It's the future we want, and I think this is the important thing is having an opinion about what kind of future we want, based on our understanding about the environment. We'll be in the context and those trends that we see, which are the elements of change within that context, and then deciding where we want to be, where we want to position ourselves and a lot of that comes from the leadership, but it could come from within an organization as well creating that vision which has to be flexible to a certain extent to reflect the unpredictability of the future, but still sets a direction which people can believe in and is motivating and compelling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you allow for individuals that you work with to develop multiple possible futures? You may be working with the organization where they see several possible futures that they would like to shape. How do you respond to that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Considering multiple futures is crucial. There's a saying which I'm sure you'll familiar with it's not about being right, it's about being ready. We have a natural inclination to try to predict specifically what will happen, and if we hold on to those predictions too tightly, we will always be disappointed because none of them none of them will happen. We're always going to be wrong. And so it's important to look at different futures and to identify which of the elements of those futures are coming to pass, which elements of those futures we find desirable, which we find undesirable, and then to continue to review all of those possible well, not all of them, but as many possible futures as we can manage to understand how they're evolving. They're very difficult to do. It's not naturally what we're good at. Our minds are pretty much always predicting a specific environment in the short-term future, and that's all we really do. So actually considering all of these possibilities, knowing that each one is unlikely to actually happen, is very, very difficult.
Speaker 1:You use the phrase decision-making with conviction, and I think that's important for this conversation, because you can engage in this exercise and have one or more possible futures. But really envisioning those futures is really only the first step. If I'm correct, you need to encourage the organization and its leadership to then shape that future, or those futures, and do so on a consistent and regular basis. It's not like a plan that you formulated put on the shelf. Am I in the ballpark there?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. There's a famous book called the Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, where the author talks about how it used to be thought that you could make a plan looking into the future and all you needed to do to make the better plan was just to have better data and to better predict what would happen. That's naturally what we'd love to happen. We'd love to just try a little bit harder and make better predictions and have better plans as a result of that, whereas the fall of strategic planning was when people realize that the future just doesn't work like that.
Speaker 2:You can't crunch the numbers and squeeze out all the uncertainty. In fact, in many respects, uncertainty is increasing, and so having a plan, having a very specific plan based on very specific expectations if the success of the plan is really hanging on those expectations, then you're often going to be very disappointed and face failure. So it's really about building some flexibility into planning, understanding, having taken into account various different possible futures, and that will make the plan much stronger. It may look weaker or more fuzzy, but it actually will make it much more robust and much more resilient when things change.
Speaker 1:I think, and I agree, I think one of the presuppositions that is not the focus of this episode is the practice of horizon scanning or environmental scanning, and I think you're implying that the folks that you may work with to develop these possible futures. You can't just simply do it once and be satisfied with the framing of the possible futures. You need to continue to engage in horizon scanning to determine if the signals of change themselves are changing. There may be a wild card. There could be changes that make a particular future not so interesting, not so exciting, and you want to regularly come back as a team and talk about that. Am I in the ballpark on that one too?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, matthew, and I'd say there's a couple of things there. One is you're absolutely right when you're looking. If you create a few scenarios about the future, each one will contain elements that will start to look like they're actually happening. But you need to keep looking to understand which elements of these various scenarios are actually happening. If you don't and then you'll just say it why it seems like none of these futures are actually coming about. But that was never the point. You weren't trying to choose a future that was going to happen. It's always elements of all of them that start becoming real, and so you need to keep monitoring that.
