Doris Viljoen is the Director of the Institute of Futures Research at the Stellenbosch Business School in South Africa and she explains why she has the coolest job in the world and about our responsibility to do good work that grows our field.
Interviewed by: Peter Hayward
Links
Stellenbosch Business School https://www.stellenboschbusiness.ac.za/
Institute for Futures Research https://www.stellenboschbusiness.ac.za/institute-futures-research
Transcript
Peter Hayward: It can be hard to get opportunities to demonstrate the value of foresight to decison-makers. Often we can feel that work is scarce. Maybe work is scarce because if we only focus on the task at hand we might miss how our work might grow the opportunity for future work.
Doris Viljoen: I think our responsibility as people that are facilitating foresight is to do Good work. To really make sure that the factors we bring, the process we facilitate, the tools we select, whatever we create there must be responsible. We have to look at really doing good work because commercially you probably get one chance if you mess it up. Not only you will not get invited back but any other people that want to do foresight work is also not going to be invited through the door. So not just for our own benefit, but that of all the other practitioners in the field.
Peter Hayward: That is my guest today on FuturePod. Doris Viljoen who is the Director at the Institute of Futures Research at the Stellenbosch Business School in South
Welcome to FuturePod, Doris.
Doris Viljoen: Thank you very much, Peter.
It's an honor and a privilege to be here.
Peter Hayward: It's a well overdue honor on my part. I can remember Stellenbosch when I was still at Swinburne and the course popped up Were you there when the actual course started?
I was out there in the world doing many other things. Our academic programs started in 1998. I was quite a bit younger in 1998 and still doing consulting work out there. So no.
Okay. It had always been a thing, in my other hat, the APF Best Student Work.
I was very aware of the work coming out of your university. So it was well overdue that we finally speak to someone from your great institution. Welcome to FuturePod and lead into the first question, which we've already hinted at. What's your story, Doris? How did you get involved with the Futures in Forsight community?
Doris Viljoen: Peter, I, after school I studied a business degree. Actually I started wanting to be an auditor, but very soon realized, checking other people's books is going to maybe be a little bit boring. Apologies to all the very good and necessary auditors out there. So I switched to strategy and economics, and loved it.
I majored in strategy and economics. I did postgrads in education, business and project management. As you can hear, I'm a born nerd and I love to learn new things. So I worked in consulting and executive development all the time. Trying to keep a little bit of a balance between actually doing consulting work and then doing a little bit of teaching on the side, always on contract basis.
And I think I was always interested in emerging shifts. What is moving and shifting that could influence business? Most of the time, a business focus and what is moving, what is shifting, how should business models adapt, how should strategies adapt to emerging shifts and things. So I did a lot of consulting on business and business models and strategy and later on ended up in feasibility studies for large capital projects.
Organizations that are wondering whether they should invest billions and billionsin establishing a large capital thing and whether that thing will be feasible equals making money over 30, 40, 50, 100 years. And that's when I realized that my beautiful Excel sheets can only capture certain things, the stuff that can actually be counted..
I could make assumptions and make projections of a 2 percent increase or a 3 percent decrease, but I realised that there were many other things that also mattered, but that I couldn't put into my Excel sheet. So I started creating these narratives to say there are also these important things and then realizing that people actually just went for the graph that the Excel sheet gave us.
And then, serendipity happened., I didn't know that a thing like Futures Studies existed, but I found it. I was asked to do an executive development course for Stellenbosch Business School and then realized that they had an academic program in Futures Studies. And when I read more, I thought: “Oh, these are my people!”
Futures Studies were what I intuitively have been doing. And there's an actual academic qualification that helps. To enrol was a no brainer. I just started consulting more so that I could have enough money to start doing the course. I started doing the courses, first the postgrad and then the master's. I was lucky enough that a position opened up soon after my graduation from the master's course and I joined the Institute for Futures Research (IFR).
