Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_03 (00:00):
Coming up on today's
show.
SPEAKER_01 (00:01):
If I could sort of
encapsulate what I think
foresight has been for peoplewho find it, it's been at that
pivot point where I don't have alanguage for what it is I want
to become.
But I'm I I'm saying it's notthat.
It's this thing, and you'redoing jazz hands, but this is
imagination, and that's that'sthe pull.
That's the that's the thing thathooked me, but it's also I think
(00:24):
the thing that hooks a lot ofpeople is we're in the process
of building a language to talkabout future that doesn't exist
now.
SPEAKER_03 (00:32):
Welcome to the Think
Forward Show.
Today, we've got a reallyspecial guest, Peter Hayward.
He's an internationallyrespected futures thinker,
educator, and the co-creator ofFuturePod.
If you've ever wondered who'sbeen quietly shaping how we
teach futures thinking, that'sPeter.
He ran the Strategic ForesightMaster's program at Swinborne
University for over a decade,literally training hundreds of
(00:55):
the futurists working today.
He's also the mastermind behindFuturePod, which just hit its
incredible 200th episodemilestone.
In this episode, we talk abouthis fascinating journey from
problem solving at theAustralian Tax Office to
becoming one of the leadingvoices in the futures education.
We dive into this concept ofpeak people and why individual
(01:15):
foresight is just as importantas organizational strategy.
We explore how a simple decisionto try podcasting ended up
creating one of the mostinfluential platforms in the
futures community.
It's a compelling conversationabout education, systems
thinking, and the heart ofbuilding a community around the
future.
So before we get going, I'd liketo ask a small favor for you to
(01:37):
like and subscribe if you'rewatching this on YouTube, and to
just subscribe and leave areview on your favorite podcast
player.
It really means a lot.
All right, let's get started.
Peter, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01 (01:51):
Thanks, Dave.
Great to be here.
SPEAKER_03 (01:55):
Uh many of you in
the audience probably know
Peter's name from Future Pod,which is one of the best futures
podcasts out there.
I definitely uh standing on theshoulders of giants building my
show, learning from him.
Uh but many of you may not knowPeter.
So uh could you kind of shareyour journey and how you have uh
(02:20):
cross-universe of futures.
Yeah, the quick story.
SPEAKER_01 (02:23):
The quick story.
Well, look again, I've um like alot of the people that I've
spoken to and you've spoken to,I was a mid-career professional
who found foresight inmid-career.
If you wind me back to what Iwas before I found foresight, I
was a precocious boomer, um,third child of depression
(02:45):
parents who instilled in me hardwork and education.
I was the first person to go touniversity in my family when
education when they opened upthe university system in the
70s.
Uh I was trained as an economistaccountant.
I was encouraged by my parentsto go into government.
(03:07):
Um I was a classic problemsolver and a voracious reader.
I crashed um sort of mid youknow 40s, where I started to
bump into before I knew aboutthe Maslow hierarchy of needs.
I think we touched on it in uni,but I started to bump into the
(03:30):
actualization purpose stuffwithout knowing what it was.
I went through at least threecycles of what I'm sure we would
now call depression.
Um it was more what I woulddescribe as, you know, dark
night of the soul, but reallynot that dark.
Um just trying to work out whatI wanted to be, what yeah, when
(03:52):
I grew up, uh, did a lot ofdevelopment works, um had a, you
know, did a bit of work withpsychologists.
Eventually someone just said tome, Look, I think you're bored.
I think you just need to go outthere and open yourself up again
and start learning stuff andmeeting people.
And I found at that time I sortof I'd kind of floated into
(04:13):
doing futures work.
Uh while I was technicallytrained, I got a bit bored with
just being a technician.
Got interested in change, whypeople change, how people
changed.
And it ever all past took me tothe future without knowing what
this thing was.
And then happenstance,serendipity, I bumped into
someone who told me about acourse starting up literally
(04:36):
twenty miles from where I livedin Melbourne.
Uh, the Richard Slaughter wasstarting the Master of
Foresight.
And so I was in class one, dayone of the beginning of that
course, uh, with three otherstudents and Richard Slaughter.
It was terrifying.
Sitting literally across thedesk from a person.
And his view was he had he hadlike 150 books that I that I
(04:59):
assume you've read.
SPEAKER_03 (05:01):
Um I've read a few
of them.
Yeah.
I read a lot of a lot ofresearch papers.
Yeah, he is quite he was quiteprolific.
Still is impactful on thestreet.
Still is.
Yeah, still coaching.
SPEAKER_01 (05:12):
Anyhow, um, rolling
on, finally decided that it was
time for me to leave the thegovernment that I'd been in and
out of for quite a while.
Richard offered me a PhDposition, I jumped into it.
Richard, of course, was planningto leave the university, and so
I became his um succession plan.
And I took over the yeah, I tookover the running of the
(05:33):
Foresight course with JoeVoros's wonderful help.
We ran it for another, oh,probably I don't know, 15, 16
years.
Um and uh then I left theuniversity and um started
FuturePod with a couple of my uhex-students, uh Rebecca Meat and
Mindy Uri.
