Leah Zaidi is an award-winning strategic foresight practitioner and worldbuilding expert, with over 15 years of corporate experience. She has worked with prestigious organizations such as the United Nations, Stanford University, and various Fortune 100 companies.

Her articles and research papers have over 75K+ reads, and her reports have been downloaded by 1000+ organizations. She has an MDes in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD University.

Interviewed by: Reanna Browne

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LinkedIn: Leah Zaidi

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Transcript

Reanna Browne: what are the three trends that really matter?

How do we reckon with the realities of the times that we are in? And how can we use stories to build new worlds?

I'm Reanna Browne. And I'm your host for FuturePod today.

Leah Zaidi: It doesn't matter what the project is if you haven't thought about those three things, you're not actually prepared for the future, you're going to miss something really critical. That's going to impact you. And what I've seen play out over the last few years since putting that out is like, reaffirmed all of that…

Reanna Browne: That's today's guest, Leah Zaidi award-winning futurist designer and world builder. Yep. You heard right world builder. It's a new idea even to me, but one that I'll now be including in all the work that I do, but I'll let Leah fill you in our world-building as well as three trends that matter how they might play out and the challenges of telling stories of emerging futures in anxious times.

Leah, welcome to FuturePod.

Leah Zaidi: Thank you for having me.

Question 1

Reanna Browne: Let's go back before we go forward. So how did you find your way to the futures and foresight community?

Leah Zaidi: So this is my second career. My first one was in marketing. I used to be a marketer and I sometimes describe myself as a recovering marketer because I left that behind. And it never quite leaves you, no matter how much you wanna get away from it. But I was in marketing for about 10 years and in that time I started to write science fiction, cuz that was really where my passion and interest was going.

And so I spent years, working on storytelling and world-building, and then I started to connect with other writers and I was getting into this place of, working with writers, doing world building and editing, alongside them. And then I. Went and did a class, a masterclass under, a well-known Canadian writer. And along the way, I kind of just realized like, that's really where my passion and interest is. So I began to look into programs that were being offered that were more along the lines of that and I came across the fact that Carl Schrader and Madeline Ashby, who are both science fiction writers and both went to the OCAD program had done this program called strategic foresight.

And I realized like, if it's good enough for them, it's probably good enough for me. So I think it was about two weeks before the application was due. I went and put my application together in a hurry and submitted it and it went from there. So I went and did the OCAD program and then fell into strategic foresight from there.

Did my thesis on world-building, which was like the culmination of years worth of thinking and work that had been going on in the science fiction writer space that I was, involved in. And, that's now my expertise. So now here I am.

Reanna Browne: And where is it that you are now? What's the work that you've been doing recently since you moved into this space?

Leah Zaidi: Yeah. So the work is, a little all over the place, but it is essentially the foundations of strategic foresight, which is really doing the upfront research and understanding the change that's emerging, then constructing scenarios, and then going into the strategy work. And sometimes that includes a little bit of the experiential futures work with the design fiction work, where you're creating artifacts and situations from the future, to help people understand and grasp changes that might lie ahead. But other than that, it's really doing strategic foresight.

Reanna Browne: I'm really interested in this idea that most of us have some underpinning kind of practice that's wanting to emerge through our work over time. Like a thread almost that has probably always been there connecting career decisions together.

What do you think that thread is for you?

Leah Zaidi: I think it is partly the communication piece of getting people to understand, these sort of complex changes that are happening in the world. When you're a marketer, you're not getting people to understand complex changes, you're trying to sell them something and I got pretty good at that. Getting people to sort of understand what was at stake for the work that I was doing in the marketing space.

Um, but really I realize that I'm actually pretty good at communicating some of these very complex things in very simple ways that people can grasp, to the point where it sometimes sounds obvious. So if I had that ability, then I want to, for my own personal sake and for the sake of where things are going in the world, be able to speak to things that are, I think, more important and more pertinent to what's happening in the world.

Reanna Browne: So story being a key thread, then that ties together your backgrounds?

