A reinterview with Frank Spencer discussing democratising foresight, the year of free and natural foresight.
Interviewed by: Peter Hayward
Listen to Frank’s other FuturePod interview
More about Frank
LinkedIn: Frank Spencer
The Year of Free https://thefuturesschool.com/yearoffree/
Transcript
Peter Hayward: Hello and welcome to Futurepod, I'm Peter Hayward. Futurepod gathers voices from the international field of futures and foresight. Through a series of interviews the founders of the field and the emerging leaders share their stories, tools, and experiences. Please visit future pod.org for further information about this podcast series. As it's almost three years since we launched future pod, we thought it would be interesting to check in with our previous guests and see how their work and thinking may have changed since we last spoke to them. So we created a new future pod series called the Re interviews.
Today we are re interviewing Frank Spencer. We first met Frank in podcast 50, Dancing with Complexity. Since then, through the COVID years, Frank and his colleagues at the Futures School and Kedge have learned a lot about this odd, interesting world that we're now in. And they have continued to stir things up in the educational and development space.
Welcome back to Futurepod Frank.
Frank Spencer: Thank you Peter, and it's of course an honor to be with you and to be with the guests of your amazing podcasts. You said that you interview founders of the field and emerging leaders. I feel like I fall somewhere in between those two. Is there a third category?
Peter Hayward: Yes. Frank you are a leader, and I think we're all butterflies and we're all still grubs if you catch that. So it's been a year since we spoke to you with, we figured that the first time we found you COVID was a thing. And you, I think we were talking at the time of the impact that COVID had on your business. What's been the arc for you and your thinking and your business's purposes and processes through that?
Frank Spencer: That's a great question, Peter. It's a, I can't remember exactly what all we covered that first time around, but that's the nature of the pandemic. There's a lot of things that the time has compressed and stretched out and warped and turned upside down and all those good things. So it's it's been a blur the much of the last 20 plus months. And I will say that. It's been really interesting in this pandemic time that we have reached more people than ever before.
What I mean by that is that obviously through Kedge, we have a well-established foresight consulting firm that, has worked with companies around the world. And then, the Futures School was launched out of Kedge as our learning ecosystem, because we just have a mission to democratize the future and democratize foresight.
And so when I say reached to more people, both in terms of clients and also people that are using foresight to instill greater resilience, adaptation, and transformation in their lives, especially in the midst of the pandemic. We stayed up all night because we have a studio and I didn't fly to Shanghai, but, I taught people in Shanghai and I just stayed up all night for them, and did a session for people in Europe and we've actually had more clients in the last two years than ever before. We've had our most economically prosperous years as a consultancy in the last two years there before we weren't doing bad before, but the last two years has been just for lack of a better phrase, off the chain, they might say it's been crazy.
It makes me feel weird because it shouldn't take a pandemic for that to happen. And I don't want to, suggest, bring on the pandemic so that it can be financially successful. Because we're about much more than that, but but that's the case. More people have been flocking to this idea. And I know a lot of your guests before have talked about agency from one end of the spectrum to the other, and how much agency do we have in terms of complexity, and that we do that, we don't, there's both the true but people are seeking, for meaning and for purpose and for ability and agency and in the midst of all of this and I think that's what's caused so many people to flock. It's been hard to turn them away and and it's been quite crazy to see that the more we move into more volatile and uncertain spaces the more of what I believe this field really is, and not what we necessarily, and myself included have tried to shape it into the old molds and the old ideas and metrics is emerging and people are latching onto that. I heard you say earlier, that people they're just hungry for this and they're ready to run with this. And that's been our experience in the midst of the pandemic.
Peter Hayward: I was going to ask you though obviously, generalizing is difficult and things fall in the middle, but we can imagine people being drawn towards futures, foresight out of a need to become safer. So it's like a move to control and move to understanding, finding agency through control or the pivot of agency through opportunity, agency through as things get shaky, then, ideas can actually get a real chance to be heard as the status quo starts to lose its hold. Things become freer. Now I'm not going to ask you to choose either because clearly that there'd be people for both, but where do you sit in that sort of dichotomy.