(05:54):
And um yeah, I do still dabbleas a practitioner, pracademic, I
suppose you'd say, hate writing.
SPEAKER_03 (06:01):
Um pracademic.
SPEAKER_01 (06:04):
Love talking to
people like you and started
FuturePod probably as a vanityproject, seriously, with you
know trying to talk to thepeople that were my heroes, uh,
and Rebecca's and Mendy's andeveryone else, the other.
That's it.
Yeah, here I am.
FuturePod's now, probably goingon for its sixth year, just
recorded and published, I think,our 223rd podcast.
SPEAKER_03 (06:29):
Wow, that's
impressive.
That is most people can't makeit to five.
You know, no, if you look atit's it's like I wish there was
a way just from like if from aglance, like if something was
like date, you know, dated.
I mean, you don't want to like,you know, delete something,
right?
But it's like if something is,let's just say hasn't been
(06:51):
published six months or a year,right?
It's like well, when you look ata lot of pot a lot of shows,
like when I was doing researchfor Think Forward um to bring it
back, was yeah, there was a lotof like six or eight episodes of
things, or it's you know, peoplewould sputter up, and you
definitely have to keep a uh apace and you definitely have to
(07:14):
love doing this, which I do.
I mean, I just love I'm acurious person and just talking
to people like you and so manyothers we've had on the show.
SPEAKER_01 (07:24):
I think it was
almost an extension of blogging.
In other words, I sort of I cameout of the blogger sphere
through the nineties.
And you know, when you wereblogging, um the rule was you
had to have at least six sixthings written before you put
your first one out because ittakes time.
And when we released FuturePod,we did 12 in studio interviews
(07:48):
before we released number one.
SPEAKER_03 (07:50):
Um That was the
same.
I I had about eight in the can.
Because you need to have abacklog.
You do, you absolutely do,because some things get
rescheduled, like you and I weresupposed to talk a few months
ago.
You were under the weather,didn't you know, things life
life happens, right?
Um yeah, it's it's funny thatyou talk about the blogosphere.
Like I started in podcasting in2006 with like Podcamp.
(08:14):
I remember when it first likethere's Adam Curry and like, I
don't know, five, five to tenothers.
Like it was so early andnascent, and you saw it rise,
and then it was in a dark placefor a while, you know, but then
I think it's found its footing,especially with long-form
conversations, um, you know,media, can't even call it new
(08:35):
media anymore, but just the waythat you can get information
completely democratized.
Yeah.
And that's been exciting for me.
You know, for me, uhevangelizing this space, we all
seem to come through itaccidentally, uh, but loving
future, loving the work andloving the way that I can
(08:59):
communicate the future is adeeply important thing for me.
And you know, your PhD work, Iwant to talk about you you
studied like individual futures.
Like what did you focus on likewhen you were going through that
process?
What did you find the PhD workthat resonated with you?
Like that helped you kind ofconnect with it.
SPEAKER_01 (09:20):
Yeah, my PhD was uh
an experience.
SPEAKER_03 (09:24):
Uh my my wife has
one.
I I was the uh I I I I I Itangentially got a T uh uh a P
you know dissertation and PhDtoo.
So yeah, I hear I hear you, man.
SPEAKER_01 (09:37):
I think I mean I
didn't have long in the
university, probably I don'tknow, 15, 16 years.
Um I think I was fortunate thatI got in to the PhD things
before it really, they reallyramped up the professionalism
and methodology.
Um so I think I was fortunatethat I was allowed to kind of
just really do it, do what Iwanted to do with a low level of
(10:00):
supervision.
That wouldn't have happened bythe time I left the university.
Yeah, so what I studied, again,I we we talked about this off
camera.
I mean, I came out of I learnt Icame to higher education out of
a certainly uh what you wouldcall a business education focus.
I did a lot of training in-housewhere you taught accountants and
(10:23):
lawyers and economists.
They are a very, very hardaudience to work for.
If you're not constantlyentertaining them, challenging
them, they basically will eitherpull out a textbook or walk out.
And so I was taught to educateadults by what I called
edutainment.
(10:44):
Is you had to be constantlyinteresting, you have to be
constantly provocative, you hadto push them, you had to be open
to them challenging you and beable to defend your position,
but not defend it like I'm on apillar and I'm better than you.
That just makes you a target.
It's more that I have to provemyself as an adversary, a worthy
(11:05):
adversary, shit, you know, steelsharpening steel.
So that's kind of the way Ilearned the craft, so to speak,
of adult education.
When I came to university, Ialso did a lot of personal
development work.
Um, just privately.
I was I was I was drawn to whatyou would call consciousness
development, um, you know,interior development, theorists
(11:28):
like Ken Wilbur and others, theythey interested me.
I knew bits about them, did alot of development.
So when I came to university, Ikind of had this background of
personal of you know, doingdoing personal work and also
this kind of notion of teachingprofessionals how to push their
understanding of things.
(11:50):
And so my PhD was in thedevelopment of foresight.
