Sohail Inayatullah, the tale of futures (always plural)

Sohail Inayatullah met the Futures Studies in Hawaii, at the age of seventeen. At university, he took his first courses in future studies, did not stop and continued to study other things: law, history, philosophy; he obtained a doctorate in Macro-History and then, in Australia, began researching and working for universities and international organisations, finally obtaining the UNESCO Chair on Futures Studies [The UNESCO Chair on Futures Studies is an initiative established by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation – UNESCO – to promote research, education and capacity building in the field of futures studies – ed.] Sohail Inayatullah was awarded the first UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies in 2016, now holds that chair at the Sejahtera Center for Sustainability and Humanity, Malaysia, and is a Professor at Tamkang University, Taipei (Graduate Institute of Futures Studies) and Associate Professor at the Melbourne Business School at the University of Melbourne. He is also editor of the Journal of Futures Studies, the leading publication in the field.

A great inspiration for futurists around the world, Sohail Inayatullah is the creator of the Causal Layered Analysis (CLA), a methodological framework for the understanding and analysis of complex social issues and problems, now considered a fundamental tool in strategic planning, future studies and forecasting to more effectively model the future.

It is easy to summarise the trajectory of one of the most influential and important futurists of our time in one paragraph. At the same time, doing so does not do justice to the man and his work who, over the course of several decades, defined methodologies, created the main frameworks and contexts with which to think about the future, and who today moves constantly, week after week, across the planet, attending conferences, meeting people in companies, communities and organisations of various kinds, such as, for example, a few weeks ago the senior staff of Interpool in the Singapore office.

This interview was written in the same spirit in which it began, i.e. with a sense of immediacy and urgency, starting with Sohail Inayatullah’s way of proposing himself: his e-mail reply to our invitation for a videocall simply said: ‘I am free now, if you are too: I have to leave in an hour but now would be good. This is my Whatsapp number‘. An unparalleled openness and availability. A few seconds later, the time to connect Milan and Vienna via smartphone, it was like entering the serene and welcoming room, as Sohail Inayatullah is, of the future. A word that, he is quick to point out, should always be used in the plural.

The future of teaching

Futures, then: very different and richer, more articulate, more interesting than we can imagine.

First of all, because we have arrived at a particular moment in which something that has been brewing for decades is coming to fruition: since the post-war period, to be precise. In fact, the technological innovations of the last sixty years have come of age more or less now, and we are all gradually realising this, year after year, mainly because of the dizzying speed with which tools and paradigms change. But what is happening now, explains Sohail Inayatullah, has to do with people, organisations and companies, not microchips.

“Futurism is the study of future things, alternatives to each other and in some cases to be preferred and in others not. Futurism looks not just at things but at the world behind them: not just one future but the many that are possible and the ways to move towards one or the other. Today, however, something new is happening: much of what futurism said has become true because it is happening, and this is changing many other things, especially from the pandemic onwards. For example, if we talk about education, now ChatGPT has arrived: do we still need teachers in a world with ChatGPT? No, we don’t need them any more, if we think about those who do a frontal lecture. They really are no longer needed. What we need instead are the co-creators, the people who support the students’ emotions; we need the people who are guides, advisors, allies. Today, at a moment’s notice, it is clear that the role of teachers has completely changed: from being the vectors for transferring content from books to students’ minds, teachers have now become guides and facilitators. We have been talking about this for more than 20 years, but with the pandemic it happened and with ChatGPT even more so”.

First lessons from home, with videos and a different way of thinking about teaching, now artificial intelligence poses a completely different approach. This is the first of the three changes Sohail Inayatullah talks about in this interview. And the most profound, even if the least understood so far, because the future of teaching for all grades, which we have to decide now, willy-nilly, will have repercussions for a very long time but we will only see the consequences in a decade or more.

“The things we have been talking about for a long time, such as the population decline in your country, are now becoming real. The population decline has been talked about for decades, it has been predicted for a long time. Meanwhile, while the debate was only centred on overpopulation, the process of population decline as a result of falling birth rates began. It is only now that the conversation is shifting to this topic, and futurists have found themselves in a position to help set an agenda that is suddenly very urgent and sought after by politicians and the public alike.

Possible futures and the role of the Futurists

It is an example of the role of futurists and the possible uses of futurism and foreseen or foreseeable futures. The changes that Sohail Inayatullah brings as examples in this interview are initially three: food, security and education. The pandemic, a topic that had been talked about in future scenarios long before Covid’s arrival, has somehow also acted as a social wake-up call: it has shown those who only believe when they touch with their hands that things can actually happen and that scenarios and predictions make sense. Hence, the hunger for futurists these days. Although it is certainly not universal.

“Not everyone wants to change: there are figures and professionals who oppose it, row against it, or simply want to get to the end of their careers. One newspaper editor said to me: “Change everything and the press sinks? Then I will go down with the ship!”. Not everyone wants to change. For example, the change regarding genders and the way they interact in society, moving from the hegemony of one gender to equal opportunities and the more profound changes taking place today, causes daily resistance and second thoughts‘.

Sohail Inayatullah, schools must accept new challenges

The meaning of artificial intelligence, which our newspapers (and others) have been filled with, according to Sohail Inayatullah is however more nuanced and complex than we are telling it. Having finished the basic research phase, we are now actually modelling the products and applications.

“We use AI, but we don’t lose jobs because of AI. Companies don’t hire computers, instead they hire people who know how to use them. People who know how to value technology are hired: business graduates did not lose their jobs when the calculator and then Excel came along, but only on the condition that they knew how to use them. I interviewed ChatGPT to ask him what is its individual metaphor and what scenarios for his future to be drawn based on Causal Layered Analysis as an approach to alternative futures. The conversation was interesting and rich. But the point is to understand how to use AI, not to get scared or caught up in the enthusiasm of certain products over others. We don’t yet know which model and which paradigm will win. However, the sense of the possible changes is clear. The challenge in schools is to accept it, not to find out whether it exists, why it exists. It is to understand that it has to be integrated and that indeed, it changes everything and releases a lot of energy. In UAE schools everyone can use artificial intelligence: there is no negative judgement, but the exams are done in such a way that you cannot find the answers using ChatGTP‘.

“In general, the challenge for schools is to change the way they work and start teaching other things: critical thinking, philosophy, emotional skills. Schools have to change very quickly, starting now, and they have to teach things that are useful tools for the way they shape not only their teaching but also their subsequent needs to operate in society. Useful tools for operating in the world. What changes in an extraordinary way must first of all be the role of the teacher, who must become advisor, curator, guide, counsellor, emotional support. This is the best time for teachers: they will be able to do what they love best and will no longer have to get lost in bureaucracy or the mechanical aspects of the job. Instead, they will have to help make a difference and help students grow by teaching them ways to think, not what they have to remember’.

Change is linked to narratives

Change, however, is also and above all related to changing the narratives and metaphors we use to define ourselves or to ‘see’ the contexts in which we move. Law enforcement is a perfect example, according to Sohail Inayatullah. In Singapore, Interpol has had its third control and coordination centre since 2014 (after the first in Lyon and then the one opened in Buenos Aires in 2011). It is in Singapore that it is possible to explain what the difference is between the security needs of society and the strategies to respond to them by the international organisation of criminal police of 195 countries and the real world. That is, the Dark Web.

“During a meeting with the executives, it was enough to show them that in five minutes it was possible to enter the Dark Web, identify a gun seller and buy a stock of automatic rifles, fixing payment and delivery, to make them realise that the world is indeed different from their schemes and narratives. This was necessary to give a concrete example of what the world looks like, what the changes have been like and what the scale of the challenges are. If the topics today are the environment, digital, technological innovation, the questions then become: do we have an idea of what corruption is for the green sphere? And for the digital world? For the area of privacy and intellectual property? Do we have the categories to think about these kinds of crimes and the ways to counter them? How do we imagine all this?.

“The narrative has to be redefined but the objective, i.e. to make sure the world runs safely, in the case of Interpol remains the same. But for other organisations it need not remain the same. For Interpol, what is certain is that it has now become much more difficult than before, or at least different, to pursue the goal of world security. Knowing this, however, allows you to shape the future the way you want it. It is like the problem of climate change, which governments did not want to talk about for various reasons, but after the pandemic that showed that things that were predicted but considered ‘impossible’ could happen, it became something else. The covid, by the way, has been a tragedy in many countries, including with you in Italy, but it has also been much more. For example, it was a way of slowing down and rethinking how to do so many different things. Without being able to travel, we started to use technology in a different way and this provided an opportunity to look at some possible futures of using technology for teaching, as we were saying. But the pandemic and the lockdown also allowed us to rethink how we travel, once the borders reopened. Or how one works, with smart working’.

Here the change is deeper and is happening now. It is a change close to that of food. Meat that is produced in a laboratory or vegetable meat have become a fundamental element of a change in sensitivity caused by global warming. But they are also a cultural change because the food model based on animal meat – and therefore intensive livestock farming and all that goes with it – is a purely Western narrative (it is Western cultures that are the main consumers of animal meat) that has held back alternative visions of food and the whole chain behind it.

“Shaping a different way of eating,” says Sohail Inayatullah, “also brings with it different choices: the use of technology or other types of resources and natural approaches? What relationships – not only technological, economic or cultural, but also spiritual and existential – identify alternative futures to choose one? We start by sampling synthetic and vegetable meats, and from there we build the path by searching together, thinking, talking, discovering“.

There is a divergence between work and social reality

Technology and the lockdown, for example, on labour in Europe and the US, have made it clear that companies are moving in a divergent direction from what is really happening in the underlying social reality.

“There is a need for connection, but the point is that work is still imagined as factory work, where there is an assembly line, a control over the presence and activities of workers, a remuneration based on effort multiplied by the time it is performed. Instead, we have entered a profoundly different era of work, whose basis should not be control and time but trust and result. A time when for knowledge workers a project that took a month can be done in 35 minutes with ChatGPT. We need to unlearn and relearn how to do things: both for those who do them and for those who pay to get them done. There is a huge space to bring people’s spirit into another mode of operation. We need to find stories to make all people happy, moving from ‘hard’ work to ‘smart’ work with a positive attitude. This shift in mindset and narrative will also change factories, which have become smaller and have robots that do many things, so the way of control and fatigue changes completely here as well. The narrative that is emerging is that people want a completely different work in the balance between time of effort and time of life: they want to live, to travel, to see other places, to take care of themselves, to have time and to go slow, not faster. This has also changed the way people travel’.

Think and act like a futurist (it is not enough to talk about the future to be a futurist)

The work of the futurist is stimulating also and because it is work that binds together completely different skills and areas of knowledge: all-encompassing. But it is also a job that allows one to meet many different people, to actively participate in processes of change and understanding. Sohail Inayatullah is enthusiastic about meeting different groups of people every week in different countries with the most varied problems and needs imaginable. Change, the futurist’s work, comes through meeting people’s needs and the ways they see and imagine them. We need to have places where we can be face-to-face, interactively connected. It goes through a confrontation that is not based on and above all does not end with a PowerPoint presentation or a talk followed by a taxi ride to the airport and another destination the next day.