Speaker 2:I would also say. Traditionally, foresight consultancy was about quite meaty projects, creating scenarios that would take months and months and crunch a lot of information, and then you'd have these scenarios, which would be useful for a while, whereas I would say, to be honest, you'd be better off doing a more humble, limited view of the future, perhaps creating scenarios as the traditional way to do it, but create new scenarios every few months, because every time you create a new set of scenarios, looking maybe at a different set of driving forces, a different set of things, the elements of the future that are changing, you will get a new, a different perspective on the future as well, and by continuing to sort of rather than try to look more intensely at the future actually just shifting your perspective to look at different aspects of the future you'll actually learn a lot more about what's coming up and how you might want to position yourself with regard to the future.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you raise a couple good points. First, I would agree with you that there are multiple tools available to organizations in the discipline of foresight, and you alluded to, perhaps, a futures wheel. Right, that's a very simple and effective tool you can use in the conference room and work on scenarios with your team, as opposed to hiring an expensive consultant to, as you put it, spend months and months developing a scenario plan. Right, with multiple scenarios. That takes time and money. I seem to think that the joke that economists have predicted seven of the last four recessions is maybe appropriate for this part of the discussion, and that it seems that we're always looking to predict things and look at the future and develop scenarios, and often we're wrong. Often we may not be continuously paying attention to the signals of change, and so I think your counsel is wise, that developing possible futures requires a certain level of tenacity and commitment to the futures that the organization wants to see Bear enough.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I wrote another article recently called the Barefoot Futurist, which is referring to the Barefoot Doctors of China, alluding to this idea that, rather than futures thinking needing to be a massive undertaking, it's a little bit more like that mindset idea you were talking about at the beginning.
Speaker 2:It's about cultivating that capacity, maybe in a more quick and dirty way, but more frequently and so on a more frequent basis, thinking about the future. Just sitting down even if it's over lunch or coffee, with some people, and just doing a futures will, for example, understanding the implications of something that's happened and what could happen in the future. A lot of these things can be done just simply on a piece of paper with some colleagues, and the more frequently you do it, the more you'll find you're thinking in that way, and so I think it's in some way. Some companies for some purposes will get a lot of value out of doing a really in-depth, deep dive into the future. But I think at an individual level we can all benefit a lot more from just doing it at a more shallow level, but much more frequently.
Speaker 1:So what are some of the benefits? We've started to talk about this through our conversation, but what are some of the benefits of adopting a mindset of futures thinking?
Speaker 2:So I would say that psychologically we have an allergy to uncertainty, and that allergy really causes us to do a few things Well, one of the things is we try to crush that uncertainty and squeeze it out of existence by gathering more information. And of course we now have access in our generation the first generation ever has access to pretty much limitless amounts of information. Previously, previous generations, could go to a library, but for most of human history all you could do is just ask around, look for yourself, and then you'd have exhausted all the avenues for information discovery. And so of course, we find that when we look for more information, it creates more uncertainty because we understand as more we could know, there's more possibilities, more things to decide on, and so we don't end up in a very healthy place there.
Speaker 2:We keep spinning the wheels, and another thing we often do is try to turn away from the future. We simply stick with the status quo, and we can see that a lot with people just kind of rejecting, you know, making decisions. They try to turn everything into black and white, try to oversimplify things. And so when we have a healthier attitude towards thinking about the future, then we have a healthier attitude towards uncertainty and I think, getting comfortable with the uncertainty that the future generates and understanding it's the opportunity, it's the space in which we make our decisions, without the uncertainty that we don't have decisions to make. If everything's already decided, then we just have to follow the road that's already been given to us, and so gaining confidence in our ability to influence the future and making decisions with conviction, knowing that we don't know exactly what's going to happen, I think is the real benefit of cultivating this capacity for futures thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think I don't want to steer your thunder, but I would go back and use the term or the phrase you use, which is it's better to be prepared instead of reacting to a crisis, and I think to me that's an important piece of this. Fair enough, Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So we can see the benefits. We can look at the benefits maybe in two parts. One is going out and shaping a preferred future or series of futures, but we can also look at it as avoiding certain undesirable futures. If we look at the benefits of futures thinking, how do we go about encouraging organizations that may not be possessive of this futures thinking or futures mindset? What do we do to move these organizations into a better position to engage the discipline of foresight?
Speaker 2:Sure, I think one of the things is to appreciate that every organization is different and there will be different situations and the people within those organizations will also have their own different perspectives on the future, on the opportunities, what risk means, and I think appreciating the challenges of actually doing that is one of the first steps, and I think related to that is giving people space and time to think long term. Theoretically, we think of executives as not being involved in the day to day. They're above the fray and they should have time to consider strategy, long term planning, these things, but often they don't. They're often caught up fighting fires and dealing with short term problems, and so I think it's important to realize that people need headspace to think about these things. I think once we've opened the door, some people are more open to storytelling type appeals, others a little bit more to data, and so I think either of these approaches to helping people understand the risks and the opportunities that their industry and their company faces are quite important.