The IFR is a commercial unit within Stellenbosch Business School where the academic programs are done. And then not very long after joining the IFR, I also started teaching on the academic programs. And that's how I found Futures. I'm home.
Peter Hayward: Who were the names of the people that were in that Institute when you started?
Doris Viljoen: Professor Philip Spies.
He was the first director of the institute, but also was still teaching until the other day. I still sat in his classes. He is now happily farming, but still very involved, checking up on us, whether we still staying within the lines kind of thing.
The IFR was Celebrating its 50th birthday this year in 2024, and obviously we invite him over to come and tell us stories from the early days. So, one person is Professor Phillips Spies and the other is Professor Andre Roux, he was the one that designed the academic program, got it approved through all the big hoops that it had to jump through, and has been involved in the academic program since its inception in 1998.
Prof Andre Roux is still the head of the academic programs at the moment.. And Andre also headed up the Institute for Futures Research for very many years. So those were, I think, the two big people.
Peter Hayward: So again, a bit like me, you started in very much the business side, economic accounting, as you say the world that we could count, and then you discovered this whole other world of narratives and interiors and values and hopes and fears.
Yes. How did that kind of journey. Work with you.
Doris Viljoen: It was so powerful and it was so confirming to see that there is an actual field with real theories, with real frameworks and things that I wanted to practice intuitively that there was actual grounding for it..
I was a quick convert and very loyal to the field and started reading everything . Professor Spies always prescribed Bertrand de Juvenel's book for the principles course and Richard Slaughter's stuff. So I started reading in the field, all the big namesand it just resonated with what I wanted to do.
Peter Hayward: Can you place the field or locate it within the different kind of approaches to futures work, if you say in one corner we have, La Prospective de Juvenal, the kind of, the notion of the future is this open thing. And then of course, we then go to the American, a lot more pragmatic often, driven with still open futures, but, driving towards the pragmatic, driving towards the business. I know in Australia, again, partly because we were founded by Richard we obviously had a deep abiding interest in critical futures and then later on integral futures. So to some extent we had a foot in either camp. Where does your school sit in that sort of pantheon of approaches?
Doris Viljoen: I think we find these different pockets of approaches. There is a Northern Hemisphere, almost US based hard focus on numbers and finding the future. And if we could just better calculate, then we're going to have a view and we can build elaborate models. There's a space for that.
And then there is the approach,many times coming out of some Europe countries, where you say no, we have to just ask experts. We can't really build anything,we have to ask experts. And we see a lot of Delphi studies,where the experts let us trust their gut on an issue.
I feel more comfortable, and I think the way that we teach futures fall within critical realism, assuming that the future is malleable, multiple alternatives can be imagined, and that the present and future actions of the people involved and the actors involved within the system is going to influence that future.
And therefore, when we practice future studies we really focus not on trying to make an accurate prediction, but rather on the causal relationships between factors and how actorscould influence those factors playing out.
Peter Hayward: When I taught methods, and particularly the scenario method, one of the diversions I took in that subject was to lean heavily into the Montfleur scenario set and the work of Ultimately, Adam Kahane working with that particular group, and then, of course, where Kahane's work went into transformational scenarios, where he took the futures process into really countries that had been devastated by war and civil war and As I said, I got tremendous inspiration, and I think my students got inspired, with the Montfleur, as I used to point out to them, the actual Montfleur scenarios were actually commissioned by the, I think it was a socialist it was actually a collection of socialist economists, and yet they produce this poetic aspirational scenario set that, Actually made it into the vernacular of the day and you heard political figures talking about, we're not ostriches and all these kind of things.
Does that work feature or is it kind of something that, You draw on when you work with students?
Doris Viljoen: Oh, for sure. I use it in multiple ways. In the first place, just to show that scenario work has been pivotal and been used in our country for a long time, but I also use it for the interesting display, because so many times if you say the word scenario, the picture people have in their mind is that of a two by two.