Leah Zaidi: Exactly and across pretty much everything that I've done. I think storytelling has really been at the heart of it for me like this is not something like I, I think, for futurists, we tend to naturally gravitate towards science fiction. And I know that there's like a lot of sort of desire and appetite to sort of understand the vision through these more artistic visions.

For me, it's really been like at the core of my passion. Like this is something I spend day in and day out studying and understanding. Like I will spend hours researching what other people have said about world-building and storytelling and come up with my own ideas and spend months working on frameworks and ideas and whatever, it is that's related to this space just because it's really something that I'm passionate about.

And I think that it is also something that we need more of in the world, particularly when we start looking at things like the decline of democracy and climate change and other such issues. and the other thing I'll throw into the mix, I've actually never shared this with anybody, I think except for Stuart Candy who was my thesis advisor. I started to do a second degree in philosophy, and I think that's where some of this other thinking got shaped around complex issues and getting at the, the core of what a problem is.

I never ended up completing it cuz I realized I didn't want to be a professor of philosophy. But it was something that I took away and I think that mix of creative and critical thinking is what's so important to futures thinking like those are the two fundamental skills that sit at the bottom of all foresight work.

So, honing those over the years is really, I think what has allowed me to do the work that I do now.

Question 2

Reanna Browne: Let's jump to your carrier bag now, or in other words, the tools and methods or frameworks that you tend to lean on that informs your work.

Are there any that you'd like to share with our listeners?

Leah Zaidi: Sure. So I, I think of myself as a tool maker and breaker at times, like I like to create frameworks and usually that comes out of a need, that I'm seeing. So when I find that I'm trying to do a certain type of work and something is missing and I can't find something that fits it. That's when I start going into tool making.

So I use the typical processes and tools that everybody else is kind of using in this space. Working with signals and using, things like futures wheel and then working with scenarios and using generic images. And then in addition to that, I have my own tools that I've created. So I have my world-building model, the min spec, for future-proofing.

I've recently released. My anti archetypes. And then I talk about things like polytopes. And so I incorporate all of that into the sort of base layer of foresight work. And then use that to build the work that I do,, in a way that, to me feels more compelling and more systems-oriented.

And my goal is always to be more comprehensive, more robust, more rigorous with the work.

Reanna Browne: I'd love to unpack a couple of those tools. Can you tell us a little bit more about world-building and its use cases and how you've applied it?

Leah Zaidi: Sure. So, um, this is something I've been like a hammer, uh, going at a nail with, but I think it's really. Important to inject, systems thinking into future's work, because we're not thinking broadly about the systemic issues and how they all connect to each other. Then we're likely not doing very rigorous work.

So the world-building model came out of my thesis that I did on, transition design and looking at how the practices of science fiction authors, like not the stories that they create, but the process by which they create. Could lend themselves to real world strategic thinking. And so in kind of exploring everything.

What I landed on was that there are seven elements of any given system. That are always at play, whether or not we pay attention to them, whether or not we give them, enough attention, whether or not they're highlighted or suppressed, the seven are always in play. And so, um you have to consider all seven when you're going about and doing any sort of work, whether you're looking at an organization or whether you're looking at a complex problem. So the seven that I landed on were the political, the economic, the philosophical, the environmental, the scientific and technological. We always tend to look at technology. We ignore the science, um, the artistic, another area that gets ignored and then the social.

And these seven elements I tend to look at from a first principle's perspective. So I don't just wanna look at democracy when I'm thinking about politics. I wanna look at systems of governance and power and rules and how that sort of can be broken down in different ways and then rebuilt and reconstructed in different ways as well.

Reanna Browne: And is this a framework that can become part of a bigger bricolage of other methods, processes, and tools?

Leah Zaidi: I kind of embed that into everything. It's like a stackable model that you can mesh with other things. When I do signals work, I will look at a signal from all seven of those angles and consider like, what is at play there. When I do scenario work, all of my scenarios have all seven elements, considered in every single scenario.