Frank Spencer: Thank you for asking that because that's the part of what I was mangling a moment ago when I was seeing that there's different ends of the spectrum on agency and, we can study Bandura and psychology or, as you're often fond of doing, and I'm so grateful for Hope Theory and the agency that lies within Snyder's theories and those kinds of things, but I do believe that people are seeing this as an opportunity for more of the second, the latter, of agency towards, the possibilities and the unfolding novelties and transformations and the realities exist in that. That's at the heart of what we do anyway. So I have a bias towards that.
And like you said, wisely said. There's people across the spectrum that are going to fit across the spectrum. Certainly our organizational clients are coming to us for probably the former more, but, and I, this is one of my most exciting elements of working in foresight, and I hope that other people can benefit from this. I've often said that when organizations come to us for a type of work or engagement or initiative or a project, we're not really working for the organizations, we're working for, the people that we have the contact with, whether it's the person that's been tasked with foresight in the organization, or our main point of contact or the the champions of the work, because what inevitably happens through three weeks or three months or a year or two years is I can show you the 3, 5, 10 people whose lives have been altered through that work. And I think that's one of the most powerful things also that I could say about working for using foresight in a corporate context or organizationally, is that we forget that we play the court jester to those people as well. And so whether an organization uses this long-term or the initiative doesn't work or does work, we're changing those people's lives and they're changed. And so what I was going to say by that is that they might come for the control piece, but they stay for the for the authored piece, and so their agency perspective and focus changes.
Peter Hayward: So you've already introduced into the conversation, what I think is quite a provocative phrase, but you probably think such a nice person don't mean it that way, but you talked about Democratizing the Future. Yeah. I want you to talk about what you mean, and I also want you to clarify as to whether the future is not actually democratic at the moment and that's the purpose . What do you really mean? And do you mean that the future has to be more radically freer than we have allowed it to be?
Frank Spencer: Absolutely. And you already heard me say the, the phrase corporate foresight and how do you put corporate foresight together with Democratizing the Future is like, water and oil or getting your chocolate stuck in my peanut butter, although a Reese's cup comes out of that so that's wonderful. Yeah.
It's true Democratizing Foresight, I think in this hour it really means, and I love this phrase, a multitude of voices or multiple ways of knowing. And that's what it really means. So in many aspects, the future, is not democratized at the moment. We know that it's being directed and controlled often manipulated in a certain direction by the powers that be when we even talk about creating the future, not just democratizing pretty, who's doing the creating?
That's why, as a matter of fact, we really started the Futures School because it's that element, the learning ecosystem that says foresight agency really comes through multiple ways of knowing or a diverse world building. And so when I hear other cultures seem different ways of knowing the ancient ways of knowing uncover ways of knowing futures lost, futures regained, then it opens up a canvas for me to create on and to see multiple possibilities. This is why I love the work that we do with organizations. And it varies, from, helping a company set up their foresight work and their, trends and the basic nuts and bolts all the way to helping an organization really think about themselves, not as a tech firm, but as a social firm or to expand their purview.
As a matter of fact, I'll just say during the pandemic we've been working with the Metro in Santiago, Chile. Their president, he's not been there very long. Your listeners know that there were huge riots in Santiago. That happened right before the pandemic and because of that, and recently they rewrote the constitution and had their first indigenous people on the constitutional board to rewrite, and so that was rewritten with indigenous ideas in mind. And and so that has just happened, that's just been concluded. And how does that relate to the work that we did with the Metro? The Metro during the riots, was a center of contention and the people who were rioting in Santiago burned some of the Metro stations because they had raised the fares by one or 2 cent across the board.
Santiago is a rich city in general, but outlying communities that really need to use the Metro are at risk and, not as privileged as that part of the city. And because of that the incoming president said, "we don't see ourselves as a transportation company, we are a social wellbeing company and we have to change our perspective". And that could sound like greenwashing or just talk, but I can assure you that they genuinely have meant it. We've been at work with them for over a year and it's been amazing to watch.