So one of the first reasons why I usethe Montfleur scenarios is because of the interesting way in which they graphically displayed it as a road with decisions to be made. And how powerful that imagery is in communicating the scenarios, because one of our big tasks is not just to think out really cool scenarios, but to make it be able to communicate.
And then touching on what you said now, that powerful metaphor of the different kinds of birds that they used. I use it to to teach that, when you're thinking of titles for your scenarios, think of something that people would be able to recognize and resonate to, that communicates in a word, the thing that scenario stands for.
And then I also use it because so many times when people look at old scenarios that have been done a long time ago, they say, “Okay, but were they right?” And then that's a very, for me, powerful teaching moment to say, No, remember, if we say, that we want to help people to understand their roles better, hen the fair question to ask of old scenarios iss, did it help the people of the time to understand their situation and their roles better? Not, Hey, were they right? Or which one of the scenarios were right? So I use the Montfleur scenarios frequently. And those are the reasons I use them for. I like them.
Peter Hayward: Yeah. And I would imagine too, a lot of scenarios are written for the elites of a society, of a organization. And again, probably showing its socialist roots of the actual brief. I actually found a style of communication that transcended status. It transcended role. It was a scenario communication that The leaders could see themselves, but also they could be seen, and they would be seen by other people.
Doris Viljoen: Yeah,
Yeah. And it translated, I think, across so many levels, exactly what you said, because ordinary people could read it, business people could read it, people fromfrom the social sector could read it and they could see and understand. So I think as for me it is a potential thing to teach from and to hold up and say, hey, this is good work.
I really appreciate the Montfleur scenarios. Our school is not that far from the actual Montfleur venue. And in the name already it holds so much of the history. They had to gather on that farm because at that time people from different races were not even allowed in conference venues and things like that.
And Montfleur put themselves at risk and say, come have it here. And it feels long ago,but in societal terms, it's a relatively short time from then until now. To see how many things changed between from then until now, it gives a little bit of hope as well in societies that are still struggling to say, but you know what, that's where we were during the Montfleur scenarios, look where we are now just carry on, let us just make better futures.
Peter Hayward: Yeah, and Adam Kahane has been on FuturePod, one of the other pod team members managed to get Adam on for a a chat and he certainly is one of my heroes in terms of, obviously a master practitioner, but a man who. Was intensely passionate about creating better futures for everybody. So much so that he came and lived in South Africa, just to feel it, married a South African.
And yes. So I've I've pushed you out of your story question and took you straight into method. Do we want to keep going that way, Doris? So what of the sort of approaches to how you do futures what are your go to either philosophies or approaches or the kind of bedrock of your own practice?
Doris Viljoen: Like I explained now the critical realism view is the one that I feel most comfortable with. I could operate from the other perspectives, but I think that is my default position. And then the oneframework that I have found to be so useful because so many times I have to speak to audiences that have never done futures before.
So teaching in class is one thing, but trying to sell it to a board of executives or anyone like that is a little bit harder. And so there, my go to is Joe Voros's generic foresight process framework, because it doesn't look too intimidating.
What I usually do is to lead in with what this thinking about longer futures is and then I say, Oh, but now you probably think that you're doing this already What I then do with Joe's framework is to just take that foresight sandwich out on the first image.
And then you just have the inputs and the thinking, okay, what are we going to do? And the outputs into the strategy. And I say, yeah, this is what you do. And then you see them nodding and then say, okay, but what I'm pleading for is this. And then I put the whole framework on with the foresight sandwich in there.
And say, okay, but what we are saying is just pause for a minute, just say, okay. If we look at stuff happening out there, let us just go through these questions and let's just go a little bit deeper and ask what lies beneath that 2 percent increase and 3 percent decrease. Why is it happening?
Let's understand better what is going on, getting to the deeper levels of what is moving and why, and then imagining alternative ways in which this could play out. And then we go back into the normal strategy process. And in that manner, we're going to craft strategies that may remain
robust across multiple futures, and that sells it. Thank you, Joe Voros. That generic foresight process framework that has been around for a very long time is still very useful.