“We are not here to scare or give false dreams. This work takes me into situations I don’t know, into rooms where I am not the smartest person, and my aim is to have a method to facilitate those who are there. My purpose is to work with others: in this activity there is an emotional intelligence and a spiritual part because it is necessary to be connected in a deeper way. When people want to move forward, to look to the future, they don’t want to be worried or agitated. They want to be confident that they can move forward. So you also have to work through the traumas and pain that prevent you from moving forward: they have to be welcomed, healed and cured. And then you need to have read philosophers and historians, as well as scientists and economists, to grasp the meaning of complex, rich, difficult situations. One needs to understand what is changing and what is not changing, and who the changing groups are. Usually only those who live outside the castle of certainties, but not all want change for the good: some seek to change the rules for personal gain rather than collective good. All draw and desire possible futures. I believe that futures in which we are all the better off and not just a few are to be preferred: there are ebbs and flows of history that one must know and therefore have read your Giambattista Vico for example. There is an idea at the basis: that of connection, which is the way people have ideas’.

In a world where green and energy are becoming increasingly relevant, the cultural leap for an energy utility is to build a new metaphor and form of narrative to represent its value in a radically changing context. This shift is essential.

Thinking like a futurist means asking what is the real story of what is going on. With great honesty the Financial Times at the time of the subprime crisis wrote ‘We don’t know what the real story of this crisis is: is it a crisis of the banks? Of the regulators? Of the mortgage market? Of middle-class income?” These are the kinds of questions that need to be asked in order to find answers. We need to be open to looking at these kinds of questions for the opportunity they offer in identifying the narrative we are in and understanding how it might be changed towards a future that radically transforms the world below“.

“For example, an electricity company, whose idea of itself is that of an energy provider, how does it transform and change its narrative in a world where it is the users’ homes that produce energy with renewables, such as photovoltaics? The idea for them is to become subjects that guide users to new adventures, making them choose the adventure they want for ‘their’ energy, the energy they have produced with their solar panels’.

We need to change the point of view, as I did with a group of Olympic athletes from the new one who had learnt from childhood to be super-competitive by looking for the ‘golden second’, the fraction of time that turns a lifetime of sacrifice and effort into a gold medal. To these people, who outside the pool, when their careers are over, are unable to adapt to a world in which values are other than that of competition at all costs, I proposed the idea of the ‘golden life’, made up of cooperation to live a life of value by collaborating with others: at work, in the family, in private, in society. It is the change of narratives, which are the way we function as individuals, society and groups‘.

Futures, in the end, are the stories we tell ourselves.

Interview by Antonio Dini at https://tech4future.info/en/sohail-inayatullah-futures/

Shifting mindsets: a conversation with futurist Sohail Inayatullah

World-renowned futurist Sohail Inayatullah joins Pam Ford, Director of Economic Development at Tātaki Auckland Unlimited, for a discussion on shifting mindsets and fostering visionary thinking through futures and foresight methodologies. They explore how these approaches can be used to instil long-term thinking within organisations and governments, and how futures thinking can support better decision-making and long-term planning, particularly in a time of ongoing disruption. 

Professor Sohail Inayatullah was named the all-time best futurist by the Shaping Tomorrow network in 2010. He delivers keynote speeches and conducts strategic foresight workshops for global clients on a weekly basis. As the co-creator of the online futures platform Metafuture, Sohail also serves as the virtual futurist-in-residence for the Department of Culture and Tourism, Government of Abu Dhabi. 

His current roles include Professor at the Graduate Institute of Futures Studies, Tamkang University, and Associate at the Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne. He has previously held Adjunct Professor positions at the Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism at Macquarie University (2011-2014) and at the University of the Sunshine Coast (2001-2020). He was also the inaugural UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies (2016-2020). 

 Sohail works with a diverse range of clients from various industries worldwide. 

Sohail Inayatullah Reveals Ten Lessons Learned Through a Lifetime of Futures

Over the course of his long and distinguished career, futurist Sohail Inayatullah has worked with hundreds of organizations around the world, from the United Nations and national governments to leading corporations and community groups Through his cutting-edge thinking and the wealth of experience that he has built over the years, he has helped organizations, and more importantly, people throughout the world, create real, lasting transformation.

I recently had the opportunity to interview Inayatullah with the goal of understanding what lessons he has learned throughout his career that current and future generations of futurists could benefit.

Inayatullah’s journey into foresight began at a young age, sparked by a love of science fiction that opened his mind to imagining different possibilities for our world.

When I was in the ninth grade, I had a teacher who offered to enhance our grade if we read one book a week, So, I started reading Isaac Asimov (The Foundation Series), Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles), Yevgeny Zamyatin (We), and others. I think that was my entry point into futures thinking – imagining other worlds. Then, in grade 12, one of my teachers shared a video about Alvin Toffler,Inayatullah added. There’s this image of serene music and a couple walking through a forest. They sit down to have a picnic, and then the camera zooms around them, and you see their robots. That got me to think about the impossible, and this contrast between the normal space in the present, and future space as unconventional.

But it may have been Sohail’s father, who worked for the United Nations, who set the course for Inayatullah’s future. When Inayatullah was still in high school, his father commented on an article in the Malay Mail (they were living in Malaysia at the time) about the future, Malaysia 2000. The conference featured Herman Kahn and James Dator. His father hoped that in the future, the UN could transform, moving away from its Western bias and toward a world focused on development for all.

Having lived in a number of different cities/nation states, such as Peshawar, Bloomington, Indiana, New York, Geneva, Switzerland, Malaysia, and Thailand, it became clear to Inayatullah “that we needed to create a world that’s outside our present contours.” Inayatullah’s journey would lead him to the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he would study futures studies under legendary futurist Jim Dator. It’s there that Inayatullah came to appreciate Dator’s approach to searching for both long-term and short-term patterns, as well as the concept of alternative futures.

Today, Sohail Inayatullah is the UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies at the Sejahtera Centre for Sustainability and Humanity, IIUM. He has also served as Professor of Futures Studies since 2000 at Tamkang University. He is a researcher at the think-tank Metafuture.org and an instructor at the Metafuture School. Along with his partner, Ivana Milojević, and colleague Adam Sharpe, they offer three online courses: Become a Futurist, Personal Futures, and Conflict Transformation Futures.

As Inayatullah forged his own path as a professional futurist, he learned from many others, and he has taught many as well. Here are ten lessons that he would like to share with those forging their own careers as futurists.

LESSON 1: It’s Not Solely About the Data — You Need to Tell a Story

Sohail recalls an important moment in the early years of his career as a futurist that left a lasting impression. After completing a futures project for the Judiciary Courts for the State of Hawaii and presenting the findings at a Hawaii judiciary conference, the deputy administrative director, Tom Okuda, visited Sohail and other members of the team and confided that while the team’s quantitative work was good, what really mattered in obtaining more funding for the court system were the stories — the stories that would move legislators to fund the court system, which in turn would make Hawaii a better place to live.

It’s about the storytelling.

“I could see the data was important, but the decisions were made by a story, language, and unconscious metaphor,” said Sohail. “It was always the metaphor that, in fact, led to change.” As one person commented: “Stories are data with heart.” “It became clear to me that it’s not just about novelty and futures, with the grand patterns of futures, emerging issues or scenarios; it’s about the ability to make those real in a way that decisions makers can say, ‘Aha, that makes sense to me. That resonates with me,’” Sohail said. In another meeting at a city council meeting, legislators made it clear: we don’t care about the future per se, we care about getting re-elected. Can your visioning process help me get re-elected so I can deliver the future desired? He understood that he had to ensure that the long-, medium-, and short-term were linked at collective and personal levels.

LESSON 2 : Who’s in the Room?

Another lesson learned early on while living and working in Hawaii was to consider whose voices are being included in thinking about alternative futures. When doing a project for the judicial system, should those who have committed crimes be included? How do we bring felons into the process so the future can be experienced from a variety of perspectives, not just the view of those inside the system but the lived realities of those outside the system?

“When working on a project for the Queensland Government, the Minister was seriously ill. This vulnerability led him to ensure that others with pain — with the experience of a different present and possible future — were in the room. Thus, those with a disability, service providers, and others were all in the room. “It’s about moving from foresight being a nice idea that we can all rally around to something that changes organizational behavior and strategy,” said Sohail.

LESSON 3: What’s Your Metaphor? Who Are You in This Story?

In conducting futures projects for an organization, Sohail says it’s critical to understand not just the purpose of the project and what it means to the organization, but the identities of those involved.

“It’s about the deeper metaphors and narratives that you use to make a difference,” he said. “We need to be aware if foresight is being used to accelerate the current paradigm. Many groups use foresight not to change who they are, but to ensure they have more weapons or more profits, or that the power structure is reinforced. Their strategy is to use foresight so others cannot.”

Instead, Sohail says, we need to consider foresight as a solution. From that viewpoint, he says, “I always start every project asking, ‘What’s my metaphor? Who am I? What character am I in your story?’”

“In one project involving a law enforcement agency,” he said, “we went from studying endless briefing papers to a narrative that ensured the project design was robust. Their overall story was about saving citizens and police from a tsunami of emerging crime. They wished to move the police station to safer grounds, higher up the hills.”

“When I asked what their individual roles were,” he continued, “the first detective said she was the machete wielder, clearing the land so others could go to safety. Her colleague said she was the white witch, whispering suggestions to command to reform the police. However, as we developed the story line, it became clear many did not see the upcoming dangers, thus we needed to create a horizon two space for the resisters, just halfway up the hill. Here, they would be convinced once they saw the tsunami on the way. We then took the story line and used it to design the conference/workshop proceedings.”

The CLA process not only clarifies strategy but can upend it as well. In one project, the client wished for information on indigenous nurse demand in 2042. “During the CLA game – we had nurses, doctors, and social workers all sharing their perspectives on the futures of health,” Sohail said. “One workshop participant jumped to the center of the room and said, ‘I am the first indigenous prime minister.’ Suddenly, the issue became not about forecasting or strategic foresight but about the politics of power. He and others suggested that no real changes were possible until there was an indigenous leader running the nation.”

“When we shifted to the administration of health, the conversation moved to safety in creating a safe space for indigeneous persons in a hospital. Time and community, too, were challenged with participants challenging the option of visiting hours and how many people could visit. They suggested that the hospital needed to shift to indigenous time (not strict visiting hours) and community visits (not just the individualism of the one person visit).”

LESSON 4 : Plant Seeds.

Sohail points back to a project he worked on in 1992, where his futures team proposed the growth of vegan burgers to a fast food restaurant company in the wake of changing demographics. “There was an uncomfortable laughter in the room,” said Sohail.

Sohail believes that futurists need to embrace the Johnny Appleseed metaphor and think of themselves as planting hundreds of seeds that will bear fruit over time. At the same time, he invites the futurists of today and tomorrow to acknowledge the seeds planted by those who came before them—those who helped shape the theory, methods, practices, and values of foresight. Sohail encourages futurists to go deeper into their own story—to explore their inner narrative and identify their core metaphor. “Ask yourself what your current metaphor is and then, what’s a better metaphor for yourself,” Sohail said.

Sohail cautions futurists who concentrate on building their online image or relying on trend reports. “You may impress everyone the first time with your PowerPoint presentation, but large corporations are run by really smart people. They’re not going to fall for it the second time,” said Sohail.

To this point, Sohail encourages a lifetime of continuous learning and exploration. For example, developing one’s ideas and submitting them to academic journals where they are properly refereed. Futures studies are regulated by multiple worldviews—the academy (rigor), the market (relevance), and community (purpose). All are required.

LESSON 5 : Help Organizations Understand That the World Is Changing.

