In this latest podcast, Alex Fergnani invites Luke van der Laan into a conversation
Guests: Alex Fergnani and Luke van der Laan
Host: Peter Hayward
Conversation Question
“Does Futures and Foresight need to be taught and researched at Universities? What could be gained if it was not?“
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References
Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Social Research, by Andrew H. Van de Venhttps://www.amazon.com/Engaged-Scholarship-Organizational-Social-Research/dp/019922630X
Using Scenarios: Scenario Planning for Improving Organization, by Thomas J. Chermackhttps://www.amazon.com/Using-Scenarios-Scenario-Improving-Organizations/dp/1523092882
The resistance to scientific theory in futures and foresight, and what to do about it, by Alex Fergnani and Thomas J. Chermackhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ffo2.61
Becoming Futurists: Reluctant professionals searching for common ground, by Tessa Liang Cramerhttps://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/en/publications/becoming-futurists-reluctant-professionals-searching-for-common-g
Audio Transcript
academia to start thinking in these terms. Unfortunately, they have a tradition which favors a viewpoint, which keeps on raising the ontological and epistemological problems of the field back at us and saying you're not and so it's an it's a tough gig in my opinion. What would universities lose? I think the bigger question is what would the students and researchers accommodated by universities lose? If that pushback was so strong and. And you became victim to that. I believe we'd lose a really good scholar in futures.
Peter Hayward: Interesting conversation , I'm going to throw a provocation in here, which is, and picking up Alex's point that if there's resistance to bringing a scientific, theoretical understanding, to futures work both inside university, certainly, but also outside. Is part of what that's about, and this is just a purely as a practitioner ex academic observation, is we actually don't, we very rarely evaluate anything we do. For many disciplines, the measure of a theory is whether in practice, it produced the outcome. And I wonder whether one of the quirks of our discipline, if we want to call it, that is that we almost never evaluate whether an outcome was achieved in such a way that we could then use that learning to basically build more theory or improve theory.
Luke van der Laan: Yeah, I think that, that raises the other point I think I wrote about in one of my recent publications and certainly Alex has raised in his discourse with the field. I am concerned about that. That's true. I guess I was taking the university perspective in that of the academy. My argument in a futures journal article recently was that it's almost a sounding board the practice of futures is a reflection of our work as academics. And if that practice is misguided, using the wrong phraseologies, unable to associate their work with good scholarship, it becomes a reflection of the field, in the academy. And affects our legitimacy in the argument of inclusion within the academy. Does that make sense, Alex?
Alex Fergnani: Absolutely agree. I think you phrase it exactly right. And I couldn't add anything more besides probably just a metaphor that I think would flesh out what we're talking about here. When I did research in my experience, I noticed that what I thought would happen in say a scenario intervention or in a foresight method actually was very different from what the data told me. So what does this mean? It means that oftentimes as practitioners, we are biased, we think that a particular intervention might be good. And then, the participants are complementing us after the intervention because they want to be polite. But in reality, you didn't really work as we wished.
And we don't know that because we didn't do any more objective evaluation as Peter just said. So that is bad because then we go on a very long way and we keep doing a mistake. So I remember if I may just now say the metaphor. I remember that when I was practicing Kung Fu I actually was a Kung Fu practitioner . When I was practicing Kung Fu I was practicing with a Master and for one summer, I remember the Master left the city. So I had to practice by myself. Now, then at the end of the summer, I met the Master back again and he said, Alex, actually, there is a core movement in your body that is wrong, and you have assimilated all the other techniques of the style wrongly. So you had to go back to the original point, relearn the core movement and then start learning again, all the other techniques, because the core movement of your body, that the body core is moving wrongly. So you got all wrong. The whole summer was a huge mistake. So for a few months, I actually had to relearn my core body movement in this particular Kung Fu style that the Master was teaching me until I mastered the core body movement.
And then I started relearning all the fundamentals of the style. Now to circle back to foresight practitioners .Is it possible that sometimes we believe that our particular intervention is working, but it is not working. And then we build up our career on that and on that mistake because we never actually objectively evaluated that. And so eventually we have to go back and relearn the fundamentals, this would be a huge problem. But it is very likely happening because we're not evaluating what we're doing. We have to demonstrate that we can do what we claim we do.