So what that ends up doing is that it creates a more robust picture of the issue that you're looking at. And it allows you to extract a lot more information insight from like a single piece of information. And so that sort of thinking allows you to then go to the strategy phase with a lot more at the table in terms of, you know, what you're looking at, what your data points are, the robustness of your prototypes, that all kind of factors in towards the end.

And I'm pretty insistent on looking at those things because I found just in my own practice over the years, that I've spotted things that other people haven't, because I'm looking at things that other people are not. And I've been told through feedback from people around the world about using the work that the work gets better when you start to embed this model into it, that suddenly there's a richness to it that maybe wasn't there before.

Reanna Browne: in an oversimplified way. I often think of the work that we do in the future space as akin to an optometrist in a kind of metaphorical sense of providing new lenses or sharpening the clarity of lenses or different depths of vision, blind spots, but also even kind of looking back in at our own interior lenses.

Can you tell me a little bit more about this intersection between story and world-building?

Leah Zaidi: So um, any, story you've encountered has a world associated with it, right? So there's always a world at play. You can have a world without a story, but you can't have a story without a world. There's always some sort of contextual background to it. And when storytellers create worlds. Sometimes they will start with the world.

So they'll start coming up with elements of the world and then think about the story that may might be placed within. And then other times they might create a story or a character and then build a world around them either way. You're getting a world of some degree or another.

In some cases you might have authors or creatives that go very deep into world-building, so they really wanna explore the richness of it. Tolkien comes to mind. There's a new Tolkin show coming out. Tolkin wrote tombs on his work, uh, created, you know, an entire background for, uh, Lord of the rings in the Hobb.

That we can explore further and can live in further, uh, star wars is another good example of like a world that you can continue to tell story after story, after story. And there's so many different perspectives, many of which still haven't been explored. And so a world is really just that container, that many different stories can take place within a world-building to me where that intersect happens in the strategic side of things versus the creative side of things, is that when we do foresight work, we're essentially building these future worlds, right? So we're creating these containers for people to occupy, and then there's many different stories that can emerge within them. So when I think of scenarios, that's what.

Scenarios are to me and a really good scenario should be, not only futures oriented, not only based in evidence and data, but should also be comprehensive in how it thinks about the system and should also incorporate design into it as well. And so there should be these rich constructs that many people, many stories can occupy, in a really good scenario is one that many people can find themselves.

Reanna Browne: Ah, so we're really talking about context or the rules of the game. And then stories are the element where we add a character human non-human and how they may navigate that context?

Leah Zaidi: Exactly. So if you think about the very traditional strategic foresight work, you create scenarios and then a organization has to think about what it means for them strategically. Right? So a really good scenario set. Doesn't describe the organization. It describes the ecosystem. That many different organizations could potentially occupy and your job as the organization then is to step into that construct and understand what that means for you and what opportunities lie ahead, what challenges lie ahead.

And so that's essentially what a scenario is. It's this construct, this world, this future world that you get to step into and occupy, and then step out of. So the world-building context to is really critical because the better the world is that I create the more the client that I'm working with can take out of it essentially.

Reanna Browne: Brilliant. I really look forward to sharing, the world-building tools with our listeners and also applying it myself. Let's dig into another part of your carrier bag. Is there another tool or framework or process that you'd like to share?

Leah Zaidi: Sure. So I, a few years ago introduced a min spec for future-proofing, which was originally situated in an article called the only three trends that matter. So this was essentially like, no matter what you're doing, what you're working on, you have to consider three things. You have to think about, the environment and how it's potentially degrading, or is, enabled through sustainability. You need to think about democracy, justice inequality, which is essentially social stability. And you need to think about emerging tech. And at the time I said, particularly AI, because that was the next thing that was going to really challenge us. So, it doesn't matter what the project is if you haven't thought about those three things, you're not actually prepared for the future, you're going to miss something really critical. That's going to impact you. And what I've seen play out over the last few years since putting that out is like, reaffirmed all of that for me.