Some organizations, including their leaders, are not ready or may try to avoid the process of transformation. When this happens, Sohail emphasizes that futurists need to help these organizations understand the meaning of their story in the context of a changing world.

“I’ve done a lot of work with law enforcement,” said Sohail. “If you have the wrong metaphor, it will actually lead to missed crimes. There’s a very clear correlation that has been documented with study after study.”

For example, in working with one police department, Sohail highlighted the idea of transcending the blue line. “What would it look like if we had citizens (non-police) trained in crime forensics? It not only represents a change, but it challenges the core metaphor for a police department’s inspectors and invites them to rethink their story. At one recent workshop, detectives suggested the need for citizen forensics, real-time data, and evidence gathering.”

Likewise, Sohail poses the question, “What would farmers trained as futurists look like?” What if, instead of thinking only about next year’s crop season, farmers thought seven years out? What if farmers started using AI to help them manage their land? Often, farming federations create a dichotomy between localized knowledge and scientists with expert knowledge. Both perspectives are required. A recent workshop in Roma, Queensland, led to suggestions for creating the farmer-scientist, adept in both worldviews. AI can certainly help in this regard, noted Sohail.

LESSON 6 : Invite Others to Think About the Future.

If there’s a next edge to futures thinking, Sohail believes it will hinge on two key elements: inviting everyone to think like a futurist and ensuring that futures thinking feels safe within one’s own traditions, particularly faith traditions.

“We need to invite those who are not in futures to bring their expertise to the conversation,” Sohail said. “We (futurists) have methods, tools, and theories they don’t have. But their localized knowledge is critical to the success of the project.”

LESSON 7 : Embrace Authenticity

Over time, Sohail has learned that futurists must be true to what they do and what they offer. The process we offer must, at its core, be authentic, and that speaks to the two-way relationship that futurists have with the organizations for whom they are producing futures work.

“We want people involved in the futures process to come at it from an authentic perspective,” he said. “It’s there where we can help. If your organization is faking it, or using futures in its corporate games, that’s not what we’re about.” “Some people will say,” Sohail added, “’I just want to plan for the next year.’ Well, that’s great, but we can’t help you. I’m very clear on that and let them know.”

LESSON 8: Move from Anticipation to Emancipation

Sohail admits that his bias is focused on transformational futures. It begins with knowing one’s story as we enter the space that we’re going to explore. “We’re active, we’re cognizant, and we’re open to the ever-present,” he said.

However, he emphasizes the need to continually shift our thinking to free the future for those to come. As futurists, we must ensure that we are not merely continuing to “colonize the future,” but rather moving towards a new position of “co-creating the future.”

“Capitalism has to go towards cooperation,” he added. “Patriarchy towards gender equity, five veto powers at the UNSG to a democratic world system, fossil fuels to renewables — these are grand shifts that futures can play a role in.”

LESSON 9: Honoring those on whose shoulders we stand

As futurists, we need to acknowledge failed futures, says Sohail. “We need to say here are the mistakes we’ve made.” Sohail goes further, “We shouldn’t pretend that we know all the answers. We shouldn’t be unconscious of our own story. Of taking a side. Of assuming everyone wants to do futures. Or our idea is the latest and greatest. Those are some of the kinds of failed hypothesis.”

From this, Sohail says we need to acknowledge that we’re part of a long lineage of futurists and we are continuing to learn from the icons of the past as well as the community of the present. And part of this means “owning up to what hasn’t worked. That’s where the power of our profession lies. Unfortunately, instead of acknowledging the founders of the futures field, we have many claiming daily they have invented the
future.

LESSON 10 : Learning to Listen

While Sohail may have many more lessons to offer up-and-coming futurists, he leaves the most important for last.
“One of the greatest traps of this field is that we get all excited about talking about all of these possible futures – the disruptive trends,” said Sohail, “but do not address the meanings we give to the changing trends.
“One of the greatest skills we need as futurists is the ability to learn how to listen and to empathize with the people we’re trying to help. That is step one. It begins and ends with understanding their story, how each person makes sense, gives meaning to the changing world and uses that story to shape their futures

Interview By:

Picture of Futurist Stephen Dupont, APR, Fellow PRSA, is the editor of Compass magazine and serves on the board of directors for the Association of Professional Futurists (APF).

Stephen Dupont, APR, Fellow PRSA, is the editor of Compass magazine and serves on the board of directors for the Association of Professional Futurists (APF).

Meet the Futurist: Dr. S. Inayatullah at VC PAX Conference 2024

This interview was taken at VC APAX Conference (Asia-Pacific Islands) on March 25 – 28, 2024.

Conference Highlights:

  • Global Impact: VC LATINX and VCEUROPEX Conferences attracted participants from 25 and 46 countries respectively, fostering incredible diversity and networking at a global scale.
  • Expert Speakers: Attendees learned from over 70 speakers at VC LATINX and over 80 at VCEUROPEX, gaining valuable insights across business, health, and wellness.

Conference presentation link : https://www.futuresnetwork.tv/media/meet-the-futurist-dr-s-inayatullah-545135

ZUKUNFTSFORSCHUNG, Kurzinterview mit Sohail Inayatullah : Interview with Pro zukunft January 2024 Edition

Sohail Inayatullah, a political scientist and futurist, is the UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies at the Sejahtera Centre for Sustainability and Humanity, IIUM, Malaysia. He is also Professor at Tamkang University, Taiwan and Associate at Melbourne Business School, the University of Melbourne. He teaches from www.metafutureschool.org where his courses include “Become a Futurist” and “Personal Futures: the CLA of the Self”. He is listed in the top two percent of the world’s scientists as measured by the highest impact of citations.

His most recent books include “CLA 3.0”, “The End of the Cow and other Emerging Issue”, “Asia 2038”, and with the Asian Development Bank, “Futures Thinking in Asia and the Pacific Region”.

In the past two years, he has presented to UNESCAP; ICESCO; PWC; ANZ; OECD; FAO; INTERPOL; WHO; Mitsubishi Motors; the Government of New Zealand; The Ho Chi Minh Academy in Vietnam; Victoria Police; the Government of Indonesia; The Asian Development Bank; Globe Telecom; the Philip- pines Senate; Aboitiz Infrastructure; the Pacific Community; GASERC; and the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission.

Sohail Inayatullah, what do you under- stand by futurology?

Futures studies is the study of alternative and preferred futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. We work to enhance agency whenever possible, to assist individuals, organizations, and insti- tutions in deconstructing the narratives given to them and reconstructing the stories and visions they wish to create.

In my workshops I use the critical success factors approach asking groups:
Question 1. What is impossible today, but, if possible, changes everything?

Question 2. What is the used future?

A practice that no longer works – not aligned to the new vision or the changing world – but we continue to do it?

Question 3. What emerging issues do you think are most relevant for the next 10-20 years?

Question 4. What are the implications of these emerging issues for the next 10-20 years i.e., how might they impact how and what the organization does?

Question 5. What are the alternative futures – the scenarios? Or how do they compare with scenario work already done?

Question 6. What is the Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) – i.e., the current and future of energy markets based on four levels of understanding: the litany, the system, the worldview, and the metaphor?

Question 7. What is the backcast i.e., the trajectory between the future and the present – the signposts?

This process assists them to move from the present to alternative futures to the preferred and then back to the present. We try and make the vision, the future more plausible.

What are your main areas of work and research in the context of futurology?

Most of my work is in Causal Layered Analysis. This approach consists of four levels of understanding. The litany or the headlines – the official description of reality. The systems that create, explain, cause the headlines. The worldviews that create the system and then finally the metaphors that underlie the entire edifice of reality. Once the present is understood at the four layers, we then focus on creating new metaphors linked to new strategies.

Table 1 shows an example from the energy industry. Table 2 shows one from a futures dialogue between students and principals.

These interventions take the form of workshops, executive training courses, and books designed to understand how

to change systems and cultures. The goal, as I understand it, is not to be the smartest person in the room but co-create so others can shine.

And what are you currently working on? Most recently, I worked on the impact of generative AI on curriculum and assess- ment. I gave a speech focused on how teaching will likely change and new narra- tives of teaching and learning need to be created as we move to a world where we can learn anywhere, anytime, with anyone.

A few months I worked with local shires in regional Australia helping them adapt to the changing world of cellular agriculture. Often traditional systems react with fear when confronted with disruption. Our role in futures thinking is to assist and empower, indeed, decolonize.

While the worst-case scenario can be useful, often it is more important to focus on how the world is actually changing pro- viding data-rich case studies of the future in the present. Done well, innovative strate- gies can emerge. For example, in the case of rural areas the narrative shift has been from farmer as victim to farmer as scien- tist, to experimenting and investing in new technologies.

This last month, we (with my colleague Ivana Milojevic) have worked in Manila (The Asian Development Bank); Hanoi (Ho Chi Minh Academy) and Bangkok (the United Nations). Four main themes emerge: a focus on the transition to renewables; toward gender equality; AI to enhance equity; and new models of governance.

Which three book recommendations would you make?

In terms of my publications, if you are asking that, “Understanding Sarkar” focused on the world philosopher, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar. It focused on comparing his views on history and the future to other grand thinkers such as Ibn Khaldun, Ssu-ma Ch’ien, Karl Marx, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Wladimir Georgijew- itsch Sorokin.

“Macrohistory and Macrohistorians” written with the great Johan Galtung focused on macrohistory and world futures.

The Causal Layered Analysis trilogy all present case studies on how CLA is being used throughout the world (“Introduction to CLA”, “CLA 2.0” and “CLA 3.0”).

Which encounters or texts have turned your world view upside down?

Meeting Jim Dator in 1976 began my jour- ney into futures studies. He was the best mentor and friend one could imagine. He focused not on the litany of minor changes but the tsunamis of deep change – ageing, AI, robotics, world government, and more. Second was being exposed to the work of Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, particularly his books from the 1950s where he wrote on mind in technology as well as his imagined future of a world after nation-states, after capitalism and community, a world of mul- tiple bottom lines: prosperity, planet, peo- ple, and purpose (spirit). Third was Johan Galtung, who used macrohistory – the rise and fall of civilizations and other patterns – to think about the next 50 and 100 years. Fourth was my partner Ivana Milojevic – from her, I saw the power of voice of wom- en, the heroine’s journey. Fifth was meet- ing the late William Irwin Thompson. His books, “The time falling bodies take to light” and the “Pacific Shift” all moved the discourse from technology and waves of change to the deeper Jungian archetypes that use us and we use to make sense of the changing world.

Encounters with groups outside of pow- er have been helpful in having me think deeply about what works and what does not. One city we were working had just ex- perience war – they cared little for positive possibilities. We first had to explore the worst case before we could travel to the best case. Working with those in the dis- ability sector was powerful They imagined a world where they were deeply included by narrative and systemic changes i.e. the en- tire world designed like the para-Olympics village.

My conclusion with these encounters has been always asking, who is not in the room, as well as ensuring all design changes the deep story and the systems that emerge from these narratives, other- wise culture will continue to eat strategy for breakfast.