Speaker 2:Obviously, there are case studies.
Speaker 2:I'm not an expert in the water industry, but you look at Kodak, nokia, these kinds of companies that are blockbuster, very famous case studies about how companies in their time, cutting edge technology companies getting eaten alive by changes that they couldn't Sometimes they could even see them coming, but they couldn't bring themselves to adapt to it and, conversely, a company like Intel, which managed to let go of the past and embrace the future just in time before it was too late.
Speaker 2:And so, I think, helping people understand that sometimes there are some serious risks and opportunities that need to be considered for a better future, but it's definitely not easy, I think, having some empathy and sympathy for people, the challenges of that, because it's not always just business, business, business At the end of the day, it's people who make the decisions, and it's a common problem that a lot of foresight work happens in the context of, say, workshop or a series of workshops, that it gets written up and everything else, and then it gets left on a shelf and gets dusty and maybe is a little bit again for a couple of years.
Speaker 2:And so I think connecting that and landing it back into the present, where the decisions are made, is really the crucial element. I mean, there are lots of wonderful tools that can transport us into the future, but as a friend of mine, jim Burke, always used to say, we transport people into the future and then we abandon them there and I think we can be as inspiring and everything else, but if we don't make decisions, if we don't change what we're doing today based on our understanding of the future, then those exercises are looking into the future of pure entertainment.
Speaker 1:This is maybe a tactical observation. It seems very important when engaging organizations in foresight activities that you have to find people who may be predisposed to the mindset that we are talking about. You may not want a room full of linear thinkers who are reactive and tactical in their approaches. You want people who are Star Trek fans or they enjoy the future in science fiction or they have that mindset, their systems thinkers. They're not ashamed, they're not insecure about creative thinking and having their boss wonder if they're insane or crazy. But having those types of people around the table to look at the results from environmental or horizon scanning, I think is very helpful in this broader endeavor. Your thoughts, jim.
Speaker 2:Burke Sure. I think one of my favorite tools is the Three Horizons created by Bill Sharp. The reason is it's not just a tool to look at the future along those Three Horizons, it also allows the people to appreciate different perspectives according to those three different horizons. I'm sure you're very familiar with this but, just for the benefit of your listeners, there are three perspectives and I'm an organizational psychologist originally, so I'm very interested in this aspect.
Speaker 2:The first horizon, or the first perspective, is the managerial perspective, so that's about understanding what's happening in the present, the status quo, and liking that and trying to preserve it and maintain it and trying to optimize it in many ways. And then the third horizon we often talk about. The third horizon next is the visionary horizon, the Elon Musk's of the world who are thinking big, really transformative, majorly disruptive futures, world's very different from the worlds we live in today. And then the second horizon, the entrepreneurial view, looking at change, and sometimes that change can be change that's going to maybe revert us back to the status quo or maybe catapult us into a more visionary kind of future, but looking at that in a more practical way. So a practical change, seeing how we can make things better.
Speaker 2:And so when we understand that we're always likely to have these three kinds of people in the room the managerial people with a managerial view, with the entrepreneurial view and with that visionary view as well Then we can. And if we open up that discussion and we're honest with ourselves about our own perspectives on the future and honest with each other, and we can understand how we could all contribute in our own ways to creating better futures. And I think that's really critical because there can be a lot of frustration with between people who are a bit more conservative in looking at the future, a bit more fearful about what could happen if the status quo changes, and those who really wanna tear ahead and disrupt everything. And that tension is it can be quite destructive, but if you reframe things it can actually be very positive dynamic.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. I might assume that, given your background in organizational psychology, you are a bit of an optimist at the ability of organizations to think about or anticipate possible futures and then to act on them successively. Is that fair?