These are the three areas that need to be thought about because when these three areas go wrong, they become highly destabilizing and super problematic. We're seeing the effects of climate change. Start to play out now and accelerate at a level that we didn't think were gonna hit for many, many years.

Social stability is so critical. It can be exacerbated by climate issues. It can also feed into climate issues. And then emerging tech is really almost getting out of hand for us in terms of not understanding what's coming next. Having, challenges, understanding what the implications for people are. Emerging tech then factors into the other two things around an environment and social stability and will continue to play a critical role in those things going forward. So that to me was almost like the priority areas for the field. I felt like all work need to address those things in some capacity or another, or we're going to be leaving ourselves vulnerable to things down the road.

Reanna Browne: Yeah, there's a real tension in this work there, isn't it. So it's the skin and the game thing I think for me. So the emphasis for us is often on holding this space for participants, where they often shape than the domain of enquiry and what gets spoken about and what changes we elevate and talk about.

But that often comes at a cost of course, is that we tend to then avoid talking about those deep, real changes around climate change working poverty inequality, for instance. So part of this is that where is the skin in the game for us if we are not having the conversations that we inherently know, we should be?

Leah Zaidi: Yeah. And when I originally proposed them, I talked about them in terms of trends. And at the time it was like, okay, this is the language that I think mass market can absorb. Cause I'm not really concerned about the futurists getting this I'm concerned about everybody else getting it. Like I want the organizations that I work with to pick up on it easily.

And when you sort of whittle things down in that way, it becomes. A little easier to engage with that material. I don't have to think about anything and everything all the time, but I do need to prioritize some of the things that I think. And so now when I look back at it, I would describe those three things as drivers, there are forces in the world that, are very hard to intervene in that are very difficult to derail and require a lot of complexity in not only in how we think about them, but how we address them.

And so if we ignore critical drivers that are really fueling the world at this point, we're going to be In a lot of trouble very, very soon. So it's about trying to get everybody on the same board, almost on the same page and addressing some of these issues that are coming up.

Question 3

Reanna Browne: What are some of the possible futures that you see emerging around you?

Leah Zaidi: Um, right. So I, I do think the number one issue challenge priority needs to be climate change. I don't know if people really understand this issue. I'm not convinced all futurists understand this issue and what the cascading implications of this is going to be. It's the thing that keeps me up at night more than anything else.

So I, I think understanding and communicating around climate change, what it means for us, the future that we're headed towards is probably going to be a key priority for all of us to be thinking about as we go forward. And then, of course, there's other things that are probably not as alarming, but still critical, and need to be factored in or things like the metaverse, which is emerging and what that means for society.

And making sure we get a handle on that before again, becomes a runaway train, like some. Things have in the past, like social media platforms, or, really trying to understand where, uh, democracy is going and what democracy looks like, in the age of disinformation and misinformation campaigns.

So these are, I think some of the critical things that we need to start thinking about. Um, And then I spend time thinking about how the field is doing and where it might go in the next little while. And I think we're headed towards an interesting point cuz we kind of reached an inflection point and I'm interested in seeing how it plays out.

Reanna Browne: Let's play these forward a little what are some of the ways that you think that these changes could play out?

Leah Zaidi: Right. So, Climate change is likely going to destabilize democracy further. So we know in terms of the data around how weather and climate affect people. So heat, for instance, creates conditions for violence. We see escalated violence when there's greater heat. We know that a single standard deviation in weather can create the conditions for civil unrest.

So things like that are probably going to be highly destabilizing and are going to challenge democracy more. And then if you throw in like, an issue like the metaverse into the mix and what that could potentially look like. That's a technology that is probably going to add quite a bit of nuance. In some cases, it can help, alleviate some of the challenges that we're experiencing.

So having really powerful, strong, robust simulations is going to be a, like a necessary tool for fighting climate change. So for instance, if we look at what Singapore is doing right. Singapore is using simulations to understand what the optimal positions for solar panel should be. And the fact that they're doing that is again, critical to fighting things like climate change and understanding like how can we start to think about renewable energy and urban planning and, how we're fighting some of these issues in a way that is, effective and data-driven.