The goal of Futures studies for me re- mains, to move from anticipation to eman- cipation. www.metafuture.org www.metafutureschool.org

 Current TrendsPreferred RealityReconstructed Reality
LitanyCost of living and sustain- ability concern growing. Cus- tomers are more empoweredWe are all customers and producers of energyHouseholds collaborate with retailers to mange their energy where and when to choose
SystemIncreasing energy usage is contribution to higher costs and pollution. Technology is helping customers and competitorsHouseholds control their energy usage, cost and environmental impact through smart digital systems. Energy is integrated beyond the home to the community and beyondThe technology, products and solutions are available to make choices about energy production, usage and consumption
WorldviewSupply energy as a basic essential service, with price the key differentiatorEnergy is a decentralized and integrated ecosystemEnergy centralisation and decen- tralisation occur in harmony
Myth & Metaphor“Keep the lights on at the lowest cost”“Connect your home and community”“Choose your own energy adventure”

Table 1

Edmund RiceStudentsPrincipalIntegrated 2030
LitanyStudents know their needsTraditional teaching and learning is bestHolistic teaching and learning
SystemStudents design their education Fluid and FlexiblePrincipals and teachers design education for a changing worldSocial hubs anchor virtual learning Teacher as navigators and life gurus
WorldviewsStudent-led artificial intelli- gence enhanced educationTradition-led education with some reformsTechnology plus place plus spiritual learning
MetaphorTinder of educationThe authorityLife as learning: life as service

Table 2

CAUSAL LAYERED ANALYSIS: Poststructuralism as method

Causal layered analysis is offered as a new futures research method. It utilityis not in predicting the future but in creating transformative spaces for the creation of alternative futures. Causal layered analysis consists of four levels: the litany, social causes, discourse/worldview and myth/metaphor. The challenge is to conduct research that moves up and down these layers of analysis and thus is inclusive of different ways of knowing. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

In the context of using poststructuralism as a research method, this article introduces a new futures research method—causal layered analysis (CLA). Causal layered analysis is concerned less with predicting a particular future and more with opening up the present and past to create alternative futures. It focuses less on the horizontal spatiality of futures—in contrast to techniques such as emerging issues analysis, scenarios and backcasting—and more on the vertical dimension of futures studies, of layers of analysis. Causal layered analysis opens up space for the articulation of constitutive discourses, which can then be shaped as scenarios. Rick Slaughter considers it a paradigmatic method that reveals deep worldview committments behind surface phenomena.1 Writes Slaughter, ‘Causal layered analysis… provides a richer account of what is being studied than the more common empiricist or predictive orientation which merely ’skims the surface’. But because mastery of the different layers calls for critical and hermeneutic skills that originate in the humanities, some futures practitioners may find the method challenging at first.2

This article hopes to reduce the difficulties involved in understanding and using causal layered analysis by providing a methodological perspective to the context of critical futures research, namely, poststructuralism.

Causal layered analysis has been successfully used in a variety of workshops and futures courses in the last six years. It is especially useful in workshops with individuals either of different cultures or different approaches to solving problems. It is best used prior to scenario building as it allows a vertical space for scenarios of different categories. Some of the benefits of CLA are:

  1. Expands the range and richness of scenarios;
  2. When used in a workshop setting, it leads to the inclusion of different ways of knowingamong participants;
  3. Appeals to and can be used by a wider range of individuals as it incorporates nontextual and poetic/artistic expression in the futures process.
  4. Layers participant’s positions (conflicting and harmonious ones);
  5. Moves the debate/discussion beyond the superficial and obvious to the deeper andmarginal;
  6. Allows for a range of transformative actions;
  7. Leads to policy actions that can be informed by alternative layers of analysis;
  8. Reinstates the vertical in social analysis, ie from postmodern relativism to global ethics.

Causal layered analysis can be seen as an effort to use poststructuralism, not just as an epistemological framework—as developed by thinkers such as Michel Foucault—but as a research method, as a way to conduct inquiry into the nature of past, present and future.

Types of futures research

In earlier articles, among other mapping schemes,3 I have divided futures studies into three overlapping research dimensions: empirical, interpretive and critical.4 Each dimension has different assumptions about the nature of reality, truth, the universe, the future and about the role of the subject.5 My own preference has been approaches that use all three—that contextualize data (the predictive) with the meanings (interpretive) we give them, and then locate these in various historical structures of power/knowledge-class, gender, varna6 and episteme (the critical).

Causal layered analysis is well situated in critical futures research.7 This tradition is less concerned with disinterest, as in the empirical, or with creating mutual understanding, as in the interpretive, but with creating distance from current categories. This distance allows us to see current social practices as fragile, as particular, and not as universal categories of thought—they are seen as discourse, a term similar to paradigm but inclusive of epistemological assumptions.

In the poststructural critical approach, the task is not prediction or comparison (as in the interpretive) but one of making units of analysis problematic. The task is not so much to better define the future but rather, at some level, to ‘undefine’ the future. For example, of importance are not population forecasts but how the category of ‘population’ has become historical valorised in discourse; for example, why population instead of community or people, we might ask?

Taking a broader political view, we can also query why population is being predicted anyway? Why are population growth rates more important than levels of consumption? The role of the state and other forms of power such as religious institutions in creating authoritative discourses—in naturalizing certain questions and leaving unproblematic others—is central to understanding how a particular future has become hegemonic. But more than forms of power, are epistemes or structures of knowledge which frame what is knowable and what is not, which define and bind intelligibility. Thus, while structures and institutions such as the modern state are useful tools for analysis, they are seen not as universal but as particular to history, civilization and episteme (the knowledge boundaries that frame our knowing). They too are situated.

The poststructural approach attempts to make problematic trend or events or events given to us in the futures literature and not only to discern their class basis as in conventional neo-Marxian critical research. The issue is not only what are other events/trends that could have been put forth, but how an issue has been constructed as an event or trend in the first place as well as the ‘cost’ of that particular social construction—what paradigm is privileged by the nomination of a trend or event as such.

Using other ways of knowing, particularly categories of knowledge from other civilizations, is one of the most useful ways to create a distance from the present. For example, in our population example, we can query ‘civilization’, asking how do Confucian, Islamic, Pacific or Indic civilizations constitute the population discourse? Scenarios about the future of population become far more problematic since the underlying category of the scenario, in this case population, is contested. At issue is how enumeration—the counting of people—has affected people’s conception of time and relations with self, other and state.8

The goal of critical research is thus to disturb present power relations through making problematic our categories and evoking other places or scenarios of the future. Through this historical, future and civilizational distance, the present becomes less rigid, indeed, it becomes remarkable. This allows the spaces of reality to loosen and the new possibilities, ideas and structures, to emerge. The issue is less what is the truth but how truth functions in particular policy settings, how truth is evoked, who evokes it, how it circulates, and who gains and loses by particular nominations of what is true, real and significant.

In this approach, language is not symbolic but constitutive of reality. This is quite different from the empirical domain wherein language is seen as transparent, merely in a neutral way describing reality, or as in the interpretive, where language is opaque, coloring reality in particular ways. By moving up and down levels of analysis, CLA brings in these different epistemological positions but sorts them out at different levels. The movement up and down is critical otherwise a causal layered analysis will remain only concerned with better categories and not wiser policies. By moving back up to the litany level from the deeper layers of discourse and metaphor, more holistic policies should ideally result.

Central to interpretive and critical approach is the notion of civilizational futures research. Civilizational research makes problematic current categories since they are often based on the dominant civilization (the West in this case). It informs us that behind the level of empirical reality is cultural reality and behind that is worldview.

While the postmodern/poststructural turn in the social sciences has been discussed exhaustively in many places,9 my effort is to simplify these complex social theories and see if poststructuralism can be used as a method, even if it is considered anti-method by strict ‘non-practitioners’.10

The poststructural futures toolbox

The first term in a poststructural futures toolbox is deconstruction. In this we take a text (here meaning anything that can be critiqued—a movie, a book, a worldview, a person— something or someone that can be read) and break apart its components, asking what is visible and what is invisible? Research questions that emerge from this perspective include:

Deconstruction

Who is privileged at the level of knowledge? Who gains at economic, social and other levels? Who is silenced? What is the politics of truth? In terms of futures studies, we ask: which future is privileged? Which assumptions of the future are made preferable?

The second concept is genealogy. This is history; not a continuous history of events and trends, but more a history of paradigms, if you will, of discerning which discourses have been hegemonic and how the term under study has travelled through these various discourses. Thus for Nietzche, it was not so much an issue of what is the moral, but a genealogy of the moral: how and when the moral becomes contentious and through which discourses.

Genealogy

Which discourses have been victorious in constituting the present? How have they travelled through history? What have been the points in which the issue has become present, important or contentious? What might be the genealogies of the future?

The third crucial term is distance. Again, this is to differentiate between the disinterest of empiricism and the mutuality of interpretative research. Distancing provides the theoretical link between poststructural thought and futures studies. Scenarios become not forecasts but images of the possible that critique the present, that make it remarkable, thus allowing other futures to emerge. Distancing can be accomplished by utopias as well— ‘perfect’, ‘no’, or far away places— other spaces.

Distance

Which scenarios make the present remarkable? Make it unfamiliar? Strange? Denaturalize it? Are these scenarios in historical space (the futures that could have been) or in present or future space?

The fourth term is ‘alternative pasts and futures’. While futures studies has focused only on alternative futures, within the poststructural critical framework, just as the future is problematic, so is the past. The past we see as truth is in fact the particular writing of history, often by the victors of history. The questions that flow from this perspective are as below:

Alternative pasts and futures

Which interpretation of past is valorized? What histories make the present problematic? Which vision of the future is used to maintain the present? Which explodes the unity of the present?

The last concept—reordering knowledge—brings a different dimension to the future and is similar to much of the work being done in civilizational futures research.11 Reordering knowledge is similar to deconstruction and genealogy in that it undoes particular categories, however, it focuses particularly on how certain categories such as ‘civilization’ or ‘stages in history’ order knowledge.

Reordering knowledge

How does the ordering of knowledge differ across civilization, gender and episteme? What or Who is othered? How does it denaturalize current orderings, making them peculiar instead of universal?

These five concepts are part of a poststructural futures toolbox. There is a strong link, of course, to other futures methods. Emerging issues analysis,12 for example, at one level predicts issues outside of conventional knowledge categories but it does so by disturbing conventional categories, by making them problematic; it reorders knowledge. For example, the notion of the ‘rights of robots’ forces us to rethink rights, seeing them not as universal but as historical and political, as hard fought political and conceptual battles. It also forces us to rethink intelligence and sentience—posing the question what is life? Thus, a futures method such as emerging issues analysis, conventionally used to identify trends and problems in their emergent phase, should not merely be seen as a predictive method; it can also be a critical one.

A civilizational perspective

From a civilizational perspective, it is crucial to explore the guiding metaphors and myths we use to envision the future. This perspective takes a step back from the actual future to the deeper assumptions about the future being discussed, specifically the ‘non-rational.’ For example, particular scenarios have specific assumptions about the nature of time, rationality and agency. Believing the future is like a roll of dice is quite different from the Arab saying of the future: ‘Trust in Allah but tie your camel’ which differs again from the American vision of the future as unbounded, full of choice and opportunity. For the Confucian, choice and opportunity exist in the context of family and ancestors and not merely as individual decisions.

In workshops on the future outside of the West, conventional metaphors such as a fork in the road, the future as seen through the rearview mirror, or travelling down a rocky stream, rarely make sense. Others from Asia and the Pacific see the future as a tree (organic with roots and with many choices), as a finely weaved carpet (with God as the weaver), as a coconut (hard on the outside, soft on the inside) or as being in a car with a blindfolded driver (loss of control).13

Deconstructing conventional metaphors and then articulating alternative metaphors becomes a powerful way to critique the present and create the possibility of alternative futures. Metaphors and myths not only reveal the deeper civilizational bases for particular futures but they move the creation/understanding of the future beyond rational/design efforts. They return the unconscious and the mythic to our discourses of the future—the dialectics of civilizational trauma and transcendence become episodes that give insight to past, present and future.14

Causal layered analysis includes this metaphorical dimension and links it with other levels of analysis. It takes as its starting point the assumption that there are different levels of reality and ways of knowing. Individuals, organizations and civilizations see the world from different vantage points—horizontal and vertical.