Peter Hayward: Joe will be delighted to hear that testimony to something that he and Maree Conway, when Maree was his boss at Swinburne and Joe worked for Swinburne University before he moved over as an academic, will make.
And that was the way that Joe and Maree started doing Foresight for the university. And yes, it is a marvelous, seemingly simple framework that also operates like a taxonomy of methods. So you can actually use it and plug in methods and you can say we want to do it differently.
Let's change the input. Let's change what we use for interpretation. Let's change how we deliver the prospection. No, it is a wonderful flexible approach and yeah. Lovely. I think you're the first guest who's actually referred to it as a method, which is Which it is a method and it's a, and an approach and a philosophy.
Doris Viljoen: Yeah.
It just captures so many things. And it was also, I think that served as a big inspiration. I have just finished developing a framework to guide and facilitate foresight projects, and that was one of the big influences into it.
Peter Hayward: Fantastic. As I like to dig a little bit deeper than that.
In terms of, as I'm very interested in The philosophical foundations of how we look at futures in terms of preference. And as there are many schools or many approaches where we can lean into the goodness of futures. How do you bring any particular approaches or ways of letting people explore futures?
Not just from a technical, what might the future be, but actually leaning into. That other notion of preference, where we move towards or we move away from futures deliberately.
Doris Viljoen: Oh, that is a lovely question. I try to always remain open to not have a pre stacked set of tools and these are my five tools and I'm going to use these five tools. I try to really sit with and spend time with people to understand why they want to do a foresight project,
and what they hope to do with it afterwards.
So spending time to really understand why they are doing it, what they hope to achieve from it, and then based on that to start stringing together tools and techniques that could be applied to assist in taking them on a journey.
So for me, a foresight project is always a learning journey. And that leans to what Professor Spies wrote in the seminal article on the effectiveness and the affectiveness of Futures Studies. That we must be effective. In other words, we must do the thing, develop the report. That is being effective. But the affectiveness refer to what we are actually doing. It is to open people's minds, and to
have them see things in a different way or see their role and how they could influence or how they should allow others to influence and who does what within a complex and adapting system.
I so like the Oxford school's way of referring to anybody participating in a scenario process. They refer to them as scenario learners and that whole concept of everybody that's involved in the process are there to learn something. And therefore, in my work, the most difficult client to work with is the one that actually just want a report in the end, and they don't really understand why they should also be involved in the thinking.
“Can't you just do the report and send it to me and tell me which one, and then I will create my strategy to get that one.” That is the hardest kind of client to work with, because they just want an answer.
Peter Hayward: Yeah, they've already made their mind up what a future would be, and they just need to know which particular future is the one that's closest to what they are going to be successful in, rather than the future being something that actually, is both made by them and to some extent makes them,
Doris Viljoen: But there is an emerging openness I'm getting very excited about that.
So there are dots of hope out there about people that are seeing that things could happen. And for me personally, what would make me happy? Make me the most happy is if we can have the hard quant model and the scenario work next to each other as the information sources for senior decision makers, not just in large corporates, but in government and everywhere else.
Nowadays, the models get more and more powerful so we can make really good models. But, only stuff that can go into a model can go into a model. And the more uncertain things make the model wobble and therefore we take it out. But that's where the interesting things come from. They also make the nicest scenarios, so if we could do scenario work with those and we do the modeling thing and then we put the two together, imagine the kind of base that decision makers could work from.
Peter Hayward: It seems to me it follows from where you just left us that experiential futures is that thing that, Stuart Candy, Jake Dungan, all that sort of group, that they've said, to some extent, If you want to move futures into the transformational learner space, then they favor the notion of designing experience, physical experience, scenarios that people walk into, the description of the artifacts, Of the future.
Yeah. Yeah. Where does that sit within what you do and what the school teaches?
Doris Viljoen: Where we teach, we try to put a really strong focus on creating those powerful narratives, creating the scenes. On the IFR side, it’s that's on my serious wishlist to have enough budget to create an experience room kind of thing.