So that, is gonna be one of the mixes that could potentially. In terms of democracy, the spread of misinformation and disinformation is highly problematic, not just because of the stories and the texts that are going around, but because we can't read images, so images and videos play a significant role in spreading, a lot of falsehoods.

And when we start to step into simulations where we have incredibly powerful visuals and robust simulations, how are we gonna counteract disinformation in context when we can't even do it for things like a video as of now. So there are some big questions that we don't really have answers to, but we need to start prototyping some of these solutions or conditions for.

Reanna Browne: What about hopeful futures? Are there any seeds of hope that you see emerging in the present?

Leah Zaidi: I think there are plenty of seeds of hopeful futures around. I think the challenges that we're not necessarily creating the right context for those seeds to grow within. And I think that's kind of what they need. They need space to land and then spread. On my side of things I think those futures belong right alongside the others.

Like you always have to think of, the spectrum of futures that are emerging but you also have to think of the spectrum of positive futures that are emerging because there's nuances to that as well. And it's a bit of a mistake to think that, a future or a vision of the future that we think is positive is going to be positive for everybody.

So there's some nuance that probably needs to be considered there. In terms of the work that I'm doing, I have a couple of things that address that directly. One is the anti archetypes, which are. A response to systems archetypes that were developed by people much smarter than me. I was looking at this framework, that is used in systems design and systems thinking around archetypes, common patterns that play out within organizations or within systems. And they usually are problems. So things like success to the successful, which is an archetype where, somebody gains a little bit of privilege for success that allows them to gain more and then gaining more feeds back into them and just perpetuates a cycle, like a virtuous circle.

So we see people who are winners continuing to win, essentially. And the set of archetypes, I just thought like, looking at them like, yes, they're good at like surfacing problems, but we probably need. The opposite, which is like radically thinking of new solutions and what those could potentially look like.

So I created the anti archetypes to think about what super functional systems might look like and what hope might look like from a systemic lens. And what happens when we start thinking about the future? And so my response to something like success to the successful was success to the marginalized.

So what happens when we redirect resources to marginalized groups and create a perpetuating cycle there? What does it mean to, have fixes that fuel? So a fix that fails essentially is like us trying to put patchwork solutions to. Issues. And then continuing to fail every single time, cuz we're not addressing the root problem, fixes that fuel are something like, we're addressing a problem, but it actually creates offshoots that are positive and further help us solve that problem.

So if I think of an example of fixes that fuel, it might be something like as simple as planting trees. So planting trees is good for climate change. But it has a, another benefit which is mental health. It improves mental health of communities. It can, improve overall health of communities. And now we can, actually look at the research that says that there's a quantifiable benefit to healthcare systems when we plant trees and communities.

And so additional, benefit is probably something that we wanna capture and it presents an opportunity for us to go make a case for planting tree planting trees, for instance, with, cities and with different communities and saying, Hey, this is a solution that has multiple benefits behind it. So essentially the anti archetypes are there to create those positive visions and to help think about how we can create very functional systems.

Reanna Browne: It's back to that lenses thing again, isn't it that when you add a different lens in front of any enquiry or whatever you're looking at, then that starts to open up a whole broader range of possibility and challenge?

Leah Zaidi: Exactly. And it's, um, I have this one anecdote from, the, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, tying it back to storytelling because I can't help it. One of the most brilliant things, about that book is that how it explores the relationship between question and answer, right? So you get the answer 42 and.

They're like, what does 42 mean? Like it's life, the universe and everything, but what's the question that led to 42 and then it's like, okay, you have to come back for the question because I need to Pondo on what that is. But the philosophical point at the heart of that is that question and answer are inherently tied to each other and knowledge of one implies knowledge of the other.

So when you have an answer like 42 that tells you something, it should theoretically tell you something about the question that you asked. So I think that's what it comes down to for me, it's like, always about understanding both the question and the answer and how tweaking one can change the other.