I I taught in both the MBAcourse, but I also had this
wonderful thing called theMaster of Foresight.
And so I was able to develop aninstrument based on a few
theories of developmentalpsychology, moral development,
um, self-development, and valuesdevelopment.
(12:12):
And I was able to run aninstrument on the first year of
the masters of foresight and thefirst year of the MBA and look
at those cohorts as they wentthrough their first year as to
what developed.
And I had a theory thatsomething was developing.
Um I didn't know what it was,and that was that was the PhD.
(12:32):
So PhD was looking, and whatRichard then asked me to do,
because he was my supervisor,Richard wanted it to move from
at what point do we start do weat what point does individual
development, in other words, Iam a you know more conscious,
more aware human being, do wepivot into social?
(12:53):
In other words, does socialdevelopment where we s where we
move from I language to welanguage?
Does that run on tracks withindividual development?
Or does individual developmentcan it like become a kind of
bulwark or foundation for socialforesight?
Because that was the thing thatRichard was personally
(13:14):
interested in.
He wrote a paper called FromIndividual to Social Foresight.
That was kind of my thesis wasI'm looking at individual
development because it wasindividuals that interested me.
Richard was interested in that,but also wanted me to look at
and hypothesize how socialforesight emerges, because that
was the thing that Richard sawwe were lacking when when he
(13:37):
sort of, you know, and when hecontinues to do his work, he
still sees us lacking thisability to practice social
foresight.
SPEAKER_03 (13:46):
How would you say he
defines social foresight, like
like specifically?
SPEAKER_01 (13:50):
I think it's closer
to what you would call wisdom.
It's closer to where people areacting in their in their
interests, but also in theinterest of others, and the
others include the generationscoming after us.
So it's that ability to join thegenerations up, not just going
(14:12):
back in time, but also joiningup with the generations going
forward.
The generations who don't haverights, who aren't even thought
of.
But it's that in my language,Richard would say it much more
eloquently, but I'd talk about acircle of compassion.
How how far can you stretch yourcircle of compassion towards the
(14:34):
unborn not here?
Can you take your almostparaphrasing, you know, the New
Testament, can we extend ourcircle of compassion to the
meek, to the poorest, to the youknow, that's yeah, it's
remarkable when people can thinkbeyond themselves to include
(14:59):
others.
And yeah, the development ofsocial foresight, the
development of social wisdom uhis certainly I I would say
Richard's that's been the onetrack that Richard's been on and
is still on today.
SPEAKER_03 (15:16):
When you talk about
individual foresight, if you
compare that to personalfutures, would they be the same
thing or would they bedifferent?
SPEAKER_01 (15:27):
Uh again, my uh I'm
always very um barr not
embarrassed, but yeah.
So what my theory was when Ifinished up looking at the
research, Steve, was that peopledeveloped again, I'm a
developmentalist, so I look atforesight as an emergent
property of developing humanconsciousness.
(15:50):
So the foresight you practicewhen you are, and I again I'm
gonna use the labels that peoplecall I don't like them because
they're hierarchical.
Well, I'm sorry, I'm gonna gowith them.
If we talk about people havingconventional values,
conventional approaches, thenthere's a conventional form of
foresight.
Now, if foresight exists alongwith all the other paraphernalia
(16:13):
about thinking, imagining, moralstructures, everything.
It's not different, it's simplyand it's part of.
And if we push, if we learn, ifwe experience our way into
post-normal, post-conventional,um then foresight changes.
(16:35):
The theorist who was central tomy work was Susan Cook Kreuter,
who did her work onself-development.
And Susan had a beautiful phraseto for describing development
generally, and she said fromreally birth to end, but we have
(16:57):
we go through a phase which islike a helix.
We step through the stepwiseconstruction of a permanent
self, a permanent enduring self.
And then when we get to thepermanent self, we don't stop.
Well, we can, is we then moveinto the realm of the stepwise
(17:18):
deconstruction of the permanentself.
SPEAKER_03 (17:21):
So we spend our life
stuff right there, man.
SPEAKER_01 (17:24):
Yeah.
I mean, that's it.
I mean, you know, you think ofyour again, if you can go back
to your, you know, you know,when, you know, through the
adolescence, you know, you, youknow, you know, can I get a job?
Will someone love me?
Will I be in a relationship?
Will I be reliable?
You know, can I become a memberof my society?
Yeah.
And so you have all this stuffyou've borrowed and learnt about
(17:45):
building yourself towards this,I'm going to be this person,
which could be, you know,sitting in the corner office,
you know, managing 250 people,earning X figure, you know,
living in you've got all theextrinsic and extrinsic stuff
that you know says, well, thisis what I'm going to become, and
you move towards it.
(18:05):
And then, of course, the funnything is when you finally get to
that point, you're in the officeand got the job and got the bank
balance and whatever else.
Well, the muse, the questioningself, for most people doesn't
stop there.
And that that pivot point fromwhat in Jane Lovinger and Cook
(18:31):
Groyer's model of development,where she talked about the
highest level of conventionaldevelopment, is a structure that
she called achiever.