The tech is there to start creating the kind of experiences that people could walk into and really feel and engage with things. Not having all of that budget,we try to focus on the narrative, to really write personalized stories. A while ago, we did a project for a really large client that has different kinds of facilities,
shopping malls and industrial storage facilities, etc. So we actually employed and paid a writer to write short stories and created a very interactive kind of digital thing with different shop fronts for each of the scenario stories. We crafted 12 different stories. So every door that you click on
takes you into a different place with the story that the writer wrote.
Because, shopping malls have to be many other things nowadays than just a place where you go and buy something because you have other options. And it was so beautiful. So really putting people in the situation, make them understand what is moving, what is shifting, what is changing and what is possible.
Because we think people are innovative, but sometimes they're not that innovative. And to help them to feel the future or different futures,that just puts it on a different level. But I'm excited about new technologies becoming more affordable, easier to use and being able to put people
in situations. The generative graphic programs that we have nowadays, because, futures pictures on normal sites that has pictures doesn't really communicate what we want to communicate, and nowadays you could just tell the cleverness that you want this and that and it kicks out a picture that has all of that in it.
So I'm very excited for scenario work and creating imagery for generative AI and the graphic possibilities that it has.
Peter Hayward: Yeah, I'm particularly taken, I certainly, I play with the that part, both the prose and the images. I actually go a bit further, Doris, because I actually think beauty is one of the great ways of drawing people into openness.
Doris Viljoen: Yeah, for sure. And beauty always brings up Gharajedaghi’s model on what are those things that are important for people and how does it degress in societies that are degressing. We used that model very strongly for one of the geographic areas in South Africa. We call them provinces. And one of those provincial governments
asked us to think about the futures of that province. That is an interesting conversation on scoping and what people come to ask you for, because they wanted to think about the futures from a very economic kind of way: “how do we grow the economy of our province?” That was the question. And then we said, do you want to grow the economy, or do you want to make it good for people?
And that was long conversations because we said, the way tech is moving now, we can grow the economy really fast,but the lives of people may be worse off. Rather than better off. And then they said Oh no, we have to think about the people as well. And that's when we really worked on that model of Gharajedaghi with the beauty and everything, and it worked beautifully.
Peter Hayward: Yeah. Yeah, beauty cuts two ways. One of the ways beauty can motivate is you can describe features that are not beautiful. Yes. And people respond to them because there is a lack of beauty. They may not even, they may not be able to articulate the beauty they wish, but they can generally respond quite quickly to what they don't want.
Doris Viljoen: And then they recognize no, we don't want that one. And what do we do? And in that sense, I think touching back to the framework that I've mentioned just now that I'm developing is we carry such a big responsibility. Sometimes before big projects, I literally feel the weight of that responsibility bearing really hard on me. To think what whatever we think out here now, people are going to act on that. And so I think our responsibility as people that are facilitating foresight is to do good work; to really make sure that the factors we bring, the process we facilitate, the tools we select, whatever we create there, must be responsible.
We have to look at really doing good work because commercially you probably get one chance. If you mess it up, not only you will not get invited back but any other people that want to do foresight work is also not going to be invited through the door. So not just for our own benefit, but that of all the other practitioners in the field,
I think we should be doing good work. And just because of that, I mean we've heard through academic journal articles, speeches at conferences, there is a need to do responsible work, but also to start creating stuff that, measure or assess the quality of what we are doing so that we can actually say that this is what we're doing.
And therefore, the framework that I'm developing has integrated quality assessment throughout the whole process. And I've tested it here and there and it's working quite nicely, so it tests quality on project management principles, on the effectiveness, like I explained just now, so appropriate tools and techniques for what it needs to do, also the affectiveness, so the learning journey of the participants, and then also assessing for institutional challenges and
purposes, was the facilitator good, was the resources appropriate, that kind of stuff. And to build that into the whole framework was a big and important thing for me so that we can say, yes, we are checking ourselves all the time that we are doing responsible work.