Causal layered analysis

Causal layered analysis is based on the assumption that the way in which one frames a problem changes the policy solution and the actors responsible for creating transformation. Using the works of Rick Slaughter, P.R. Sarkar and Oswald Spengler,15 I argue that futures studies should be seen as layered, as deep and shallow. Its textured richness cannot be reduced to empirical trends.

The first level is the ‘litany’—quantitative trends, problems, often exaggerated, often used for political purposes—(overpopulation, eg) usually presented by the news media. Events, issues and trends are not connected and appear discontinuous. The result is often either a feeling of helplessness (what can I do?) or apathy (nothing can be done!) or projected action (why don’t they, usually meaning the State, do something about it?). This is the conventional level of futures research which can readily create a politics of fear. This is the futurist as fearmonger who warns: ‘the end is near’. However by believing in the prophecy and acting appropriately, the end can be averted.16

The second level is concerned with social causes, including economic, cultural, political and historical factors (rising birthrates, lack of family planning, eg). Interpretation is given to quantitative data. This type of analysis is usually articulated by policy institutes and published as editorial pieces in newspapers or in not-quite academic journals. If one is fortunate then the precipitating action is sometimes analysed (population growth and advances in medicine/health, eg). This level excels at technical explanations as well as academic analysis. The role of the state and other actors and interests is often explored at this level.

The third deeper level is concerned with structure and the discourse/worldview that supports and legitimates it (population growth and civilizational perspectives of family; lack of women’s power; lack of social security; the population/consumption debate, eg.). The task is to find deeper social, linguistic, cultural structures that are actor-invariant (not dependent on who are the actors). Discerning deeper assumptions behind the issue is crucial here as are efforts to revision the problem. At this stage, one can explore how different discourses (the economic, the religious, the cultural, for example) do more than cause or mediate the issue but constitute it, how the discourse we use to understand is complicit in our framing of the issue. Based on the varied discourses, discrete alternative scenarios can be derived here. For example, a scenario of the future of population based on religious perspectives of population (‘go forth and multiply’) versus cultural scenario focused on how women’s groups imagine construct birthing and childraising as well as their roles in patriarchy and the world division of labor. These scenarios add a horizontal dimension to our layered analysis.

The fourth layer of analysis is at the level of metaphor or myth. These are the deep stories, the collective archetypes, the unconscious dimensions of the problem or the paradox (seeing population as non-statistical, as community, or seeing people as creative resources, e.g.). This level provides a gut/emotional level experience to the worldview under inquiry. The language used is less specific, more concerned with evoking visual images, with touching the heart instead of reading the head.

Causal layered analysis asks us to go beyond conventional framings of issues. For instance, normal academic analysis tends to stay in the second layer with occasional forays into the third, seldom privileging the fourth layer (myth and metaphor). CLA however, does not privilege a particular level. Moving up and down layers we can integrate analysis and synthesis, and horizontally we can integrate discourses, ways of knowing and worldviews, thereby increasing the richness of the analysis. What often results are differences that can be easily captured in alternative scenarios; each scenario in itself, to some extent, can represent a different way of knowing. However, CLA orders the scenarios in vertical space. For example, taking the issue of parking spaces in urban centers can lead to a range of scenarios. A short term scenario of increasing parking spaces (building below or above) is of a different order than a scenario which examines telecommuting or a scenario which distributes spaces by lottery (instead of by power or wealth) or one which questions the role of the car in modernity (a carless city?) or deconstructs the idea of a parking space, as in many third world settings where there are few spaces designated ‘parking’.17

Scenarios, thus, are different at each level. Litany type scenarios are more instrumental, social level scenarios are more policy oriented, and discourse/worldview scenarios intend on capturing fundamental differences. Myth/metaphor type scenarios are equally discrete but articulate this difference through a poem, a story, an image or some other right-brain method.

Finally, who solves the problem/issue also changes at each level. At the litany level, it is usually others—the government or corporations. At the social level, it is often some partnership between different groups. At the worldview level, it is people or voluntary associations, and at the myth/metaphor it is leaders or artists.

These four layers are indicative, that is, there is some overlap between the layers. Using CLA on CLA we can see how the current litany (of what are the main trends and problems facing the world) in itself is the tip of the iceberg, an expression of a particular worldview.18 Debating which particular ideas should fit where defeats the purpose of the layers. They are intended to help create new types of thinking not enter into debates on what goes precisely where.

What follow are five case studies which illustrate CLA. The first is a theoretical case study and the rest are from workshops held in Asia and Australia.19

Case studies

The futures of the United Nations

If we take the futures of the United Nations as an issue, at the litany level, of concern is news on the failure of the United Nations (the UN’s financial problems and its failures in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda).

Causes, at the second level in the UN example, include lack of supranational authority; no united military, and the perspective that the UN is only as good as its member nations. The solutions that result from this level of analysis are often those that call for more funding or more centralised power. In this case, the UN needs more money and power. Often, deeper historical reasons such as the creation of the UN by the victors of WW II are articulated as factors impeding structural change.

At the third level, the analysis of current UN problems then shifts from the unequal structure of power between UN member states to the fact that eligibility for membership in the UN is based on acquiring national status. An NGO, an individual, a culture cannot join the National Assembly or the Security Council. Deeper social structures that are actor-invarient include centre-periphery relations and the anarchic inter-state system. They are the focus at this level. The solution that emerges from this level of analysis is to rethink the values and structure behind the United Nations, to revision it. Do we need a superordinate authority or are market mechanisms enough to manage our global commons? One could at this level, develop a horizontal discursive dimension investigating how different paradigms or worldviews frame the problem or issue. How would a pre-modern world approach the issue of global governance (consensus, for example)? How might a post-modern (global electronic democracy)?

At the fourth layer of myth and metaphor, in the case of the UN, some factors that could lead to an exploration of alternative metaphors and myths include issues of control versus freedom, of the role of individual and collective, of family and self, of the overall governance of evolution, of humanity’s place on the Earth. Are we meant to be separate races and nations (as ordained by the myths of the Western religions) or is a united humanity (as the Hopi Indians and others have prophesied) our destiny? At the visual level, the challenge would be to design another logo for the UN, perhaps a tree of life or a circle of beings (instead of just flags of nations as currently outside the UN headquarters).

UNESCO/World Futures Studies Federation course

While the previous example was logically derived, the following are based on actual futures—visioning workshops. A CLA was conducted at a 1993 UNESCO/World Futures Studies Federation workshop in Thailand on the futures of ecology, where the issue of Bangkok’s traffic problem was explored. Here were the results.

At the litany level, the problem was seen to be Bangkok’s traffic and related pollution. The solution was to hire consultants particularly transportation planners at local and international levels.

At the social cause level, the problem was seen as a lack of roads with the solution that of building more roads (and getting mobile phones in the meantime). If one was doing scenarios at this stage, then there would be scenarios on where to build roads, which transportation modelling software to use.

At the worldview level, it was argued that the problem was not just lack of roads but the model of industrial growth Thailand has taken. It is the big City Outlook that had come down through colonialism. The city is better and rural people are idiots. Wealth is in the city especially as population growth creates problems in the rural area. The solution then becomes not to build more roads but to decentralize the economy and create localism ie where local people control their economy and feel they do not have to leave their life and lifestyle. Psychologically it means valuing local traditions and countering the ideology that West is best and that Bigger is Better. New leadership and new metaphors—from the fourth level—on what it means to be Thai (valuing local selfreliance, agricultural and Thailand’s pluralistic cultural traditions) emerged as the solutions.

Faculty of Work, Education and Training, Southern Cross University, Australia

When used at a seminar to the Faculty of Education, Work and Training at Southern Cross University in 1994 on the future of enrolments, the results were as follows.

At the litany level, the problem facing the University was declining enrolments. University professors saw it as an external problem. It was believed that the government should do something about it, for example, increase the number of scholarships.

At the social level, a range of alternative positions were explored. Among them that the faculty was too busy doing research, that there was a job boom and students preferred to work rather than sit in institutions. It could also be that the pool of students had declined, suggested participants. The solutions that result from this level of analysis are often those that call for more research to investigate the problem—or to create a partnership with industry. A precipitating action in this case study was the changeover in government from Labor to Liberal, with the government seeing education less as a social concern and more in economic terms.

At the next level, we explore how different discourses (the economic, the social, the cultural) do more than cause the issue but constitute it, that the discourse we use to understand is complicit in our framing of the issue. At this third level, participants discussed how conventional education no longer fits the job market and students’ experience of the world that they might get from community associations or high-tech TV. The solution that emerged from this level was the need to rethink the values and the structure of the educational institution, to revision it—quite different from the litany level where the issue was more student aid or different than the second level where the solution was partnerships between the university, government and industry.

At this level, one could develop a horizontal discursive dimension investigating how different paradigms or worldviews (and related ways of knowing) would frame the problem or issue. How would a premodern world approach the issue of teaching and learning?20 How might a postmodern?21

At the fourth level of myth and metaphor, issues that arose are: does schooling free us or is it merely social control? Should education still be based on the Newtonian Fordist model of the factory or is education about transcendence, the return to mission, the reenchantment of the world? At this level, the challenge is to elicit the root myth or metaphor that supports the foundation of a particular litany of issues. In this case, the metaphors used were that of the university as prison versus that the university as a garden of knowledge. This latter root metaphor was then used to aid in the visioning process, of imagining and creating futures participants desire.

Senior management, Southern Cross University

Later at the same university but at a workshop with senior management, the issue again was financial, this time a drop in funding for education from government. The solution that emerged from the social analysis (focusing on the history of the state and education) was to diversify the funding source, to ask where else can we get money. This is in contrast to the litany level where the focus was on how to convince the government not to change its policy or to hope that the Labor government would once again be elected. At the discourse/worldview level, discussions revolved around the changing nature of education—on the decreasing importance of traditional education, and increased emphasis on skills for a global economy. It was the change in worldview from knowledge as sacred, the idea of the scholar, and the idea of the scientist, to that of the education to create better skilled workers in a global competitive marketplace that became the focus of discussion. It was believed that it would have to be people that lobbied the government to rethink its educational policy, not just universities. At the last level, the issue became that of rethinking money and exchange as well as finding other ways to manage and fund a university.

Of all the many causal layered analyses done, this was the most difficult and least satisfying, largely because it was hard to see money in layered terms. It was nearly impossible to move outside the administrative—capitalist discourse—the jobs and futures of all in the rooms depended on that discourse. In this sense, spending more time on emerging issues that might change the funding nature of the university (or on what-if questions) might have been a better approach. Still, some important scenarios were developed from the analysis: (1) the collapse of the university system in Australia; (2) a corporate/industry aligned university, (3) a virtual university (expanding its customers and reducing its overhead) and (4) a return to core enlightenment values. These helped clarify the alternative futures ahead as well gain consensus on the preferred vision held by participants (a mix of a virtual university and core enlightnment values).