It's also very similar to RobertKeegan's work, but then it flips
into this deconstruction whereyou deconstruct your prior self
to liberate and emancipateyourself and others.
(18:53):
It's a it's a it's a fascinatingthing.
And and so the story, which I'mgoing to bore you with and bore
your listeners with is when Iwas sitting in the Master of
Foresight orientation or kind oftrying to sell the course to
prospective students, I'd bestanding there, you know, along
with the MBA and the Master ofMarketing and whatever else, and
I'm there, the Master ofForesight.
(19:14):
People would walk up to me andsay, What's this course about?
And I'd tell them.
And the funny thing that peoplewere saying to me was they were
saying, I don't want to do anMBA.
So that's what they'd actuallysay to me.
And they'd say, Well, what'syour course?
Because I don't want to do anMBA.
When you think about it, it's aweird way to buy something.
Where you where you go up to theperson who's selling something
(19:35):
and say, It's not this, is it?
The answer is no, it's not.
And this idea of talking in notlanguage is what Groyer found
when you moved topost-conventional, because you
only have the way to describeyourself as you were.
What you don't have yet is alanguage for describing what you
(19:59):
want to become.
And so you describe yourself asI'm not that on the path to
becoming the the I don't knowwhat to say I am.
And that that that pivot, if Icould sort of encapsulate what I
think foresight has been forpeople who find it, it's been at
(20:22):
that pivot point where I don'thave a language for what it is I
want to become.
But I'm I'm saying it's notthat, it's this thing, and
you're doing jazz hands.
But this is imagination, andthat's that's the pull.
That's the that's the thing thathooked me, but it's also I think
the thing that hooks a lot ofpeople is we're in the process
(20:44):
of building a language to talkabout future that doesn't exist
now.
I mean, you've done it in yourbook.
SPEAKER_03 (20:50):
Oh, thank you.
But it's it's the language isdefinitely trying to communicate
the language of futures, not thefuture, but to talk about it in
a not so abstract, this is toofar, this is far away, we're not
gonna, it's not relevant to us.
I think the the thing that I andyou and I both share is, you
know, is organizationalforesight application, right?
(21:13):
It's like how do you buildcompetency?
It's always stupefied me.
And I think it goes to thecredibility of the futures field
and where its focus has been.
Like, is it a job or is it askill set, right?
When you look at strategygroups, why they don't go
farther out to reallyunderstand.
(21:34):
Just it somewhere along thelines, and this probably in the
70s or 80s, there was a thepolitics of this basically made
it like almost heretical.
And but what's happening now ismore organizations are seeing
that it has, and you know,Renee, like Warbeck's work on
you know tracking uhprofitability to organizational
(21:57):
capability, organizationalforesight capability has been a
big uh boon in that way.
I mean, when you just what youshared with personal futures,
like how do you make these, howdo you get these two levels to
interact?
Like where do you see gaps?
Yeah, I know.
I'm sorry, it's a big the bigsledgehammer question.
SPEAKER_01 (22:16):
It's a big question.
SPEAKER_03 (22:17):
And it is, it is.
It's my job.
It's my job.
SPEAKER_01 (22:22):
I think again, my
trite but serious answer, Steve,
is organizations don't havefutures.
Only people have futures.
Only people have futures.
So at any particular point, whenyou're working in an
organizational sense, you're notworking for the organization,
you're working for the peoplethat are the organization.
(22:45):
So talking about how do you howdo you create organizational
foresight, there is there is nosuch thing as organization for
foresight.
There are people who areforesightful thinkers.
Now, will they share as part oftheir future path the purpose of
the organization?
So to me, everything links backto purpose.
(23:07):
If you bring people in that arereally good thinkers, both
cognitively but also have gotstrong moral basis, social
commitment, then if you're goingto engage them to what I call we
futures, us futures, then yougotta give them some you gotta
(23:29):
give them something really,really good to hook into because
why should this person work foryou?
Why should this person sharetheir future journey with the
journey you want yourorganization to go on?
They have to become they have tobecome part of them have to
become the organization.
And that's how Yeah, I think ityeah.
(23:50):
And that's it.
But that's hard fororganizations if you haven't got
a good purpose for theorganization.
SPEAKER_03 (23:58):
Well, you know,
organizations, interesting to
say, like it's not they don'treally have anything because
it's the people, but it's alsocalled a going, you know, they
use the term going concern.
It's a question of the viabilityof it long term, the people that
come and the people that go.
Yeah, it is not that the it itis made of the people, right?
But the people have their ownindividual uh goals and
(24:20):
motivations.
It was really about how do youform a competency around this
type of skill.
But I I I understand what youruh your take is on this.
It's interesting.
SPEAKER_01 (24:33):
I think again, our
friend Rene Ruhrbeck has done
tremendous research in this areaand and Rene has studied
organizations, and they andcertainly there are
organizations that have enduringfutures capacity.
Um that, of course, stems fromleadership.
(24:53):
Because if you haven't got aleadership that embraces the not
here and not now, then you'renever going to have foreside.
Yeah, you're never gonna haveforesight.