So who is directing, who's in control? The president of the Metro has it. And that's what democratizing the future is really all about. And that's what we mean when we say democratize the future and then subsequently to democratize foresight. And that means really getting this in the hands of people who don't have the privilege because Peter, that when we talk about the future, often it's from a privileged standpoint and most people don't have the privilege of thinking about the future. And don't think about the future because they're not in that privileged state. We have to get them thinking about the feature. That's the most important voices of all.
Peter Hayward: Yeah. So I'm going to push you again. Cause there's the notion that the future is not owned and therefore it's open and people should feel agency and have opportunity, but you're also a member of the Federation. You're also a member of the APF, like me. Are those institutions of futures, are they singing from the same song book in terms of democratizing or in some ways, are those institutions or have they not been helpful towards democratizing?
Frank Spencer: That's a question for me? Are you kidding me? I should be asking you that question.
I think they've been helpful, certainly. To say that if I were to say that either of those organizations or these institutions have not been helpful, I would just be totally amiss. There's so many wonderful people in those organizations. But is that where I, my question is that where futures is really going, is that where foresight is really going?
And I know there's been a lot of just internal debate about what is the utility even of those organizations. And so certainly the WF S F the APF others have done a tremendous, great deal of good for advancing the knowledge of foresight and futures. But there. Let me just tell you a a brief anecdote.
I was teaching futures at Duke University and I remember someone said to me yes, Frank don't you think there's probably, how many Futurists do you think there are in the world? 250 to 500? And I remember even back then being struck thinking like, wow, I've met a lot of people at organizations already who are like really excited about the feature. Now, granted, they might not have a Master's degree or a PhD in foresight. But. How do we define who a futurist is and who a futurist isn't? And so I don't know, organizations have, are impeded in any way. But definitely I think foresight is extending far beyond the purview of what those organizations have encapsulated to this point. And in this past couple of years, APF has got more youth on board and they have a youth futures festival. I think that's all the right direction. And to see more and more of that is where this these organizations have to go because futures is expanding in a way that I don't think that they even had a plan for it too.
I think that in its very essence, it was meant to do that. And I think that we, me, myself included we've misunderstood the power that lies inherent in futures thinking and foresight as a natural and human trait that needs to be unlocked from the systems that are quite honestly, barriers to this this way of thinking. They're almost like an an antidote to this kind of thinking. And so I really believe that, inherent in this way of thinking is just this human trait that unlocks something. And I don't think our organizations or these associations have, we're creating with that in mind or thought that way. And so we have to open up a whole new avenue of how we're thinking about this field.
Peter Hayward: Yeah. I agree. I know, Tanja Schindler quite well and Futures Space. She's got a thousand members in two years. Yep. And the APS got about 450 , and they're completely different, it's almost and I'm going to say Futurepod, I think is a little bit like this it's yeah. Have things like Futures Space, Futurepod allow people to enter who come in, take what's useful and leave. And then others come in, meet the community, suddenly realized there's a professionalization side to it. There's a whole craft. There's a whole community of practitioners. And some of those may say, this is my tribe. This is now the people that I'm going to spend the next part of my professional life, working with.
Frank Spencer: That's right. Tanja of course has done an amazing job. I know she's one of your former students as well. We've been friends with Tanya for a long time and Tanya's flown over to the U S on several occasions to do work with us. And I think our internal marketers here were telling me just the other day. It's funny, you mentioned that about 15% of Futures Space are actually alumni of the Futures School because we have a direct link with what she's doing. We just sent our alumni straight over there and, most of those are again, not traditional. They don't come into the field of the traditional field features foresight way. These are people that are wanting to unlock new ways of looking at work and have found the field, but aren't using it the way that, that we
Peter Hayward: That we meant them to!
Frank Spencer: Doggone it Why aren't you using Futures the way I've wanted you to. And Peter, rapidly as we speak right now, the great majority, and it's only escalating, of people coming into the field it's not the academic route. And there will continue to be that. I believe there should be that I obviously believe there should be that. But these people that are coming in are seeking to co-create with one another and with the larger ecosystem of life to to co-create a a better path forward, a better way forward. And and that happens in many flavors and streams. And and that's the beauty of foresight is it's so multifaceted and diverse. And when we come into that way of handling this field, that's when we really realized the beauty of what we have. What we're holding something so powerful and, but we've held it close to the vest and we need to release it.