Luke van der Laan: I think that's a fantastic metaphor and it definitely resonates with my understanding of this question of the link between practice what we claim we do, what the outcome is and our legitimacy as a field. And that has been an ongoing concern. It's through scholarship that we can potentially rectify that. And in terms of your metaphor is only through scholarship and disciplined inquiry that we can become the Masters, not out of any patronizing perspective, but as a servant to the field. And I'm very concerned as well about our ability to communicate the disciplines of our field, if I can use that phrase. I've not only been a scholar of futures, but quite a prolific practitioner in industry context. And I've seen firsthand what you're talking about assumptions that have been made uninformed assumptions that have been made in practice that have unfortunately led to a problem with legitimacy. When we then go into similar networks and then through good practice and evaluating that and recording that and bringing it back into the academy, in a disciplined way would improve our chances within the academy. Yes, while I started this conversation focusing on the Academy's resistance, it's probably a reflection of my own bias in the sense that I've been trying as many of us have. You're an old hand at this.
Peter Hayward: If you read the journals, one of our fundamental methods that is written about, if any futures and foresight process is analyzed, It is the scenario. It is'nt hard to pick up any journal at any particular time of the year and find articles on scenario process, both scenario as theory and scenario as outcome. And they're the most singular, and most identified foresight and futures process. And yet, and I'll put my hand up here as an educator, I'm not sure when we taught it. When were you learnt it? We were taught and learnt it such that we could evaluate it. We were taught how to do them, but I'm not sure I taught and I'm not sure I was taught about what we expected scenarios would do. And Graham Molitor had a special issue of Journal of futures studies where he said looking back in his career, he's not sure scenarios, were worth the trouble.
Luke van der Laan: Yeah, it is most singularly, the most dominant futures discourse that's been published attached to it though, is what I'm confronted with. And I'm going to give an example of my own. What I'm confronted with is that is a whole convergence of futures with Strategic Management and this notion of strategic foresight. It's an incredibly problematic area for us in terms of our legitimacy, because there is an assumption in the sort of foresight practitioner toolbox, that we are not only the facilitators of developing alternative images of the future, but Hey, wait a minute, we're also the decision makers and and that is an incredibly damaging assumption for the field because I am not aware of any significant futures practice where we've moved from the conclusion of developing alternative images of the future into positions of resource allocation and corporate decision or policy decision-making, it just doesn't happen that way.
And unfortunately, it's a very dominant discourse to assume that we have that within our methodology. We don't, if you go back to De Jouvenal and other icons of the field, it's all about images of alternative futures. That's where it starts and stops. Now, the problem is that I come along and I go into a corporate board environment. And I mentioned the utility of futures for the organization. And through some prior experience I'm immediately dismissed. Or at least the audience is only as engaged as I struggled to get them to see what it is really we do. So I come back to this question, which is, our practice is a reflection that grants us legitimatcy and it's also a fertile area of data collection for us to be able to take evidence that can contribute to theory building. And we're not traditionalists. We're not traditional scholars or traditional academics in that sense, but we can still use scholarship to promote the field and ultimately at the end, if it doesn't get taught or doesn't get mainstreamed, I think that the beneficiaries of futures, which is humanity will will not be gained by that.
Alex Fergnani: I think, on this point, and this is a very sensitive issue, whether we were using scenarios or not, I would agree and disagree with you at the same time. And let me tell you what I mean by that. So I agree with you in the legacy of future studies, as in the tradition of the De Jouvenal, Gaston Berger, and then eventually the critical schools with Sohail and others. We have a very strong emphasis on producing this alternative images of the future. That is completely true. But on the other hand, I also appreciate that in the intuitive logic school of scenario planning, and all of those methods that originate there from Europe as well, and north America starting from Rand to the La Prospective in France. Eventually there is a connection between scenarios to strategy. So there are methods that allow us to at least connect scenarios, to strategy of the organization. Now, I agree with you in that we are not the decision maker, but I think you should also be made clear that we are facilitators that are able to connect those alternative images of the future with some form of strategy, for us, that should be an input to the strategic decision-making. So again, if you want, if one takes a bird eye view of the field, not just considering the more hard-core future scholarship then, including also other methods of scenario planning and particularly the intuitive logic school then one can see that we have something to contribute to how we use scenarios. There was this amazingly provocative, but also truthful book by Thomas Chermak just published, titled Using Scenarios. And in the book, it's perhaps the first book on scenario planning I read that is not about scenario building. So it does not focus so much on building scenarios. It starts the book by saying, I don't care how you build scenarios. Let's just focus on how to use them in organizations, and then he lays out a number of methods to do that. And it makes it very clear that the scenario facilitator should also enable that dialogue. So if we consider that part as part of the field of, the larger field of futures and foresight, then for sure we have, something to contribute in terms of evaluating whether these alternative images of the future we build actually are useful. And so this connects back to the importance of evaluating what we do . To know that we can do what we claim we do. I think that's important as well.