And it's more than culture,because culture, I'm a little
bit of a culture heretic aswell.
SPEAKER_03 (25:11):
Culture is Well,
it's more of like culture
reinforcing it, notindividually, but just being
part of the DNA of the of it.
SPEAKER_01 (25:20):
Well, again, Andy
talks about this.
When Andy talked about way, wayback, when Andy talked about
permission foresighting, I thinkwhen you're in a foresight, when
you're in an organizationdelivering foresight in whatever
shape or form it is, then you'vegot you you have to deliver.
You have to deliver value, whichmeans by its nature, you're
(25:42):
leaning into short-term ormeasurable outcomes.
In other words, you don'tpromise something in two years,
three years, trust me, I'm adoctor.
No, no, no.
You've got to you've got toactually generate trust in the
moment, at the same time buyingthe kind of credibility that you
(26:04):
can stretch it out.
But if you're not delivering,which mightn't be very
foresightful, it might be very,very tactical.
But if you've got a you've got adance between the tactical,
measurability, add value now, tothen hold the space to be able
(26:25):
to stretch out time, to stretchout the credibility.
If you and in successfulorganizations, they understand
that dance.
The dance between the here andnow, the dance between the not
here, not yet, and so corporatememory.
So I I it's not surprisingly theorganizations that are good at
(26:45):
foresight have been good atforesight for a while.
So the corporate memory remindsitself that futures and
foresight is central to who theyare when they work together.
SPEAKER_03 (26:57):
Yeah.
It's uh very much aboutembedding it.
I've I've talked about this inmany ways, and I've heard the
term like being stealthfuturist.
You know, the product work Idid, I brought in techniques to
be more efficient and morefocused and how we looked at it,
(27:17):
right?
Because that was a still aproduct, but it was still doing
some futures techniques usingsome of the tools, right?
The skill the skills.
And then the innovation, whichis where I found my sweet spot
to your point of like gettingsomething on the radar, making
investments, doing things thatalso allow you to look at a
radar from different horizons,is something that speaks the
language of that.
(27:37):
The pure futures work that I seeto my sadly, is it's it's it's
like a novelty, right?
You have people come in and theydo something once a year, and
you it's like part of thestrategic planning process, and
they put a report out and youput it in a drawer.
And that's sad.
And that's that's uh what Ithink we can change.
I think it started to.
(27:58):
I think there's an evolutionhappening.
Um, I think there's easieraccess.
We talked about this on when Iwas on your show about
artificial intelligence and youknow, AI-driven foresight.
It's not letting AI be yourpersonal futurist, but it is
allowing you to have um tools atyour disposal that give you the
power of many people that youcouldn't have had before, which
(28:20):
is extremely compelling in thatway.
If you know how to synthesizeand get the information out of
it, yeah, it can it can be verypowerful for you as a as an
individual, getting yourself ayou know, a bump in your career,
I think is uh worthwhile.
SPEAKER_01 (28:37):
Yeah, I I'm biased,
Steve, because my background of
training in total qualitymanagement and quality circles
meant that I'm biased to pushingforesight to as low a point of
the organization as you can.
Because it's the people doingthe work, not the people sitting
(28:59):
in the suites who think theyknow what the work is.
But if you get a chance to doforesight and futures work with
people on the line, they're someof the best work you'll ever do.
And those are people that arejuggling, I'm I'm here for a
job, I need a paycheck, I'vealso got a family, I've also got
kids, I've got a partner.
They've got people who've got,you know, they're really
sophisticated thinkers becausethey are trying to juggle work
(29:24):
as part of a life, as part of afamily.
And when you give them the toolsof foresight, when you get them
to sit down and talk about theimagined future, their preferred
future, the weight of the past,they they are some of the most
powerful conversations you'llhave.
Obviously, it's a lot about whothey are and who they're with
and what their point in and whattheir point in life is.
(29:47):
But to me, the experiences I hadas a practitioner, yeah, I did
the C suite work and I did thebig corporate workshops where
you sit down.
Yeah, I'm that's good.
But the work that really floatedmy boat was.
When you got a chance to go inand work with the people on the
line and do their futures.
SPEAKER_03 (30:06):
You mentioned
before.
Sorry, you mentioned before thatyou had the it was about the
action of taking things in theshort term, like the now term,
if you will.
So how do you bridge that gapbetween futures thinking and the
actual kind of change making?
Like how do you how do youconnect that?
SPEAKER_01 (30:28):
Well again, for me,
it's about what's a person
motivated by.
And as I said, foresight isdevelopmental, in my opinion.
In other words, if people ifpeople have short-term needs as
the dominant things in theirlife, then that's what you work
on.
(30:48):
You practice foresight in theshort term because that's where
they will, that's where theyare.
It's the same with decisionmakers.
A person who's got a decision tomake, if it's a short-term
decision, can you help them?
If you can't, leave them alone.
If you can, help them.
It doesn't matter if it's asix-month decision or
three-month decision.
The experience of once peopleonce people have a positive
(31:10):
experience of something, anenjoyable experience of
something, a joyful experienceof something.