Peter Hayward: Lovely, thanks Doris. Let's pivot a little bit from the practitioner to the person, as Doris makes sense of the world around her.
What things is Doris paying attention to and why?
Doris Viljoen: So Peter, I live in South Africa, in Africa, and the attention of the world, many people, many organizations, institutions, are interested in Africa and in the global South for multiple reasons. We are seeing centers for African studies that has been longstanding at many places, but also very many new centers for African studies being established at academic institutions, global bodies, et cetera, across the world.
So a lot of interest. That's what I'm looking at. A lot of interest in Africa. And then I started thinking, okay, but why do they think we are that interesting? And there are a few reasons for it. The development corridors or the potential for development corridors across the continent. And then this question of, are we going to maybe be the beneficiaries of a demographic dividend, just because we are going to have such a lot of large numbers.
I put a question mark next to it because to be able to benefit from the demographic dividend, we need to have appropriate skills, appropriate positioning. So in that alone, there is a lot of potential work to be done. And then we are the next billionpotential consumers. Every marketer out there in the world has its eye on Africa for potential marketing opportunities.
We have some of the fastest growing cities in the world. We have the potential as a global food basket. Just because we have such a lot of arable land and we have very good indigenous knowledge.. So my wish is for more voices about Africa that comes from Africa, because we are hearing a lot of voices about Africa. Thank you to all the voices, but have a little bit of real Africa. Come here. Like you said, Adam Kahane came to Africa, to spend time here before he facilitated the scenario work..
So more voices about Africa from Africa. It's my big wish and my interest.
Peter Hayward: from our field's perspective, do you think the field, I've been very conscious of how Eurocentric the field is, the theories, the practitioners, and the names. Do you think The same potential that exists in Africa in its people and its history and its culture, its indigenous roots, its roots to the natural system, and as well as being a country that sits in precarious, so many precarious areas to create innovation.
Can that also be something that is harnessed by our field of futures and foresight?
Doris Viljoen: I think so, definitely. And I think it also puts even more of a responsibility on us to develop and to produce enough futures thinkers out there, whether they do our academic programs or whether they are just exposed to the act of thinking, because we have this continent,
it has multiple issues and problems, but it also holds immense potential. And we are in positions where we can make decisions. We are going to co-create the future of Africa. And therefore, I think we should help with futures thinking by producing enough graduates, but also creating the spaces to have conversations about the things that people are uncomfortable with.
Many times when we facilitate sessions at the IFR, futures thinking sessions, I think the most frequent piece of feedback is: “whoa, we've never spoken about these things before” And I think more and more that is our role and our responsibility. To be brave enough to have those conversations and to create spaces for people to have those conversations.
And therefore, because people go out of the conversation, go back to their family, go back to their place of work, go back to their society with deepened insights. Even if it's just a little bit, and next time another little bit, then people's eyes are opened and they think and make decisions in a different manner and Africa cannot afford to have short sighted decision making at the moment. It is probably the truth for any other continent and nearly any other country as well.
I'm passionate about my continent.
Peter Hayward: I can hear your passion Doris. Jump to the communication question. Cause I love to ask this one. How do you explain to people what Doris does when they don't understand what it is Doris does?
Doris Viljoen: Being from the business school, if somebody knows that I come from the business school and I do futures, the most frequent misconception is that I'm in
investment, because there's an asset class called futures. “Oh, so you're in futures, so what should we invest in next?”
And then the other obvious one is the prediction: “Oh, so do you have a crystal ball?” I'm actually considering having one and say, yeah, but it's very expensive. That kind of thing. If people approach me through my position as the director of the Institute for Futures Research, they already have sort of an idea.
So I think I am more lucky than many other people that are in foresight positions. Because then people already have an idea, but then still, they look for an answer many times. So what I try to say is that we look deeper and wider for factors that could influence the futures. And we create those spaces for conversations to develop insights.