Queensland Advocacy Incorporated

The final case study was a seminar conducted on the Queensland Advocacy Incorporated, Australia, a systems advocacy organization for people with disability. The broad issue under discussion was the practice of housing people with disabilities in institutions. At the litany level, the issue was framed as abuse and neglect within institutions. The solution by the state is often prosecution of offenders and the creation of better institutions for those with disabilities, said participants. The locus of action has been government with the media providing images of positive actions the state is doing for people with disabilities.

At the social causes level, it has been the anxiety and frustration resulting from an imbalance of power within institutional settings that has been the key issue facing the disabled. The solution is thus focused on the individual rather than the social structure, taking the form of therapy for individuals with professionals providing the solution.

At the worldview level, it is fear of difference and individualism that is the central problem. People with disability are ‘othered’, seen as separate from ‘normal’ communities. At this level, the solution offered was consciousness raising, a softening of individualism and a strengthening of community. The actors who could make this change are people with disabilities themselves—particularly through their various organizations.

Finally, at the myth and metaphor level, it is the story of inclusion/exclusion, of who is normal and who is abnormal that was paramount, said participants. The negative story is that of the cyclops— the image of the one fundamentally different from us and thus to be feared and loathed.

The scenarios that resulted were: (1) society changes so that people with disability feel welcome, (2) genetic technology eliminates ‘disabilities’—a negative scenario for people with disability since this continues the location of their body in the space of nonacceptance; and (3) continued ghettoization with occasional feel good media-led campaigns.

Difference as method

While there are other examples, hopefully, the above give an indication of the possible beneficial uses of CLA. The utility of causal layered analysis is that it can categorize the many different perceptions of realities while remaining sensitive to horizontal and vertical spaces. Often individuals write and speak from differing perspectives. Some are more economistic, others are concerned with the big picture; some want real practical institutional solutions, others want changes in consciousness.22 CLA endeavors to find space for all of them.

Causal layered analysis allows for research that brings in many perspectives. It has a fact basis, which is framed in history, which is then contextualized within a discourse or worldview, which then is located in pre and post-rational ways of knowing, in myth and metaphor. The challenge is to bring in these many perspectives to a particular problem, to go up and down levels, and sideways through varied scenarios.

Like all methods, CLA has its limits. For example, it does not forecast the future per se and is best used in the conjunction with other methods such as emerging issues analysis and visioning. It can lead to a paralysis of action ie too much time could be spent on problematizing and not enough on designing new policy actions. Individuals might find themselves speculating on layer upon layer of meaning (as they can with scenarios, creating endless scenarios, instead of focusing on the plausible, probable or preferred) instead of focusing on the actors that hold particular worldview commitments and the structures and epistemes they inhabit.

For newcomers to the futures field, it may dampen their inner creativity, since it categorizes reality instead of allowing for a free for all visioning. For others, it is too difficult. This is especially so for empiricists who see the world as either true or false (who insist on being right instead being located in layers of reality, who reject that there are deeper levels embedded in their litany) or postmodern relativists who reject the vertical gaze CLA implies, who insist that there are not layers of meaning but just different equal spaces, all horizontally situated.

These limitations can best be overcome by moving up and down layers of inquiry, by not getting bogged down by the demands of any ideological perspective. CLA endeavors to find space for these different perspectives. It does not reject the empirical or the ideational but considers them both along a continuum. In this sense CLA, while part of the poststructural critical tradition, is very much oriented toward action learning. Answers are neither right nor wrong. Rather a dialogue between the different levels is sought. Interaction is critical here. By moving up and down levels and sideways through scenarios, different sorts of policy outcomes are possible and discourse/worldviews as well as metaphors and myths are enriched by these new empirical realities.

Of course, if at a workshop, a discussion does not fit into our neat categories of litany, social causes, worldview and metaphor and root myth, it is important to work with the individuals to create new categories. However, in general, these categories work because they capture how we think and categorize the world.

Causal layered analysis is best used with other methods such as visioning which can help create preferred futures, emerging issues analysis, which can help challenge our conventional views—shallow and deep—of reality, and backcasting, which can help generate a plan of action.

Causal layered analysis provides a method in which one can explore levels of responses, decolonise dominant visions of the future and create authentic—that are sensitive to the different ways women and men, civilisations, class, people with disabilities and those without (among other categories) know the world—alternative futures. CLA helps in creating a distance from the present, in deconstructing particular futures, exploring alternative orderings or knowledge, and genealogies of the present and the future. It does not however forecast the future, but perhaps, neither should futures studies.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Rick Slaughter, Jennifer Fitzgerald and Paul Wildman for editing earlier drafts. In addition thanks to Paul Wildman for his assistance during futures workshops at Southern Cross University and to Jennifer Fitzgerald for her assistance at workshops with Queensland Advocacy Incorporated. I would also like to thank Tony Stevenson—with whom I first presented CLA at World Futures Studies Federation course in Bangkok, Thailand, 1993—for creating an environment at the Communication Centre where eclectic methodologies could flourish.

Notes and references

  1. Slaughter, Rick, Developing and Applying Strategic Foresight, The ABN Report 5(10), 7–15 (December 1997).
  2. See, for example, Linstone, Harold, What I have Learned: The Need for Multiple Perspectives, Futures Research Quarterly, Spring 1985, 47–61. He divides futures into the technical, organizational and personal. Also see, Masini, Eleonora and Gillwald, Karin On Futures Studies and Their Social Context with Particular Focus on West Germany, Technological Forecasting and Social Change 38, 187–199 (1990). They take Linstone’s model and apply it historically to Europe and the US, seeing futures as going through technical, organizational and personal phases. See also, Sardar, Zia, Colonizing the future: the ’other’ dimension of futures studies, Futures 25(2), 179–187 (March 1993). Sardar argues for a colonization/decolonization dialectic. The classic map of futures studies remains Roy Amara’s division into preferred, possible and probable. See his, Amara, Roy, The Futures Field, The Futurist, February, April and June 1981. See also, Bezold, Clement and Hancock, Trevor, An Overview of the Health Futures Field. Institute for Alternative Futures, Washington DC, 1993. 29 pages. Bezold adds the plausible to Amara’s three categories. For a compendium with articles on methods by Schultz, Masini, Bezold, Slaughter, Sardar, Boulding, Milojevic and many others, see Inayatullah, Sohail and Wildman, Paul, Futures Studies: Methods, Emerging Issues and Civilisational Visions (A MultiMedia CD-ROM Reader), Prosperity Press, Brisbane, 1998.
  3. Ibid., 11.
  4. Inayatull, Sohail, Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Future: Predictive, Cultural and Critical Epistemologies, Futures, 22(2), 115–141 (March 1990).
  5. Inayatullah, Sohail, From Who am I to When am I?: Framing the Time and Shape of the Future, Futures, 25(3), 235–253 (April 1993).
  6. Caste.
  7. For the classical treatment of this, see Slaughter, Richard, Towards a Critical Futurism, World Future Society Bulletin, July/August and September/October 1984 and Schultz, Wendy, Silences, Shadows, Reflections on Futures. In Who Cares? And How? Futures of Caring Societies, eds Jim Dator and Maria Roulstone. World Futures Studies Federation, Honolulu, 1988. Rick Slaughter writes that critical futures study is itself an approach to futures questions that arises from a deep understanding of the dysfunctions of the Western worldview. This can seem threatening to those whose professional interests are bound up with… the industrial growth ideology. But, in fact, the analysis of dysfunctions at this deep level is only a ground-clearing exercise. Beyond this the task of exploring new domains of cultural possibility and potential. See Richard Slaughter, Developing and Applying Strategic Foresight, The ABN Report, 5(10), 11 (December 1997).
  8. See, Ray, Manas, India, Fifty Years On: Revisiting Modernity, research paper, School of Media and Journalism, Queensland University of Technology, Research paper quoting Kaviraj, Sudipto, Religion and Identity in India, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 20(2), 331 (1997).
  9. For the best discussion, See Shapiro, Michael, Reading the Postmodern Polity, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1992. What makes the poststructural approach to research different is that whereas the general tendency of critical theory is toward a critique of ideology, based on the presumption of an authentic model of intelligibility, the genealogical imagination construes all systems of intelligibility as false arrests, as the arbitrary fixings of the momentary results of struggles among contending forces, struggles that could have produced other possible systems of intelligibility and the orders they support…. Rather than presuming an underlying system of order… [genealogy and other poststructural modes of inquiry] assume[s]… that every interpretation of the order is an arbitrary imposition…. There is no natural limit summoning the process of inquiry.(2) Others take a different approach, removing postmodernism from its Nietzschean traces and asserting that it is post-modern, that is, explicit statements about what can and should occur after modernity. See Griffen, David Ray, The Reenchantment of Science and Spirituality and Society: Postmodern Visions, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1988. In contrast, Zia Sardar takes a critical approach to postmodernity. In Sardar, Zia, Postmodernism and the Other: The New Imperialism of Western Culture, Pluto, London, 1998, Sardar, citing Zygmunt Bauman and Eric Hobsbawm, argues that postmodernism, unlike modernity, embraces, evil, 45. Since moral reality is totally relativised—all judgements are merely expressions of alternative discourses—any particular position carries the weight of any other position. What this perspective misses are the efforts of Michel Foucault and others who have argued that the question of the price of a political position cannot be removed from poststructural inquiry. Moreover, the issue of who gains and loses is not framed only in a limited class sense but also in the sense of which knowledge commitments, which worldviews, which definitions of reality remain naturalised and which are contested. For more on this see, Nandy Ashis, Futures Dissents in Sardar, Zia, Rescuing All Our Futures: The Futures of Futures Studies, Twickenham, Adamantine, 1998. Like Foucault, Shapiro’s intention is to reveal the circulation of power, to lay it bare. Causal layered analysis presents a model of inquiry which systematizes such an effort. However, given that postmodernity now comes to us as an extension of modernity, it is not surprising that what is embraced is total relativism and not the unveiling of layers of meaning, of politics.
  10. Postmodernists would reject the idea that deconstruction etc should be seen as a method. It is considered an anti-method, focused on problematizing not on providing recipes for policy. Moreover, there are no practitioners of postmodernity, if at all, the episteme of postmodernity practices on us.
  11. See, for example, the works of Ashis Nandy and Zia Sardar. Short essays by these two can be found in Futures. Ashis Nandy, Bearing Witness to the Future, Futures, 28(6/7) (1996), and Zia Sardar, Natural Born Futurist, Futures, 28(6/7) (1996). Also see the special issue of Futures on Futures generations thinking, which takes a Confucian approach to futures studies, Futures, 29(8) (October 1997).
  12. Emerging issues analysis is a method which identifies issues before they reach the trend or problem phase. It makes the assumption that issues follow an s-pattern growth curve from emerging to trend to problem. For more on this method, see the path breaking work of Graham T.T. Molitor, Public Policy Forecasting, 9208 Wooden Bridge Road, Potomac, Maryland 20854, USA.
  13. See, Sohail Inayatullah, The Futures of Communication, Futures (with Samar Ihsan and Levi Obijiofor), 27(8), 897–904 (October 1995), and Sohail Inayatullah, Futures Visions of Southeast Asia: Some Early Warning Signals, Futures, 27(6), 681–688 (July/August, 1995).
  14. Johan Galtung, Enactment of a Universal Drama-Ethnic Conflicts, New Renaissance, 7(1), 13–15 (1996).
  15. See Richard Slaughter 1989, Probing Beneath the Surface, Futures, 454 (October 1989), (Slaughter offers the brilliant idea of different types of futures studies from the litany-based to the epistemological-based. Indeed, it was Slaughter’s presentation at the World Futures Studies Federation conference in Budapest in 1990 that I noticed that his division of futures studies into levels was more than a typology but a potential method). Sarkar, P.R. (Shrii Shrii Anandamurti), Discourses on Tantra–vol. 1 and 2, Ananda Marga Publications, Calcutta, 1992 (Borrowing from Tantra, Sarkar argues that the individual mind is composed of layers. The first layer is the body, then the conscious mind followed by three layers of superconscious mind). Also see, Inayatullah, Sohail Oswald Spengler: The Rise and Fall of Cultures in Galtung, Johan and Inayatullah, Sohail Inayatullah, eds., Macrohistory and Macrohistorians, Praeger, Westport, CT. and London, 1997 (Spengler argues that reality should be seen as deep and shallow, not as truth or false).
  16. The Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth and other studies is a modern example of this.
  17. In Pakistan, for example, parking spaces are rare—parking as a regulatory discourse is not active there.
  18. Most policy thus merely reinscribes the modern capitalist worldview. However, by noticing how a particularly litany is shaped by a particularly worldview, this allows us to enter alternative worldviews and articulate different policy statements based on them. At the same time, CLA in itself is part of a worldview—one committed to methodological eclecticism but in the framework of a layered, post-postmodern view of reality. It thus not only challenges the totalizing nature of the empirical paradigm (to use Paul Wildman’s phrase) but as well the horizontal relativism of postmodernism.
  19. As a new method, there are limits to the number of case studies that can be drawn upon. I have also used CLA at a World Futures Studies Federation, Centre Catalan de Prospectiva, government of Andorra and UNESCO course on the futures of communication. See, Ihsan Samar, Inayatullah, Sohail and Obijiofor, Levi, The Futures of Communication, Futures, 27(8), 897–903 (1995). Paul Wildman has used the method at workshops for the Singapore Civil Service.
  20. Perhaps: community learning, through more spiritual approaches that revive the ideas of initiation into meaning and culture systems that current educational institutions lack, wherein merely an application form suffices.
  21. Perhaps: Focused on distant learning or interactive learning where boundaries between student and teacher, text and context disappeared.
  22. For an exploration of these differences, see Paul Wildman and Sohail Inayatullah, Ways of knowing, culture, communication and the pedagogies of the future, Futures, 28(8), 723–741 (October 1997).