Luke van der Laan: Yeah. You're absolutely right. And there's no question of a doubt that the outcomes of futures work needs to have utility and inform in the case of the example, the strategy process. Absolutely correct Alex . And the can be said in this sort of policy domain and social enterprise domain, et cetera, it's the utility of the outcome and then to be able to walk it. To use a metaphor to walk the results into the next decision-making process. That is part of our field. No question of a doubt, but we have got to call it the right thing. And that's where I get a little bit concerned that, in this space of strategy, and it's the most obvious space where I see this crisis of legitimacy. It does an untold damage to claim to do something that we don't do.
And and I feel that universities in particular have a role of taking Humanity back to what it's innately capable of doing. And futures is a human capacity. It's something that we're born with. Socialization has meant that we become less foresightful as we get older. Universities have the role of being able to reignite, encourage, build, that human capacity to envisage the future. And so there's a bigger picture here. Number one, the future, isn't the domain of a select few people that call themselves futurists. Number one. Number two, academia or the academy, isn't the domain of only those that adopt a Positivist worldview. The academy is a coming together in my opinion of debate that promotes Humanity and human progress. So what can universities gain by not teaching futures? Clearly we've got a biased view. I've got to come up with something a little bit more rigorous, it gains nothing. It gains nothing. In fact, what it does gain is a deterioration. Back into the dogmatics of traditional higher education.
Alex Fergnani: Yes. Yes, Luke, you mentioned this point about the importance of using foresight at large in the social system. So everybody should do foresight. So I think we should also unpack that a bit because I know you might have the same viewpoint Peter, but maybe the listeners might actually not. So I want to unpack this further because this is very much connected with Democratization of the Future. This is something that we talk about a lot and, oftentimes Democratization of the Future is described as a polarity that cannot absolutely exist together with professionalization, right? So basically we should democratize the future. Everybody should learn it. And at the same time, for this reason, we shouldn't have any specialists. Everybody should be a specialist. So I think this particular viewpoint is very detrimental because democratization doesn't mean that a profession that does not exist, actually the two are mutually beneficial to each other.
We actually need to specialize to achieve improvements in order to teach foresight. So I like to mention a lot the metaphor of the medical doctor. So of course, sure everyone should know the basics of medicine. It's impossible to argue against it so that they don't put lime and chili pepper on a wound when they have crushed their knee. But at the same time, shouldn't our society have specialized medical consultants ? When personal medical problems go beyond what one can manage with time and resources constraints. One cannot do a surgery on himself or herself. So of course we should have those medical professionals and that's doctor, we have them, and the same goes for a specialist. Democratising futures for everybody does not mean that we should not have these specialists. When organizations run into problems about their own role in the future and what they're doing. So I think the two actually go together, not against each other.
Peter Hayward: I think it's an interesting metaphor to, to look at medicine. People should be interested in their own health and take care. And there also are professionals who are regarded as being specialized in. I'm going to bring it back. Part of the reason you are a specialist, is that you've proven you can do it. And as a specialist, you are measured and accounted on the effectiveness of your treatments. We give specialization to medicine because we know this person is a specialist because they actually get the outcome. I come back to the notion that we can say that we're professional futurists but how can we prove that we actually are professional? If we actually don't have the ability to actually measure outcomes?
Luke van der Laan: Yeah, Peter, that's a great point. And I think that's that, as you said, in your earlier intervention or your earlier question, that is part of the problem or the field, and it's something that Alex and I come up against daily, and that is the ability to within the academy promote work that can set out those theories and those assumptions that then put us in a position to be able to evaluate our work and others to evaluate their work. And for us to, establish benchmarks for practice. But as in the field, any notion of benchmarking or professionalization in futures, there's tremendous resistance to that. And that's one of the challenges that we face. Is that your experience as well, Alex?