In short, if I just have to have that one liner thing, I say that I think with people to imagine multiple longer term futures and their role in shaping it.
Peter Hayward: Nice. I've noticed that since the hammer blows of really, GFC followed by September 11 followed by COVID, it's. Really not necessary to justify why governments and organizations and people need to think about the future. Is that, has that been your broad experience in Africa that basically the appetite has grown along with the awareness of it?
Doris Viljoen: I think so. I think the big crises of the past two decades have made people look up and say: “Whoa, maybe we have to think about the longer future as well.”
So thank you to the crises that made people look up and think, but I also think the impetus of things like the Sustainable Development Goals’ big commitments that are being signed to say, yes, we will try to do this, that and the other, brings a little bit of a longer term perspective, and that helps.
There was an interesting shift. I joined the Institute for Futures Research in 2017, and most of our work came from strategy or heads of strategy in organizations. And then, COVID and all, we saw an interesting shift with requests coming from the risk managers. To say, Hey, can you come and help us think about next risks kind of thing.
And then once we start working, they say, oh, but the Strat people should be in the room as well.. So interesting shifts about where requests for thinking come from and how it gets wider. But still, they, most of them would prefer one answer. We're still working on that one.
We still have work to be done, Peter. Still work to be done.
Peter Hayward: are you aware of any sort of undercurrents around the generational difference in how people think about the future? Where I'm, We certainly, before COVID, we were starting to see in quite a few countries, I'm sure it was in South Africa as well, we were starting to see the children, I shouldn't call them children, the young adults in high school starting to leave the high schools and lean on the political parts before they have the vote to simply demand that their interests start to be factored in to the political process, and with a real impatience.
For the big institutions to start acting as if their interests were at the forefront of what they were doing. And that, that has retreated a bit since COVID, but it's never gone away.
Doris Viljoen: Yeah, two things spring to mind now. Early 2023, there was this big grouping of futures thinkers, people around the world that said let us imagine how we may disgust our descendants in 2123.
And they made a list, and people voted, and an interesting list came from that. That's the one dot that your comment is now ringing for me: Realising that we have a responsibility, that kind of thing. And in Africa, that is a powerful thing, because elders are revered.
To bring foresight to people based on that you are now here, and you may be an elder going forward, what would peoplethink about what you have decided as an elder when you are an elder. And then a while ago, I stepped into a board and greeted everybody before I made my speech.
And this person, so I went, hello, what do you do? And this is the finance manager, and this is the market marketing manager, et cetera. And this person says, yes I'm the three G person. I said, three G aren't we on five G already? Because I thought of cell phone communication. No. I'm here to represent the interests of the third generation that is yet to come.
So this organization had somebody in the senior decision making, there and present in each and every decision that they're making, and they represent the third generation that is yet to come. I thought that was serious.
Peter Hayward: I'm impressed. That's very impressive.
So I'm Going to take us to the last question. I'm going to start you with this one. I noticed on a LinkedIn post That you described yourself as having the coolest job in the world. I do. I'd like you to talk to the listeners As a kind of summer about this cool job and about this cool school that your job's in, because there aren't that many cool schools where people can go and learn how to think about this stuff.
Doris Viljoen: So let's start with the school first. Stellenbosch Business School is a business school that runs many academic programs. They have the traditional MBA, but also DevelopmentFinance, and Coaching. And Leadership. And then, of course, Futures Studies. This is the home where our academic courses live.
We have a postgrad diploma in Futures Studies.
We have a master's in Futures Studies. And you can even do a Ph. D. I've just done one. A Ph.D in Futures Studies. I think we are one of very few places where you can do the whole suite of programs and focusing and specializing on Futures Studies, not just doing something generic and then, oh yeah, but we think about the future as well.
And we have been doing that for quite a while. We welcomed the first masters students into the program in 1998 already. So it's been running for quite a long time. I have the privilege of teaching on the academic programs. I really enjoy every minute of that. And then we have a commercial unit within the business school.