Speaker 2:I can't say I'm optimistic or not. I see it as really challenging and so it will always be the case that it will be challenging because evolutionary one of the challenges in an evolutionary sense. It's difficult for us to catch up with the changes that we're creating for ourselves, and so in some ways I'm optimistic that we can maybe employ technology to help us overcome some of those psychological challenges and the psychological burden of considering the future. And in some ways I'm a little bit pessimistic that some people are gonna get left behind and some elements of inequality will start to emerge. So I'm a little bit agnostic in those terms.
Speaker 1:Okay, Well, it seems that we may, as we discussed at the outset, we may have that sense of immediate gratification and we are biased or immune to, perhaps, some of the unintended consequences of our decisions and we don't think about those long-term risks or even opportunities, because we are focused on the present and through the discipline of foresight we can maybe begin to unpack those risks and opportunities a little better, to, as you put it, maybe have more thoughtful decisions in the present to help us get to that possible or possible futures. Fair enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I think, even for those who are a little bit more conservative minded about the future, a little bit more cautious, I still think it's useful for everybody to have direction, and that direction, naturally, is gonna be temporal in nature. You know the future is gonna be in some way better or at least as good as today, and so I think you know it's important for people to have visions and to think more deeply, I think, about the future so that they can understand and have those opinions. I mean and this is it when you have an opinion about the future, then you have something you can work towards. Because the worst thing, I think, is to wake up every morning and just accept the status quo and kind of ignore what's changing around you, because, whether you like it or not, there are things changing and the risks are changing, and things are changing whether you're looking at them or not.
Speaker 1:Well, I am cautiously optimistic about, as you put it in your article, that the water sector with all its different organizations. I am cautiously optimistic about the water sector mastering the three aspects of futures thinking and I suppose it's up to all of us, as foresight practitioners, to engage and not sit on the sidelines, but to engage and help these organizations, both inside the water sector or even other sectors out there, to really understand and begin to implement a framework of futures thinking, of practicing foresight on a regular basis because, as you discussed, there are benefits of adopting that mindset of futures thinking.
Speaker 2:Do you see any I'd say bright spots of that happening already? Matthew?
Speaker 1:It's a good question. I do see organizations throughout the world of water kind of harnessing that futures mindset. Obviously, the entrepreneurs, those in the water tech space, have said I see a problem or I see a particular issue and they are envisioning a better, plausible future, and so they build their new widgets to help with water quality or other activities. And so I see that I'm beginning to see the organizational culture of certain utilities, for example, change because of new leaders taking the role of CEO or general manager, where they have a different mindset and you're an expert in that and organizational cultures. So there are some glimmers of hope. But I do believe that the world of water dominated by utilities, for example, are within a hierarchical structure, they are a bit reactive and tactical, and so hence our discussion today on the idea of mindset and how do we engage that mindset of futures thinking?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, now it's interesting that there usually are, even in most conservative industries, some people who want to shake it all up, and it just depends how much influence they have over the border context and within the system itself as to how successful they are. So I was quite interested to do a little bit of research about the water industry in the United States.
Speaker 1:Yeah, looking at Some of the more the organizations that I mentioned in the water tech space are creative or at-hocracy cultures where they are not grounded by hierarchical cultures. They are creating new opportunities, new technologies, new ways of doing things and applying them into the world of water, and so you will see perhaps opportunities for futures thinking in those types of cultures. So I remain cautiously optimistic. It may take some time, but it's up to us to help, I think, encourage and shape that future in the world of water.
Speaker 2:That's great, that's great because optimism, actually it's quite important. It's quite important to encourage positive change. It's a belief that what you will do will have some good outcomes, and a belief that the context, the environment you'll find yourself in, will allow for those good outcomes as well. So I hope your optimism is well justified.
Speaker 1:Well, I will do my level best, as will you, to continue to discuss the mindset behind futures thinking. So, graham, I wanna thank you for being a wonderful guest today on the Water Force Site podcast and tell our listeners where they can get ahold of you if they have more questions about this topic.
Speaker 2:Well, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm more than willing to connect with you on LinkedIn. You'll find me there, graham Norris, and also you can find me on my website as well. So that's foresight-psychologycom, and so you can read my blogs and contact with me there. So we'd love to connect.
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