Question 4

Reanna Browne: Now here's an interesting question. How is it that you describe the work you do to others?

Leah Zaidi: So I, I tend to escalate up in my answers depending on where people are at, in the conversation. So, , at a very fundamental level, I describe it as data analytics. So I look at data that, is a little bit more. Qualitative in nature rather than quantitative. And I'm using that to understand and anticipate change.

So there's data out there that suggests that things might go in a different direction and a different trajectory than the one that we're on. And I'm essentially looking at That data to understand where things might go next. And my job then is to look at where things might go next so that you understand where you should go next.

Reanna Browne: How do you tie threads between the data analytic component and the storytelling component of the work that you do?

Leah Zaidi: I talk about creating evidence-based stories. Right. So I don't do science fiction and I'm not creating things that come out of nowhere. I'm looking at what the data is saying when you put it all together and the story that the data is telling. So when you weave those little bits of evidence together, a picture starts to emerge.

That's a little bit more complex than nuance. And for me, when I create these sort of scenarios or create, visions of the future, They tend to be based on a lot of evidence. I don't always show all the evidence and I don't always put it in front of people, but there's usually like a very long list of evidence saying, this is why I think this could potentially be a possibility in the future.

So it's always data-driven stories and it's always, evidence-based stories.

Question 5

Reanna Browne: Our last question is an open one, and I'd really like to connect it back to your practice that ties together foresight and storytelling. What immediately came to mind for me was the Greek mythology tale of Cassandra, who was given the power of prophecy.

Actually, I think it was a curse that would bring her to frustration and despair. So Cassandra could see into the future, but of course, no one wanted to hear it. What have you learned about telling difficult stories that reckon with reality?

Leah Zaidi: It can be quite frustrating. I imagine a lot of practitioners feel this frustration because. For me personally, I've spotted a lot of the challenges that have happened in the world. Well, beforehand, and it it ranged from things like, oh, we're headed for a significant systems' breakdown very soon.

I don't know exactly what that's going to be, but I think something's coming up, to, I think there's going to be like a Trump inside militia attack at some point, because he lost the presidency. So being able to spot those things, but then not having the ability to. Effect change has been a significant frustration.

And I think it's just part of the battle of like demonstrating over and over again, like there's value in this. Here's what you lost dead on by not thinking about this last issue. Let's make sure we don't make that mistake again. And so it's been a bit of a journey, I think, in trying to, prove the efficacy of the work, which is a challenge that we all have and then demonstrate like why as an individual, I'm the right person to be doing that work.

And when I'm the right person to be doing that work. Cause I'm not always the right person too. So it's finding that sort of place. And I think for me, this is going to be, an ongoing challenge in the field. We get caught up in this language of possibility a lot, which makes sense for what we do, because we're looking at the future as a spectrum and not like a destination.

We're thinking about the many things that could emerge. We're looking at change from many different lenses. I think sometimes we do it ourselves and others, a disservice by getting too caught up in that, because there are certain things that are more likely to happen than others. And we have to take a stance on some of those things.

So there's no denying the data on climate change. Like when I do work now, there is no piece of work that gets done that ignores the reality of climate change anymore. We just can't do that. And to do that would almost be anti-science at this point. Part of the reason why I'm so adamant about using my world-building model is because to date, it is still the only one that outwardly acknowledges science and the role of science and not just technology.

So we need to get away a little bit from the possibility of rhetoric into some of the more plausibility things and the probability things, and using a little bit more of that language as well, because. We're not doing anybody any favors, and we're certainly not doing the field any favors.

When we start to go into the space of like Yeah we can have a future without climate change. And like, here's the transformation it's like, based on what, what is that based on, the data doesn't support it. And if you're going to put those images out in the world, then you have to explain how you got there.

You have to show people. What allowed that to happen? So a little bit more of that probably needs to happen in our space and we probably have to offset some of the, the initial things that we've kind of laid down in terms of the future can be anything it's it's like well, within a certain range yes. Given some of the challenges that we're experiencing.