Appendix

Causal layered analysis

The table below offers a systematic presentation of CLA as a method. It can be easily used as an overhead transparency.

Context

  • How one frames the problem, creates the solution
  • Language is not neutral but part of the analysis
  • Wisest inquiry goes up and down levels of analysis and across constitutive discourses

Horizontal levels

  • Identification of Problem (what is the problem)
  • Associated Solution (what is the solution)
  • Associated Problem-Solver (who can solve it)
  • Source of Information of problem (where is the problem/solution textualized)

Vertical levels

  • The ‘Litany’ official public description of issue
  • Problem seems unsolvable or it is up to government or power to solve it
  • Little personal responsibility
  • Often appearing as News. Mediated by interstate system and conventional accounts of reality. Short term approaches. Government solves the problem.
  • Social Science analysis

Short term historical factors uncovered

Attempts to articulate causal variables (correlation, causation, theory and critique of other theories)

Often State or monopolistic interest group has ownership

Solution often in Civil society in interaction with other institutions (values with structures)—partnerships.

Often appearing as Op-Ed piece or in a conservative journal

  • I Discourse analysis/Worldview

Problem constituted by frame of analysis

Strong focus on the genealogy of a problem

Many frames: paradigms, mindscapes, discourses

Solution often in consciousness transformation, in changing worldview, in rethinking politics of reality.

Solution long term action based on the interaction of many variables Often appearing in fringe/peripheral journals

  • Myth/metaphor analysis

Problem constituted by core myth (unconscious structures of difference, basic binary patterns)

Solution is to uncover myth and imagine alternative metaphors

Often appearing in the work of artists and visions of mystics

Solution can rarely be rationally designed

Mapping the past to predict the future: Interview with Radio New Zealand on October 31, 2022

Topic: Mapping the past to predict the future

Program: Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan

Conducted by:  Jesse Mulligan

Visit Radio New Zealand 

Complete Audio Transcription

Jesse: (00:00):

Studying the future is not about predicting it, but rather understanding the forces that shape it. Universities all over the world now teach future studies, giving students the tools to explore the future. The way historians study the past. Dr. Sohail is the UNESCO chair and future studies and a world-leading authority on how to develop our foresight muscles to anticipate change and plan for it. He helps governments and organizations grapple with some big questions. Can we stop global warming? Will we switch from being meat eaters to mostly vegetarian? How will the shape of families change in the next 50 years? Well, he is in Christchurch right now to hold some workshops with Think Beyond a Future-Focused Leadership organization. And Sohail joins me now. Hello there. Welcome to New Zealand.

Sohail: (00:55):

Uh, thanks so much. Great to be here.

Jesse: (00:57):

Uh, I know you’re hugely respected, uh, in your field and we’re very privileged to have some time to talk to you, so thanks for your time today. Um, is thinking about the future a natural human instinct?

Sohail: (01:11):

Uh, the kind of science suggests no, we’re more comfortable with the past is kind of what’s called Velcro thinking. Some trauma happens to us, some pain. And so that becomes our set point, our emotional intellectual equilibrium. So we go back, futures thinking suggests, can you use vision as a way to help you decide what you should do today? So I won’t say it’s counterintuitive, but it is, as you suggested, a muscle that we have to work on develop.

Jesse: (01:41):

Yes, it sounds that way. So we are not inclined to do it. We must teach ourselves to do it. And how difficult is that? Um, what do we have to unlearn?

Sohail: (01:52):

Uh, well, it’s, part of it is a conceptual framework, right? So if we look at indigenous people, that the notion of 200 or present that helps from grandmother to grandchildren, grandfather of grandchildren who has suddenly moved us away from, uh, the future as an abstract idea to when you’ve placed it in future generations, it’s easier to access, easier to understand. And most people are very clear what type of planet do they want to leave for their grandchildren? That’s easier to access. It’s more family based. And I think there’s an emotional connectivity to it that makes futures thinking far less abstract than someone would want us to think.

Jesse: (02:32):

Nonetheless, you need some training, right? For future studies. You need to equip yourself with the tools and, and work out how to use them.

Sohail: (02:43):

Yeah. In, my approach is a book called What Works, uh, the Practice of Foresight. And basically, what I’ve seen over quite a few decades, you first have to start off seeing the future as a learning journey as opposed to a prediction. So it’s a prediction then people want us to give us the right answer. And as you hinted earlier, uh, the right answer, you may know from today, but the world is changing. We’re part of the way the world is being redesigned and recreated. So prediction becomes problematic. So what do you do? Well, you go from seeing how can I use the future to learn about today? That’s step one. Then we ask ourselves, what’s the used future? What are we doing today that’s not working, but we keep on doing it? So some people say education is the factory. Many people say it’s hierarchy just for the sake of hierarchy.

Sohail: (03:35):

Some people say it’s the nine-to-five job framework. So every organization, every country has certainly used futures. And so that’s once we say, Well, what’s the used future? What are we doing that doesn’t work? That frees up space for doing what does work. Now, if we’ve done that well, then the next part is, oh, what’s coming down the road? These are the disruptions. What are some of the weak signals? The emerging issues, we don’t know for sure, but we have a hint. Something’s about to change. And then we start to explore those in selves. If this occurs, what might it lead to? So again, what you mentioned earlier, what if 30 to 50% of the protein comes from cell agriculture or new sources of protein? How will that impact livestock, farmlands, uh, national innovation? And then we move towards scenarios. So with scenarios, we’re saying we don’t know, but here are four possible pictures, four ways of thinking no change, marginal, adaptive, and radical one. So now we’ve gone from what doesn’t work to what are some possibilities. If we’ve done that well, we can go towards what’s our preferred future. Cause this is going from I can’t change the world. There are threats to what might be some opportunities, and some possibilities, and there are some steps forward. But I’ll let you if you wanna respond to that and I can go on with the next steps.

Jesse: (05:00):

Yes, thank you. And, and hearing you talk about that, um, what, what’re the terms that cellular protein, um, or cellular grand, basically looking at replacements for traditional meat. Um, interesting to have you talking about that here in New Zealand. And I was gonna ask you about the value of future thinking. I guess if you’re a farmer or otherwise involved in New Zealand’s primary sector industry, it would be fairly obvious to you why you might want to think about the future because it will affect what you are doing today and, and maybe the role, um, you see yourself having in future years.

Sohail: (05:39):

Yeah, so part of the threats I ran, I won’t say which country, a project with the farming federation and I’m, you know, there was a three-day, two-day thing. So there are lots of very complex, great argument scenarios. But, one of the funnier workshops was when we said, Okay, how will this impact the seller agriculture farming industry? One group said, I said, What’s your strategy? Well, it’s obvious we just go kill the vegans, <laugh>. And I said I said, Well, you know, legally you can’t do that. What’s your strategy number two? Oh, he said, That’s easy too. I said, What’s that? Well, we’ll kill the scientist. I said, Okay, well you really can’t do either one. Is there a third strategy? They said, Yeah, kill the city-based coffee drinkers, <laugh>. I said, Okay, I understood your threats before. What’s about the city-based coffee drinkers said, Well, they’re early adopters of new technologies.

Sohail: (06:27):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. And finally, the conclusion was, we feel under threat in terms of salaries, diseases, and pandemics. This is one more threat we don’t want to hear about. And then my task with the game, Okay, you don’t want to hear about it, I get it, but it’s may become a huge trillion-dollar industry. If that’s the case, what can you do to use it wisely? Have the technology actually, uh, optimize what your, you know, your products make ’em safer? Or do you help in the transition from meat to post-meat as we’re seeing from fossil fuel to renewables? These are tough transitions, but in case there is one, are you ready to make some opportunities out of it or are you gonna say it’s never gonna happen? So if futures thinking, we don’t quite know the future, but we have some hints. So the notion then is, okay, if this is gonna occur, should my country, my farm actually be looking to be a player in the game?

Sohail: (07:27):

Or even better can we be the best player in the game? So Holland, which was leaving this leading this, of course, is a leading agricultural exporter and they’re disrupting their own industry. They’re saying, We, we know we’re the best at agriculture, but what could disrupt it? Well, obviously southern agriculture can, So it’s, let’s lead in both. So now we have two horses and we’re gonna win in one of those. So that’s to me, a more clever way to use foresight, not just to make the castle optimize your castle, but to leave the castle, put the drawbridge down, and look for other forests to actually innovate in.

Jesse: (08:05):

This is a more negative example, but when you were talking about that, it made me think of cigarette companies and, and the way they started, um, getting into the vaping game. They saw what was going to happen and they thought, Well, let’s dominate the thing that’s here to replace us.

Sohail: (08:20):

So this, I mean, that’s where scenarios are good. Exactly your point. I was working with a large car company in the region. Scenario one was bigger in Boulder, right? Where you, might, if you’re a detractor, call car obesity. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> scenario two was future washing, let’s just call it tailored cars, where you change the facade, and make it look green. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we put some nice paintings on it and three became, and I said, Okay, that’s your marginal change where you’re just doing that to keep your market and making customers feel better about themselves. Is there a third scenario? And they said, Well, the adaptive, I said, What’s adaptive? Will we move towards greener driverless pods and start to rethink the city and scenario forwards that radical, which was too far, right? I mean, radical is too far for most companies and people. This said, Well, let’s imagine a world after the car. Maybe our new product is mobility. So we become like a telco selling a subscription as opposed to you buying a car in aloha. Mm-hmm.