Peter Hayward: So is that one of the reasons why 2022 is the Year of Free?
Frank Spencer: It is the Year of Free. It's like the Jubilee. And it's, we've laughed internally because I wonder what some people think it's oh, what I'm what's really going on inside of Kedge the Future School?
I was struggling to get people to come to the school. And therefore they're trying to think of a way that hasn't been the case. We actually have seen, like I said, the last two years we've reached more, but one day we were staying around and really this is pandemic related. So here we are in the midst of the pandemic and we're like, What does it mean for our mission and what does it mean for Kedge and the Futures School and everything that's going on?
One of us blurted out at a staff meeting because we always we joke internally that we ask question number seven which is the seven questions that we often ask about futures of, you could ask a clairvoyant, anything, what would you ask in me? And the seventh question is on this, on this survey that we often give people "If there were no obstacles and no barriers, none don't think of any, try to clear your mind of all obstacles and barriers, and you could do anything that you could do, what would you do?" And so we try to apply that to ourselves and we say, so we just say around here, Hey, it's time for question number seven. And so somebody said question seven and one of us blurted out. "What if it was free." What if we just stopped charging people for this? Let them nominate, get more people involved in this. And we gave away our three-day training, our six month training for free. If you nominate somebody from outside your organization or if you're an alumni from inside your organization who would we be able to put this in the hands of that never even heard about.
And that was 14 days ago that we actually launched the initiative. We've been talking about this now for over a year, we've been behind the scenes, working furiously to get this, to become a reality. And we launched it about 14 days ago and the response has been unbelievable. And the people that are nominating people and the people that are being nominated are, I don't think. Peter. I don't think we've had an American nominated yet. I'm sure. We have not had somebody from the US nominated yet.
Peter Hayward: I want to back the truck up just a short distance. So for people who are listening to Futurepod, what's this nomination , talk to them about what's involved, who can nominate? Because you talked about democratizing, but is there actually a select group of people who get to nominate?
Frank Spencer: The answer is no, there's not a select people, a group of people we get to nominate. That's the crazy part about this. So this is where we've gotten with the Futures School. Because we've always said like what we're trying to build and we've talked to Sohail about this often and he's in our orbit, others as well. And he was, he inspired us greatly too, because he was like, oh, years ago I remember being in a room with all these people from the different, associations and all. And I said to them, what if we built this open university of foresight that just wasn't at a particular university. And Peter Hayward was involved in all of these and, he was throwing out names and he said, and I remember. That everybody thought it was a good idea, but then it was a really bad idea. And he said, and it got squashed. Yeah. I don't want to tell Sohail's story, cause I don't want to get it wrong, but that was the gist of it.
And he was like, I still want to see that happen. So he's one of the ones that inspired us to this and we said, If Democratizing the Foresight means what I said. It means a few minutes ago, then it means that anybody, not a professional, not somebody that's, inhabiting an organization or, as executive level or whatever. I have to be able to have somebody who is sitting in the most obscure place today, really? You know what a bizarre statement for me to make my place as obscure there's is not the obscure one sitting in the most obscure place for me right now to nominate their friend. or to find somebody to nominate them?
It's really funny because early on the last couple of weeks we've already had all the, the FAQ's well, I'm going to be the one that goes I'm like, we'll just find somebody to nominate you work around the system. I'm giving them free reign. And so sure enough, they found a friend and nominate them. And guess what?
Now the nominator gets to know about foresight to. And so the majority of the nominations that we've already gotten in just 14 days are from nominators that don't even know what foresight is. They're like, oh my gosh, this looks so amazing. What is it? And we have an interview with the nominator and when the nominee, and now they're both in the ecosystem, the nominator doesn't owe us anything. They don't have to stay connected. They don't have to get our newsletter or anything. They just know. And we get to have a chance to talk to them. And so anybody can nominate anybody and we've had, high level people nominating, high-level people. And then we've had, people that, that aren't in organizations or really aren't in anything. They're just they just saw us for the first time in this maybe their first chance to ever step into a realm of any kind of foresight learning, nominating friends, or getting nominated by friends. And that's already been the response has been tremendous.