Reanna Browne: How do you think we have these conversations that reckon with reality in a world of increasing fear?

Leah Zaidi: I think it's just a matter of standing your ground, and doing it. Like I'm not going to shy away from putting those harsher images out there.

I've been dragged at times. Like I started talking about dystopias in 2019, cuz I kept saying like, look, something is coming. Like we need to talk about the system's breakdown cuz that's what dystopias are. And those are really important. And at that time everybody was on this like positive futures kick.

It was like everything. Is good and it's gonna be transformative and all of this stuff is gonna happen. And then of course the pandemic happened and we lived the dystopia. So I, I think there needs to be some of that. And I've gotten quite a bit of flack for it over the years. I've gotten flack for, leaning into the dystopic angle.

I've gotten flack for suggesting that we shouldn't talk about 1.5 degrees anymore. Like I think that's, we're reaching a point where that's almost immoral. So it's. Yes, there's going to be pushback, but you have a responsibility to go forward anyways, because I think if the bad thing could happen and you choose to not do something about it.

You choose not to say anything about it, and you act out of a place of fear. You're just doing a disservice to everybody. There is a moral component to this work. There does need to be integrity to this work, and if you preach certain values and you don't live them, that's a massive problem. I question futurists who talk about certain things and then don't follow up with that through their actions. And I think we kind of have to get to a place now where we're living, the things that we talk about.

Reanna Browne: So we need to have these conversations, but where do you think, or how do you think we have these conversations that help reckon with reality?

Leah Zaidi: So some of that is identifying where those leverage points are, where you can have that conversation for change. And they're not equal and they're, non-existent everywhere, right? Some, some things are more, impactful than others. And we probably have to go about. What we're doing in a bit more of a concentrated way.

Part of the reason why I do storytelling and why I emphasize it so much is because stories have a way of engaging us in that material in a manner that facts and figures just can't. So your brain reacts differently to being told a story that contains a moral lesson than it does to the moral lesson being told to you directly.

And so embedding some of these ideas in these hard to have conversations in those constructs, I think can be very powerful. And I think then following it up with, okay. Yes, there's the bad thing. And the, the potential dystopic future that could come up, but here's the antidote in terms of the solutions that are floating around in the world.

And I'm of the opinion that I think we have all the answers we need. I think we have a lot of solutions to counteract a lot of the problems. I just don't think we're giving them enough attention, enough funding, enough room to sort of grow. And so hopefully when the right context emerges and hopefully the right context is not one of a total and complete breakdown.

We need to start identifying some of these solutions and empowering them so that they're able to flourish, and offset some of these negative things. I know that there's some futurists out there who will say like, oh, the world needs more imagination. I don't agree with that. I think there's a lot of imagination out there.

And I think a lot of people have really great ideas. I do think that we have entrenched systems of power. People who benefit from the world being exactly the way it is. And so giving some room and space and, power to those other things is probably what needs to happen.

Reanna Browne: I often talk about this idea of the politics of the future. We shape our images of the future and thereafter they shape us, but we could argue that the loudest voices shape our images of the future and thereafter, those images shape us.

How do you think we navigate that in the world that we're in, in terms of who gets to claim the space to tell these stories of the future?

Leah Zaidi: It can be really challenging, right? Because when you have a dominant voice, someone like let's say Elon Musk or Donald Trump advocating for a particular type of future counteracting, that can be quite difficult. Part of the issue is that we need to acknowledge the fact that other people do have visions that are radically different from ours.

We tend to, as futurists be like very bright, happy, and shiny in terms of like we'll have social progress and equality. And everybody will, benefit from things like universal, basic income. Like we get into those sort of conversations, not realizing that no, that's not a preferred future for everybody.

There are some people who look at that and think that is the absolute worst thing that can happen. And so if we're unwilling to acknowledge like that, there are different preferred futures out there and they don't necessarily match our vision of the future. We're not gonna even be able to have that conversation.