We ask money for the work we do, we work with outside clients and we focus on foresight work, facilitating conversations, doing commissioned research. We have a subscription product as well, and we make a lot of speeches, do presentations about things that are on the horizon. The Institute celebrated its 50th birthday in 2024.
It was established in 1974 as a direct result of limits to growth being published.
I was going to say, 74 sounds like limits to growth.
Some of our people went there and said, whoa, we better start thinking about the longer future in South Africa and said, where will we put this? And it was established first within our Bureau of Economic Research.
And then when it grew up a little bit, it became a single standing unit and then within the business school. I have the privilege of doing a little bit of both. I direct the institute, do consulting work, plan the commissioned research, lead it, et cetera, but then taking all of that learning (still bleeding sometimes) into the the class and sharing that with our students.
The institute is also then a place where we can create an opportunity here and there for students to come and feel what it feels like in practice. So if a client allows, if it's not too confidential, we are able to put in a few students, they add to the conversation, and they're already familiar with the tools and techniques, but then they also have the practical experience of what it feels like to go through an actual facilitated process.
At our school the two are interlinked and I think the synergies between the two are beneficial to both.
Peter Hayward: Are your students in the school, are they just people located in South Africa or do you take international students and what about distance or remote students?
Doris Viljoen: I think very early in the program, they realized our students would probably not live in close proximity to our town,
that they would probably come from at least the whole of South Africa and South Africa is really a big country geographically. So to travel to class is not easy. And that we have an at least Africa wide focus. So we have a lot of international students. We have a lot of students from Africa and from across the whole of South Africa.
So very early in the design of the program, they've already decided to do the program in a manner that anybody can attend class from anywhere and luckily technology has matured to such an extent that it becomes easier and easier to facilitate that kind of teaching. So last week in class, one of my students had a layover in Dubai and attended class because it's that easy nowadays.
So we purposefully design it in such a manner that they can be in class from wherever they are. And I think the secret module on our courses are what they learn from each other because they come from literally any industry, any kind of organization, multiple geographies. We select them into the program once they have a little bit of senior management experience.
So they come as mature students. They come from good deed organizations. They come from government. They come from corporates big and small, single entrepreneurs, consultants, anything. So the secret module is the amazing conversations that they are having in class and what they are learning from each other.
Peter Hayward: Yeah. I used to always say there is more wisdom in the room than there is at the front of the room.
Doris Viljoen: Oh, for sure. Definitely. And I think that's how we facilitate as well at the institute. So not just teaching in class. And we usually set that up right away with the client to say, we think you know your industry the best.
What we will bring is the foresight tools and the facilitation and maybe a little bit of what else is going on outside, but we expect you to bring the expertise about your industry and be in the room and participate.
Peter Hayward: Congratulations for keeping a futures Institute going for 50 years, that is, there aren't many of those that have survived the limits to growth. There were quite a few that sprung up and very few of them make it. So that says something to the credentials and the, I'd say, the both strategic and tactical level.
Of the predecessors before you to keep it going through some pretty hard times.
I look, it's been a delight to finally catch up and well overdue. Like I said, we needed to get you on to the pod. It's always delightful to get another voice from Africa. We have a sprinkling of them. I wish it was more, but just wonderful to hear your passion for the country, the continent. The work, yeah, I can see why you think you got the coolest job in the world, but Doris, it's been wonderful to catch up to thank you for the chance for the chat and thanks for spending some time with the FuturePod community.
Doris Viljoen: Thank you, Peter, thank you for FuturePod. Please keep it going. It's really valuable to me personally, to my students, to the whole of the community. So thank you very much for FuturePod and keep it going.
Peter Hayward: Thanks Doris.
I hope you enjoyed Doris’s passion for her job and her continent. And that you do your share of the good work to grow our field. FuturePod is a not-for-profit venture. We exist through the generosity of our supporters. If you would like to support the Pod then please check out the Patreon link on our website. I'm Peter Hayward thanks for joining me today. Till next time.