Once something touches theirheart as well as their head,
then you've actually got a bitmore interest to take it out
further.
If people have a positiveexperience with foresight, if
it's useful for them, if ithelps them, if it gives them
(31:34):
agency, motivation, creativity,then you that's the beginning of
foresight.
That's the beginning of teachingpeople foresight.
SPEAKER_03 (31:45):
Well, what's the one
thing you've learned that you
wish you knew?
Like I'm serious.
Because you now have aperspective.
Yeah.
It's a kind of corny question,but it's like there's a
perspective here, especiallywith how the field has gone from
almost kind of, I dare I say,dying in like the mid-2000s, to
now it's a robust space that iscontinuing, you know, real, real
(32:10):
futurists, not you know, justcalling yourself one on
LinkedIn, but but realpractitioners, right?
Like if you were to be at thatpoint now, what would you what
would you wish you could tellyourself?
I've got so many, I've got somany things as let it rip.
Just let it rip.
More than one.
The sky's the limit.
Go for it, man.
SPEAKER_01 (32:29):
Just as an in-house
futurist, when I got when I got
the chance to to create anascent foresight capacity in a
large organization, the thing Iregret I did was I too quickly
moved to large scale.
I was too keen to do the bigscenario workshop and pull all
(32:53):
the people in and you know.
And it was it what happened whenthat I mean, it was, yeah, it
worked, we got scenarios, butwhat we'd burnt up was two years
of social capital for littlereturn.
And I so I regret that I movedtoo quickly to build too big
(33:18):
rather than continuing to grindaway and build the the kind of
both capacity and appetite.
The two have to go together.
If you are an in-house futurist,you have to build appetite for
this work.
You don't you don't get it.
(33:38):
Now, when you're a parachuteconsultant, you don't have to do
as much work on appetite.
Because they're paying you,they're bringing you in.
What I learned, and what againI'll come back to regrets like
Breno Brown, yeah, I do learnfrom regret, it's a wonderful
emotion, is when you areparachuted into an organization,
then you are freer to say thingsthat people in the organization
(34:04):
cannot say because they stay.
So I think if you're a parachuteconsultant, obviously do your
due diligence.
But one of the reasons you'reprobably being brought in is
your one of your purposes, apartfrom delivering outcomes, of
course.
Or being or being blamed orbeing blamed after the fact.
(34:25):
Yeah.
Because you're gonna leave.
So you can say things thatpeople and I learnt this, and
people, yeah, where they wantyou to say things, to talk the
things that they can't talkabout, and they don't want to be
the one saying, but you can sayit and leave.
And uh so those are kind of myas I said, if I was starting
(34:50):
again and if I was startingagain in 2025, then I would be
building a practice aroundpersonal and organizational
foresight integrated in withgenerative AI.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (35:10):
So happens I'm doing
just that.
So excellent advice.
And it is.
No, but let's talk about it.
No, seriously, AI is the panaceain the in the hype cycle.
Yeah.
But where do you think it'swhere do you think where do you
see its value now?
Where do you think its value isover the next say five years?
Because it's too far of alifetime for change in AI.
SPEAKER_01 (35:33):
It's it's going to
blow industries up by its
nature, because it is going towe are, we've been we've been on
a cycle now for the last 20years where we are to use
Toynbee's macro history, we aredelegitimizing elites and we
will be re-legitimizing newelites.
(35:55):
So now I'm not calling AI and anelite, it's not.
It's still a tool and willremain a tool in the foreseeable
future.
But one elite industry that isgoing to be undone, is being
undone as we speak, of course,is education, and particularly,
of course, the education thatI'm most familiar with, which is
(36:17):
higher education, postgraduateeducation.
And if you're an educator andyou're not sitting down and
designing your curriculum coursefor students to use AI as part
of their learning, assessment,development, everything, I don't
know what you're doing.
So it's around the relationshipwe have and the persona we want
(36:42):
to create with AI.
Because AI is still a construct.
We still make it it doesn't forma relationship, it's a mirror to
who to how we integrate with it,but it can be engineered to be a
specific persona.
And once you understand thatyour job is to author the AI you
(37:07):
want, to then form the mostconstructive relationship with
it, it's still yourresponsibility.
It's not the AI's responsibilityto be what you want.
But if you let it form arelationship, then the way it's
been programmed, it'll becomethis kind of you know, blow
(37:27):
smoke up your bum kind of thingthat kind of says you're
wonderful when really you'renot.
It's not going to kick you inthe bum hard enough unless you
tell it to.
Um, it's not going to be anadult unless you tell it to be
an adult.
In other words, you need to takeresponsibility for the
relationship and what do youwant it to be, and then you work
with that relationship.
SPEAKER_03 (37:54):
Change of mind,
because for me, the the biggest
the education is one that I seedisrupted immensely.
The other one is uh consulting,the high-end consulting.
I used to work for a very bigwell the biggest.
And uh there's a they're tryingto wield it in a way that they
can use the resources, but inthe end.
(38:17):
It's no.
It's not gonna be there, Ithink.