So I think it's like getting down to some of those really fundamental pieces of our thinking and starting to challenge. And then thinking from the ground up in terms of like, what does this actually mean? And then going back to that communication piece of like, okay, if you're creating this scenario where this particular type of preferred future that not everybody is on board with is going to come up, what's the selling point for the people who don't agree with that future, where do they find themselves within it?

And how do you bring them on board? And that's the harder work than the actual creating of the vision? I think the change work is the harder work.

Reanna Browne: Absolutely agree it's the, what happens come Monday? How do we actually act on this? On that note? I have this underpinning principle in the work that I do that, it should be able to help people come Monday. What can they do right now? With what they have. Do you have any insights or anything that you'd like to share with our audience in terms of what they could start doing or thinking come Monday?

Leah Zaidi: I think the easiest thing to start with is probably expanding your tool kit. Which I, and I say that as someone who's totally biased and again, like loves tools and frameworks, like that would be the place that I would start. And I suggest that partly because I think we get caught in a rut of using the same models and frameworks all the time, which again goes back to that question and answer dilemma.

So if you're constantly applying the same framework to problems, you're constantly going to be producing things that only that framework allows. And so breaking some of our tools and rethinking them from a fundamental level can lead to new thinking. I like indulging in tools because I'm of the mindset that if I create something that's useful to me, then imagine what a thousand other people could potentially do with it.

I know that I cannot possibly address every single one of the world's problems by myself. I probably cannot even address a single problem by myself, given the complexity of the issues that we're dealing with. But if a thousand of us are starting to work on it, then we're probably gonna get somewhere a lot faster.

And we're gonna bring all sorts of nuance and perspectives from each of our lived experiences into it. So I think to me, that would be the starting point of like start expanding out what you're actually using and then start challenging those. First principle assumptions that you're holding. So write down to the fact of like, should we be talking about possibilities.

Like when can you actually make a prediction? Because sometimes you can, some things are predictable. Like climate change is going to be bad is a very fundamental statement. But it is something that's entirely predictable based on the data that we have right now. So we may not be able to say what the nuances of climate change are just yet, but we can say some bad things are going to happen if this problem continues. And so working from those foundations, we can start to break some of our thinking.

Reanna Browne: So this is about expanding the toolkit, but also beyond the boundaries of the practice or the discipline, perhaps.

Leah Zaidi: Yeah, and I. I'm a big fan of stacking tools. I think some of our methods are too simple and too deductive to actually address the challenges that we are applying them. If you think about the history of foresight work like this work was not initially designed for complex problems, it was designed for complicated problems.

So if you look at like the sort of classifications and systems thinking, complex problems or things like climate change, Complicated problems are like, how do we increase profitability in the future? So that corporate, the corporate heritage that we have of scenarios and of creating these constructs.

For organizations like Royal Dutch shell, which is where this kind of work was born out of, that was designed for complicated problems. It created complex problems in the process of, the things and the solutions that these organizations implemented, but they weren't trying to address those.

And so if our tools and the, processes that we're applying to everything. Also don't have complexity. We're going to continue to struggle to apply what we have to the challenges that we're trying to resolve again, cuz they were not designed for that initially.

Reanna Browne: Absolutely Leah, this has been such a rich and fascinating and insightful conversation. I feel like we could continue to talk for hours. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your insights in particular your insights around what's emerging and some of the tools and frameworks that you've been using. Lastly on behalf of the community, thank you so much for joining FuturePod.

Leah Zaidi: Thank you for having me.

Reanna Browne: Today's guest was Leah Zaidi, futurist designer and world builder. Before we go I just wanted to highlight a couple of her brilliant articles. Polytopias, Anti-archetypes, World building, Building brave new worlds, science fiction, and transition design and Min Spec, the only three trends that matter a minimum specification. All of Leah's articles will be available in our show notes.

I hope you got as much out of today's conversation as I did.

FuturePod is a not-for-profit venture. We exist through the generosity of our supporters. If you'd like to support the pod, please check out our Patreon link on the website. I'm Reanna Browne. Thanks for joining us today.