Peter Hayward: And how you feeling about it now? 14 days into the launch?
Frank Spencer: Oh my goodness. That's such a good question. Because we were like, we did the best job that we could to prepare ourselves. With the thought, in mind, like what if we get an onslaught? And I don't think that we knew how much of a response we would get to this. So you know, now there's a little bit of scrambling going on to make sure that we can, handle the load, but we're so excited about it. We could not be happier with what's happening. And I really believe that this is just another piece on the journey of what we're trying to accomplish. And some of the responses has already been like, oh, this is what you guys meant by Democratized Foresight, I get it now. And the heart that I can see that's coming from, what's happening here is inspiring others to act the same.
That's one of the things I hope happens too, is that more people get this and give it away, get it and give it away. And so that's what we're trying to inspire. And we're super excited. We haven't even held a program yet with any of these nominees in it, but that's coming up because we've already had, we have one for the AMEA region and we're well beyond capacity and already talking about doing a second and third program for that one as well.
Peter Hayward: So will the people who are doing the program in the Year of Free, will they be, in an online sense, sitting alongside people who are doing the paid course by their corporations, or will they be streamed into distinct different groups?
Frank Spencer: They won't be, they will be sitting side by side because there's, as good facilitators and Peter, I know that, this way better than I do, but it's always a struggle. It never will stop being a struggle to teach, very different people from different with different needs and different backgrounds and different points of entry and a similar meaning, but there is a benefit to it, to the pro side is that my slam poet is sitting next to the vice president of such and such company. Yeah. And if you want to challenge those corporate people, that's the way to do it. Have them sit in a room with people who are like, I wanted to use this for what our development in my region, in Southeast Asia.
Have him sit next to them and that will challenge them in ways that they would not get challenged. They just go to a course and they learn the tools of foresight and how to do this in your corporate setting, because yeah, you can get that and we'll give you that. But the most, the greatest things that happens in this meetings is when it's all hands off and the groups are working together and they get to hear somebody with a perspective, a different way of knowing the challenges. How they have performed in the things that they've done. And yeah, there'll be sitting together side by side and and we continue the struggle of of accommodating everybody in a course, but we couldn't be happier that they are mixed together in a group , with multiple voices and multiple ways of knowing.
Peter Hayward: Yeah. It's a fascinating dilemma you talk about when you mix people who come there with entirely appropriate, pragmatic needs, an organization is paying you to do it's part of your it's part of your brief to actually deliver these services to the organization. Because as individuals, when you bump up with a person who's dealing with anything from poverty, domestic violence, indigenous disadvantage, whatever else, it actually puts the people coming from the pragmatic, in a somewhat difficult situation that they have resources to deliver a better version of status quo. Yes. And then they meet the people who are on the other side of status quo, the kind of the kind of victims of status quo. Yeah. And how do you handle that in a workshop space? Because I could imagine they could both be on one hand guilt and another hand almost blame for, but that becomes the kind of material to work with.
Frank Spencer: It does become a material to work with. I'm glad that you worded it that way. And it's a beautiful discomfort. I'm a big fan of letting people be uncomfortable. You have to learn as a good facilitator, how long to let them be uncomfortable and when to mediate. I think the discomfort is a part of futures, right? Is it not, is discussing futures surely is a discomforting thing. And I haven't met too many, there's certainly they exist, but most people, the majority, at least of people that have been tasked to do this or want to do this and found a way to get it and their organizations fund it. They have a sense of, that the way my organization does things is not right, or it's not complete, or it could be done better, it could be done differently. There's gotta be a better way. And so they're usually open to hearing about this and I'm thinking about the past two years, a big piece of work we did with one of, if not the largest agricultural and food providers in the world and the person who is heading that work could not be more of a transformationalist. Sitting inside an organization that wants to be super conservative and sell food products. But this person drove them to think about food from the perspective of the other side, as you said, the people who are receiving and the inequality and the need. And that means for her, it's definitely a tough road to hoe as we might say. But that is ultimately what, futures inside of an organization does. So I did think there's having done this for 20 years inside the organizations, there's a bit of a misnomer with people who might be just starting thinking I go in and I , help them sell a product and everything certainly that exists.