SPEAKER_01 (38:21):
No, and as I said,
prompt engineering is the skill
that people need to learn in theshort term.
It's not it's it's not gonna bea long-term career as a prompt
engineer.
SPEAKER_03 (38:34):
But you need to be I
think it's even disappeared now.
I think you're gonna be like anagentic and the agents is the
new the new the new thing thekids are talking about doing
these days.
SPEAKER_01 (38:44):
Aaron Powell And the
second thing the second thing
about AI, which I think it'sgonna put a lot of pressure on
us as human beings, because it'sis that the value of AI is
you've got to have contextknowledge to understand if AI is
useful or not.
In other words, if you have nocontext, AI is going to give you
terrible information becauseyou're gonna go, that's that's
(39:06):
rubbish or that's not right.
So the onus is going to be onyou to have better contextual
knowledge such that you can havethe best relationship with AI.
Otherwise, it's the blindleading the blind.
Now, how do you get contextknowledge?
Well, that's your responsibilityto get broad with what you think
(39:27):
you understand.
I to me, AI is going to push usto be more polymaths than
technical.
In other words, we need to beready to do that.
SPEAKER_03 (39:38):
I've always said the
two greatest things of being a
futurist are curiosity and beingan auto-dietter.
Absolutely.
And being the constant pursuitof new knowledge.
And to your point, where I seeone of its there's a couple
different points along the wayof a traditional like uh futures
engagement or project, right?
The signals research that ismanually done or gathered on,
(40:00):
you know, I mean, there's a lotof tools, you know, I don't want
to name them, but it's like it'sso manual, and you're just
limited by what you can find.
It's like being able to pullthat in and and level it up to a
uh review process or a synthesisprocess to your point.
If you have no context, it'sgonna hallucinate and tell you
(40:21):
crazy stuff.
That's right.
That's right.
And if you don't put in theright formats for a scenario or
the right framing of it, it'salso gonna give you things that
you you know, so there's aboundary in that, and I think
that's that to me is where thethe opportunity of people are
like if you're consulting, islike giving the guardrails into
place, right?
(40:42):
That's like the career advice Igive to people.
But you know, when you thinkabout futures, right?
Like you talked about AI and andfutures thinking.
Do you think that someonestarting on this now, is there
anything that they should avoid?
Like we talked about what theyshould do, we talked about
(41:02):
things to like kind of read andconsume.
What's what's the don't go therebecause it's not it's it's like
some things have had their time.
Certain scenario methods are notreally it's a more complex
world, right?
It's like it did its job to kindof bring it into frame.
But are there certain things,I'm not just talking about
(41:22):
tools, but certain things thatyou know they should avoid.
SPEAKER_01 (41:25):
Great question,
Steve.
Not something I've actuallythought about specifically.
I suppose um I think you touchedon one, which is I mean, we've
always the way I was taughtfutures in foresight from
Richard Slaughter critic comingout of critical integral, was we
(41:48):
looked at yeah, we always lookedat trend spotting and that and
that idea of trying to grab thefuture as not being the wrong
thing to do.
It's a completelyunderstandable, helpful, useful
thing for some people, but atthe same time it's really, you
know, what are you doing?
I wonder what AI will do tothat.
(42:10):
I I I think what you're saying,and I tend to think, I think AI
can push, can actually make usmuch better at that, rather but
at some level we don't want tobe better at that.
We don't want to become I don'tthink our job is to become
better trend spotters.
I think AI as a trend spotter isprobably better than us in terms
of signal and noise, providedthe person has the context.
(42:34):
I don't think you necessarilycontext, right?
So to me, trend spotting ifagain, if if if you want to get
started, if you want to getpaid, if you want to get in the
door, then trend spotting is agreat way to get your first
credibility on the ground.
And then you know, hopefullystart moving to the really juicy
(42:56):
stuff uh around you know theemergent disruptive stuff.
Again, um I don't I mean I don'tknow that there are things I'd
say a person shouldn't do,because I I think by its nature
we're sitting on this, I thinkwe have to be braver than
(43:17):
everyone else.
Not because we're better, notbecause we're braver, but I
think our job is to, you know,we have to be out there on the
front trying the bleeding edge.
We have to be trying this stuff.
We have to be seeing what worksand what doesn't.
If otherwise, who's doing it?
If you know, if we're futurists,how can we be sitting inside
(43:37):
strategic planning processes,you know, five year yada yada
yada?
How can we be sitting in thatnow?
And then someone comes along andsays, how do we use AI to
actually do a strategic planthat's a hundred years out?
Then the answer's got to be,well, well, actually, we're
trying to do that.
Not not because we're trying todo it because we think it'll
(43:59):
work, but we've got to be tryingto do it to see if it can be
done or seeing and I thinkthat's that's my how is it's
hard to but we have to be reallyon the bleeding edge and beyond
the bleeding edge to to toactually see what's useful and
what's not.
We have to break we have towaste our time trying things
(44:25):
such that people can come backand say, have we got anything
that could do X?
And you can go, well we could dothis.
And once again, you've got tobuild contextual knowledge from
doing stuff.