Alex Fergnani: Yes. And, we have unpacked this this resistance. And when I say we, me and my co-author Thomas Chermak, and then the following debate and, to take to step into the shoes of practitioners who resist this objective evaluation of the things we do. I do get it. I was in their shoes actually. There was a time where I actually resisted scientific theories and eventually I understood that it's pointless. So at the beginning, I was trying my best, to say, but what do you say with a theory? We don't know. We don't know for sure, because everything is subjective. I used the postmodern claim very often. And then I realized that there are ways to debias theory, right? There are ways to reduce the subjectivity and there is meta analysis, for example. So by learning science, what I'm trying to get at is by learning science, I have understood why it is useful. And I have seen myself in a different light because at the beginning it was resistant the objectivity because in a way indoctrinated with very relativist claims. And so I, I get it, why practitioners or, some other maybe academics in the field resist science, but then actually my point on this is that if you learn science and if you really understand what it can do for us, then you also appreciate it can help us to demonstrate what we claim we do. And again, just to disambiguate science is not like the truth, right? It's a process that help us to get at the truth and we may never get it, but by doing it by doing more and more, triangulating results and having academic discussion we can get closer and closer, right? So that's the process. It's not that I do a study on a scenario plan intervention intervention and that's gospel. That's what we should sell to others. It works, that one study is not enough.
Luke van der Laan: So to put the question back to you, Alex, you've now explained that this is an important part of the academy and being an engaged scholar. So what do you think that universities gain by not teaching futures?
Alex Fergnani: Yeah. I would say they're not gaining anything .Instead they are speeding up their collapse as the dominant, overly objective and overly reductionist paradigm. And I would say possibly the most problematic attribute is overly oppressive paradigm is obsolete. If futures and foresight managed to get its feet in the establishment and, I'm suggesting, that you should do it by trying to demonstrate that what we do works scientifically, then we could join forces with those parts of the establishment that realize that the old way of doing science is obsolete and speed up this change, because as you said in your previous podcast whenever you try to do a PhD, oftentimes this overly positivist belief lurks back. They want you to do a certain kind of research. Any other kind of research is not considered, they wanted to publish in certain journals. Any other journals I'm not considered good. So this is oppressive, right? And we can fight with those parts of academia that have already realized this.
And when I say we is the futures and foresight community and we do that by getting into the establishment. The only way to defeat your opponent is to fully embrace your opponent, become your opponent, to understand your opponent. So we have to become the establishment before we want to improve the establishment. If that makes sense?
Luke van der Laan: Absolutely. And in order to join the establishment, you need to meet it's benchmarks for what makes a good engaged scholar. While at the same time, rejecting dogmatic notions of oppressive paradigms of the past. And I must say it is possible. I see it happening around me all the time. All one needs is the critical mass to affect the change. . As the qualitative tradition has been fighting for its rightful place in the scientific method since 1960s was when it really emerged and gained a foothold. It's taken 60 years for us to get to this point. I believe we're at a juncture where and obviously we don't include the hard sciences here. We're talking about the social sciences and I think we're in a space where within the social sciences, we can gain a foothold. As long as our work is defensible . And that's the important part. Have the courage to put your work out to peer review as you've done Alex and I, as I said, I admire the work you've done over a very short period of time, but if more of us can do that, we can certainly start gaining a foothold that we aspire to.
And I think it is a noble aspiration and I take your point around specialized futures practitioners, or foresight practitioners. I take your point on that. And I agree, I don't see it as mutually exclusive to the democratization of the future . But for us to develop skills that make us specialists and to further empower others as our primary objective or purpose, I think that's what it's all about. And I know I'm talking to the converted in the whole community of futures. We all aspire to that, but I do come back to this question of legitimacy. It's a real problem for the field and more work conducted in a disciplined way, often in universities can only help improve that situation.
Peter Hayward: So can I thank the pair of you for wrestling with this slippery question, the notion of legitimacy, professionalism, measurement, evaluation and also the open nature of the future and the democratic hope and normative aspect of futures work. But thanks for starting the conversation. Again, I put this conversation out to the community. We would love to have a chance to have someone a previous guest want to come back on and keep the conversation going. But to you guys, thanks very much for at least starting it..
Alex Fergnani: Thanks. Peter was really a pleasure. What Luke just said was really well said. I really hope that conversations like this will push into that direction and really a pleasure to talk with Luke.
Luke van der Laan: Yeah. Wonderful opportunity. Thank you, Peter. Thank you Alex, for posing what was a slippery question by the way? Thank you very much for the opportunity and inviting us in. Yeah, I hope this conversation continues.