Jesse: (09:17):

<affirmative>.

Sohail: (09:17):

So the thing they got out of it, and I got out of it thinking, well, we can decide where do you wanna play on no change, marginal, adaptive radical, Those are four possible areas of, you know, uh, innovation. You can decide, no, we actually wanna keep on selling tobacco and we’ll do the vaping just to make sure some people are happy. But it essentially keeps us going. And you think, well, okay, that’s keeping you going. But I think what uh, the former CEO Pepsi said, Well, aren’t we here to develop a planetary purpose? Is not just about a sugar-coated drink. We’re here to actually make a difference. And she said, You can’t decide what markets do, but you can shape ’em for the better if you try. And I thought that was very possible. And so when we were working with them, she started this process, What would it look like if we changed who we are to the greatest wellness company in the world? Which goes to step four. After you do the scenarios, what’s your vision? Where do you wanna be? What type of company, or country person do you want to be in the future? So you’re guided by the future in terms of where you could go.

Jesse: (10:28):

I’m talking to Dr. Saha Ella, who’s the UNESCO chair and future studies, a world-leading authority on how to develop our foresight muscles. And he’s in Christchurch to hold workshops with Think Beyond a Future Focused Leadership organization. You gave us an example of the idea that is too radical. Is that a useful way to think about the future though for businesses and organizations and individuals, to consider the wacky idea? Might it get our thinking into an area of imagination that’s useful for making a realistic plan?

Sohail: (11:02):

So it depends on your role, right? My role with the future is to be radical, right? I have to push them. I was working with a very large company, a huge, a large country. It was a budget and they were looking at the future of museums and at the future of art and museums. And so in the workshop, it came off, what if art was designed by AI, was the role of the artists. Now, this was a year ago that seemed very radical that mm-hmm <affirmative>. And they said, Okay, that’s perfect for 2050. Let’s rethink the large museums in the world that have AI paintings. What happens to the artists? What happens to Mon Lisa? And they had a billion dollar budget behind the, behind us to rethink the museum. Now that was 2050. We already know what’s going on today, right? I mean the whole notion of AI software winning awards for best art. So our role, the radical one seems far away, but sometimes the technological, rate of change can be so quick. It’s tomorrow. So it’s really pushing them. So the far-away imagination isn’t so far

Jesse: (12:07):

Why you do encourage people to break up the future, uh, into different time spans and different horizons?

Sohail: (12:17):

That’s helpful. So I mean the common thinking is uh, three horizons, right? Today, Oh, I’m too busy long term. My vision and midterm is the area of possibility, uncertainty, anxiety, and fear, but also here are areas we can change. So that’s a good business tool. But at the same time, I think it’s more to know all of us live in different time horizons all the time. Some days we’re future-focused, some days we’re present-focused. If you’re saving for retirement, you’re of course future-focused. So I think one of the things we try to rethink is the nature of time. If you’re into mindfulness meditation, then every day you’re spending some time in a timeless time. Outside of time when you’re doing things you truly love, you’re no longer in the future or the past, you are in the extended present. So I think the useful part of futures thinking is to step back, and look at the way you’re timing the world.

Sohail: (13:13):

Most of us live in colonized time. We’ve adopted a view of time that’s not ours. So I know when I was young, we moved to the US and the first thing I learned is that second grader was the early bird gets the worm. So that’s a metaphor of time, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative>, be quick, be first, be agile. And that may work. But then after a while you think, well, you know, do I really want to be eating worms <laugh>? Do I really want to get up so early? Is that really the purpose of my life? To think what’s a better metaphor? And that’s actually, once you do the visioning, we’re pretty clear visions and strategies where they occur or don’t occur do so because it’s a supportive metaphor or a metaphor. Let’s suggest we shouldn’t change. And everyone has that. Today we are with Sport New Zealand and working on the future of sport in New Zealand.

Sohail: (14:01):

And I think one of the metaphors that people set is no longer so useful cuz the goal is inclusion. Sports for all. Exercise for all well-being for all is a metaphor of the gladiator. The gladiator leads to heroism the Michael Jordan of basketball for example. But it’s individualism, it’s rugged, it’s competitive and there’s some value to that. But it doesn’t help you create a wellbeing, culture, wellbeing society. So then we see the gladiator metaphor gives you strength and power and success in some ways, but it fails in terms of creating society of wellbeing where everyone is healthy and diabetes level keep on falling <laugh>. So then you have to find what’s a new, a better story. So I know in one country we were working with, they went from a poor country and now they’re I think the third or fourth richest in the world. I said, So what’s your issue?

Sohail: (14:48):

They said, Our issue is diabetes. We went from farming, fishing, we’re working all this. So diabetes was not an issue to now we got so wealthy you were watching TV. And what’s I said, what’s the core metaphor? The core, the core metaphor is we live to eat. And so the purpose of life has become now the six, seven meals a day. And that may give you temporary joy. It work when you’re working 12 hours in the field and now in our world, it’s okay. The new metaphor is the purpose is eat for life, eat to live. So living becomes wellbeing, healthy community being with nature. And thus we have to rethink taxation for sugar, rethink plant based economy, rethink, subsidizing, uh, uh, foods that aren’t good for you. So they said we need a new story. Purpose of eating is for life and we have to change our taxation system. Incentivizing local food, incentivizing whole range of green buildings, et cetera. Um, urban farming. So this is the last part of the fust thing is you go from here’s the world you don’t want, here’s the vision I want what’s my supportive story? Which increases the plausibility of it happening that often, more often than not, it’s a narrative that inspires that coheres that helps, that resonates with the world we want.

Jesse: (16:13):

That’s interesting because um, I mean a metaphor seems like just a nice thing to have a nice way of thinking about something. But I guess what you are saying is that you’ll be operating under a metaphor whether you like it or not. So you may as well pick one that um, that suits your desired outcome.

Sohail: (16:33):

Now your point is brilliant. I mean I think, I mean whether you’re a critical theorist and read lock off or an indigenous person and live in story stories define us, stories create us. I remember during the global financial crisis, Financial Times had an amazing article. This said there’s a crisis in search of a narrative. None of us knows what it is. Huh? Is this because of saving high rate of savings in East Asia? Is this a shift to Asia? Is it just about mortgage rates? Is it a financial crisis? Is it actually a creative destruction, new tech? So no one knew, is it a tech crisis, a rise of East Asia, a minor mortgage crisis or is a financial system in per is the metaphor they used was given the whole system a good crash, they decided let’s save Wall Street, not Main Street. So they saved Wall Street.

Sohail: (17:22):

But I think we’re still living in the peril of a system that doesn’t quite work. So the metaphors are stories, but there’s stories that help us understand the world. So I was working with W H O in Mongolia and is that they did the futures work, but for the people there, they needed stories that made sense to them and their stories didn’t make sense to me. Cuz I’m not Mongolian. I think one of the ones was neither can nor carrot don’t make your mouth the garbage can. And they said as they went from a command control economy to a market economy, they went for living in the steps to living in the city. Their food, their diet changed such that they lived on junk food. Mm. So I’d never heard of the metaphor of don’t make your mouth a garbage can. And so when it came to time we had one senior director of a hospital, she said, uh, she used to be the step girl, s t e p P e working in the Mongolian steps.

Sohail: (18:18):

There’s no sense of time there. This is before lunch, after lunch, that’s it, <laugh>. And now she’s right, she’s there and now she’s a city girl. And to optimize her strategy in a hospital, she had to change her story cause the step world makes sense, but not in a hospital with covid ramp you can’t just show up some day. The hospitals have rules and regulations and efficiency out there, efficiency imperatives. So what they got from it, in terms of national strategy on health, we have to use stories that make sense to our citizens, our patients, our doctors, our surgeons. When the best one, one head of a hospital, she said to succeed she had become the golden fish making everyone happy. And that helped her rise to the top. But given the crisis in health systems, it no longer worked co the golden fish actually can’t make everyone happy.

Sohail: (19:13):

The health system has so many different stakeholders. Her better story about herself was the bamboo forest. The bamboo tree allow the proms to right go through her like bamboo was flexible, could meet the needs, but the bamboo’s also strong could actually in board meetings say actually no, I can fund this but I can’t fund that. And so what was unique for me was of course learning about core stories from a different culture. And if we don’t do that, then we get the just sense. So the justice is the colonized time. I went on a new, I think da A L L e, you know, one of those new AI art sites. And I think, okay, let me for this talk I gave today for Sport New Zealand. Let me just Google sport robot future, let’s see what the algorithm said. And what came out was two gladiator robots trying to kill each other.

Sohail: (20:07):

And so I said, okay, so the official reading of the future from whoever planned it design and algorithm, it is basically sport is about robots, cloud ideas attacking each other. So I thought, well I don’t wanna live with that future. So then it becomes imperative if I’m at, how do I redesign the software, the algorithms so they better resonate or express my values. So if you’re an indigenous person, those may be a community, those may be nature, those may be spirit. And clearly those weren’t represented in that. So that’s what decolonizing the future or to use the future to better fit the world you wish for becomes quite powerful in how we design technology. The technology design, I would argue is always based on story.

Jesse: (20:55):

So Hal, just a minute or two left And um, we’ve talked a lot about mapping the future as it applies to institutions or organizations, but anything you’d like to leave us with in terms of how to apply it to one’s personal life and, and why futures studies is important at a personal level?

Sohail: (21:12):

So the core part as a personal level is again, you know, you can do, here are four scenarios for your own life. But the personal part is very powerful. I was working with law one law enforcement agency and there were senior detectives in your junior detective. And I’ve said this story before, the junior detective, his issue was, you know, feeling a bit ostracized, right? But also feeling better than everyone. And that got expressed in his battle between being inferior and being superior. But when it came telling a story, he, he’s an iPhone in a room full of Nokia, an iPhone and a room full of Nokia. Now the other detectives heard this and they all put their heads down and they go, What is smart Alec kid? And, and then he said, Well actually that story expresses my today it doesn’t make me feel good. I said, What’s the better story that gets you the world you want?

Sohail: (21:58):

And he said, Aha. A co-designing chip maker. So now I’m collecting my youth experience with the knowledge of the senior detectives we’re co-designing and finally said, go to a meditative state. We did a little meditation and now what do you see? And he said he saw the warm sun. So he went from feeling agro, tension between them and him, more inclusive scenario. And finally it hit him that actually wherever you are, people remember you in terms of how you feel, how you connect with them. And so he moved to very much a spiritual inner experience. So the main point there was he applied futures thinking to his own storytelling and found a better story and a better way to live and be

Jesse: (22:45):

Enjoy your time in New Zealand. I so appreciate,  you having a conversation with us this afternoon, Sohail and all the best for the future.

Sohail: (22:54):

Thanks so much. Really appreciate it. Thanks. This was great. Thank you.

Jesse: (22:57):

Dr. Sohail Inayatullah UNESCO chair in future studies and a world-leading authority on how to develop our foresight muscles. He’s in Christchurch to hold workshops with a New Zealand organization called Think Beyond, a Future-Focused Leadership Organization.

This is a System generated transcription.

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