But these people that are sitting in these trainings with these other people are often challenged to a point where they do try, they at least try to go back to the organizations say, but there's things we're missing, there's things we're leaving out. And that's how we play the court jester with them. So that doesn't mean that always, I'm not trying to paint a rosy picture. That doesn't mean it works. And they go back to those organizations and again, those antibodies try to fight against that for sure. But I think that's the beautiful discomfort and that's why I do want that person in particular, I'm thinking about from the food organization, sat through two trainings and was with slam poets and people who are working in social initiatives and other corporates. And I do want them in the meeting with those people. I don't want them to be separated from them. I don't think it's healthy. And we're also not afraid to say that, there are certain clients that we just wouldn't be able to handle because if they can't hear these kinds of stories and don't acknowledge then we ultimately, in the end, I wouldn't be able to help them. Anyway, it's going to be a failed. It's going to end up in a failed initiative, our project with them anyway, and then they're going to fire me or I'm going to fire them one or the other.
Peter Hayward: Or you are going to fire yourself yourself
Frank Spencer: or? Yeah, I often I fire myself.
Peter Hayward: Another thing I noticed that Kedge has introduced certainly last year is this term, and I'd like you just to unpack it a bit, you call it Natural Foresight, which when you first see the phrase, it's a put down, but it's also, again it's an interesting phrase to use Natural Foresight because we know that, while foresight is a natural human process. It's certainly not natural to be employed by political organizations with longterm consequences, people with power. So it's a. It's almost an oxymoronic phrase to call Foresight Natural, when a lot of our through the skin experience is it's completely unnatural.
Frank Spencer: I actually believe it or not love that you said that because I couldn't be more encouraged because I think that and we don't get as many people saying that part to us, but I love that you pointed that piece out because there is an oxymoron in it. It was purposeful. But it does base itself on the fact that we believe that foresight is a more of a natural process. You've got a lot of people who, have promoted foresight or who do promote foresight as being this really tough thing to handle. And I'm not saying it's not our tough thing to, actually evangelize.
And I'm not saying that it's not. But I think that's because of the systems, not because foresight itself is unnatural and there's so much good work being done. And by the way, this is a great place for me to say. I probably said on the previous podcast, it's like we can study ourself in circles, inside the foresight room and talk about, the three horizons and, climbing the mountain to the guru and all this stuff. Those are all great research projects, but the greatest input to understand more about what our field even is from research outside our field. I just think that you're going to learn more about foresight from studying non foresight related research papers and those kinds of things and you are going to learn from the ones that are, and I'm not saying that, the journals and the foresight research papers aren't valuable, they are. But the more that they include external ideas, unrelated fields, really tying those pieces together is going to be powerful. The reason I say that is because Natural Foresight expresses foresight, frameworks, the approach, the mindset from evolutionary organic, as Riel might say, anticipatory, complexity sciences, rather than proving foresight by foresight. Yep. And and so what we mean by Natural Foresight, the phrase is actually referring to, the organic process of foresight, that foresight is something that is a natural human trait, but that gets covered by a unnatural reductive linear systems.
And that foresight should, and it's framework should be releasing us into more organic ways of seeing, knowing, becoming, being. And so it is a natural force itself is a framework. It's based on much of the work of Gunderson, Hollins and Panarchy and complex adaptive systems, complex, responsive processes, complex potential states.
And there's, all the good tools fit into the different parts and pieces. But what we wanted to get across for the novice and natural foresight is there is a framework that can be used and there's a way approaching foresight that can be used it's non-linear and foresight itself. Of course, everybody listening to this might be going like, yes, Frank you're preaching to the choir, of course, foresight is non linear.
Oh yeah. Then how can we approach it through very linear processes? Step one, step two, step three, step four. We often do that. And so the more the field progresses and going back to what we were talking about earlier, the more it becomes embedded in the hearts and minds in the hands of people, the more we're going to need to approach it in very non-linear ways. And if anybody needs to get away from the linear processes, it needs to be the foresight field. You can learn all about Natural Foresight by going to the Futures School.com website and downloading the 115 page guide to the Natural Foresight framework. It's free. You can get it there. And hopefully what it does in the guide is it takes you down the path of looking at a lot more organic, natural, complex, I mean that in a good way, cooperative evolutionary pathways to approach in our field and to disseminating it among the masses. Yup.
Peter Hayward: Now it's lovely stuff. My additional question, and I'm thinking on top of Natural Foresight is the very human, moral aspect that as decision makers, we make choices about preferred futures using whatever the best, most adaptive, most, most appropriate cognitive process to understand our situation. But then we have to choose. How does the Futures School, Natural Foresight embrace the notion that humans also need to understand how they reason and choose morally?
Frank Spencer: Yeah for us, it's at the core of it. I just got off of doing the interview this morning with a big toy company in based in Europe. So everybody knows who it is probably. And And one of the things that they said, what do you want to see our company do more? What would be your challenge to us? What should we do? And I said I'm not gonna pull punches. I want to see you as a brand create a greater ethical agency, the kind of agency we were talking about earlier, being able to really co-create. And so we talk a lot about ethically co-creating, which I think is almost redundant in a way, because true co-creation means that I see myself as a creator, not alone, I can't successfully create alone. I have to do it with not only other humans, but with the rest of all living things. So it's planetary is cosmic. This is where we get into future consciousness. And that, we moved from just the Kedge side of things to make an organization future ready to the human element of things, making people future empowered to this greater transformative aspect of futures, which is, I think that the jewels and the box that we're sitting on, which is future consciousness.
And that really allows us to release this greater element of what foresight is really all about. And that is collectively and collaboratively and cooperatively creating the future together. That's that if we get to that, then we are creating ethical futures because we're doing it with one another in mind. And so Natural Foresight and the Year of Free and all of that is all meant to have people hearing other voices so that they have to weigh those both desires and maybe covered futures or lost or hidden futures that need to be recovered so that they have to make an ethical decision about creating the future now. Were all going to land on something you're going to land somewhere. We have to make a decision. But what foresight allows us to do is it allows us to make multifaceted decisions instead of just point in time decisions or quick decisions or linear decisions are decisions based on systems that we already in.
We can make this multifaceted decisions, which not only make us resilient and adaptive, but more transformative. And so that's how , whether we're working with, whether we're talking with slam poets and training, or we're talking to an organization, that's how we're going to address foresight with them. I want to tell your audience this, like this past week, we were approached by an organization that wants to, oh, we're so excited that we want you to do foresight with us. We're so excited and we couldn't take it. It wasn't even, we didn't sit around and think about it. We couldn't take it because the aim is unethical. And so somebody can certainly say isn't that, I know in the foresight field, a lot of academics, the aim of all corporate foresight is unethical. And again, that it takes me back to is that true? Because we're really working with people. I can tell you the ones that are doing foresight, the vast majority of these organizations, they want to make a difference. They're trying to change things. That's why they're doing it. But that's different from just doing something that's completely unethical in the first place and you can't work with, so ethics is critical to our futures consciousness, and that can't happen without co-creative collaborative.
Peter Hayward: Lovely. Frank, it's always great to catch up and bounce off one another, some more dancing was necessary. So thank you for taking some time out to do a few more spins with Futurepod and the community.
Frank Spencer: Peter, it's always amazing to talk with you. You have always been a great mentor and inspiration to me from afar. Of course we, like we spoke last time. I think the last time we saw one, another face to face was many moons ago, but it doesn't matter because you still been there and Futurepod's been there. And even before Futurepod, the inspiration you've given me over the years has been amazing. So it's an honor to speak with you always I'll always be here for you and for your audience. And I'm so excited to see where Futurepod continues to go in the years ahead.
Peter Hayward: Thanks Frank.
Peter Hayward: This has been another production from Futurepod. Futurepod is a not-for-profit venture. We exist through the generosity of our supporters. If you would like to support Futurepod, go to the Patreon link on our website. Thank you for listening. Remember to follow us on Instagram and Facebook. This is Peter Hayward saying goodbye for now.