SPEAKER_03 (44:40):
And I think that the
one thing that reminds me from
just what you just said is Ijust did an interview with Seal
Kramer.
She's uh Kramer, she's in uh inthe Netherlands and uh she's a
Dutch futurist, and I love herstatement, is about I think we
need to avoid asking all theright questions because we seem
(45:02):
to be kind of framed.
She likes she's about asking thewrong questions.
So, you know, I think for me,like the in in interviewing you,
uh I wanted to ask you aboutkind of inspiration.
Like what's been the mostunexpected source of inspiration
you've had, you know, you kindof come across, it's influenced
foresight, your foresight, yourwork.
SPEAKER_01 (45:25):
I suppose it's it's
it it's an old one, Steve, which
is what Wendell Bell said.
He said, All futures work ismoral.
SPEAKER_03 (45:35):
Wish I could have
interviewed him.
SPEAKER_01 (45:36):
Yeah, well, I did
the I did I did the remembering
Wendell, so that's the best Icould do.
unknown (45:41):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (45:42):
Where I had two of
his friends and two of his
colleagues talked about him.
But his point that he put in thesecond book of Foundation to
Future Studies is that allfutures work is morally based.
And what Wendell said, it is ourresponsibility to examine and
(46:05):
develop a moral basis for thework we do.
And that to me is still thething that we have to have ex we
have to have a personal moralbasis for our work.
So you've got that, and that canbe faith-based, but whatever.
But this is what this is this isyour moral basis.
(46:28):
Then there is the work you'reasked to do.
Now, professionals can manageboth.
They can manage where they are,and then they can understand the
work they're being asked to do.
And if there's a conflict, whichI think there should be, by its
nature of us holding moralbases, we should be in tension
with those.
Tension's not a bad thing.
Tension is that point where welearn about ourselves, we learn
(46:51):
about our basis.
Is it is it a good enough onefor me and us and how far the
circle of compassion goes?
And you learn about your moralstanding, your moral foundation
by engaging people who havedifferent moral bases.
You don't, you don't just workwith people like you, you go and
work with people not like you.
(47:12):
And I think I still think thatwe don't, I mean, I didn't do
enough as an educator to teach,not to teach a particular moral
basis.
It's not about this is a goodmoral basis, you know.
No, it's about do you have abasis?
Do you know what it is?
Do you know what it do you knowwhat its precepts are?
Do you know what itsfoundational axioms are?
(47:35):
And I because to me, and and sowhen I you would have heard it
on some of my podcasts, when Iwhen I interview a person who's
got a strong philosophical moralbasis for their work, I jump in
because I love it, because thisis a person that I can really
push on them.
(47:55):
I can push on them, and I didfind in my practicing
experience, Steve, that people,both practitioners and clients
that had a strong faith basewere some of the most
interesting people to work with.
Because they were notuncomfortable with the notion of
(48:18):
a moral basis.
They were actually literate inthe idea.
They were also they weren'talways comfortable with
challenging it, but they atleast were literate in what it
meant to have a moral basis andeverything stemming from a moral
basis.
That's kind of that's kind of along answer to that that
mightn't even be the answer tothe question that you wanted.
SPEAKER_03 (48:39):
No, that's great.
I think as as we uh wrap thingsup, you know, what I kind of
want to always ask, you know,people have had uh incredible
careers, and yours is continuingto go in gangbusters.
Like, when you look back, youknow, what do you want the imp
we you you know, you talkedabout Wendell, right?
(49:00):
And kind of having that kind ofa you know, nice, really nice
episode.
I listened to that with hiscolleagues.
Like, what kind of impact do youhope you have on the field and
just the world?
SPEAKER_01 (49:12):
Um yeah.
I I again I'm I'm one of I thinkI think you make a contribution
to be forgotten.
I think um it's not it's thecontribution that I think you
put the thing in place that'llbe there and it might be useful
in the future.
(49:33):
Yeah.
Because I th I mean I think, youknow, we all turn up, you know,
you know, we all end up ascompost.
Um which is not a bad thing.
Yes.
I mean I you know, I have I havea lot of interesting
conversations with people whowant to extend life, and I'm
fully understanding the wholethe the whole idea of life
extension, but I kind of thinkit's someone who said that
(49:56):
change only happens throughfunerals.
And I'm very conscious that theyoung can be just carriers of
the ideas of the old rather thancarriers of their own ideas.
So I don't I don't think oflegacy future pod.
(50:20):
I mean the course that I wasinvolved in with Joe and the
others who taught in it, if wemade a difference, it went
forward in those people's livesthat we taught.
So I'm I'm happy with that.
Future pod, if it has value,it's that it's there.
That someone can find it andthey can hopefully get use from
(50:46):
it.
Not through me, but through theconversation, through the
materials.
So I to me it's around buildinga capacity that could be useful
in the future.
And who did it, I less fussedabout.
I don't I don't there's youknow, that doesn't matter, I
won't be around.
So um that that's kind of it.
SPEAKER_03 (51:09):
Oh I look at the
content that I do, uh, the show
or the books, and it's about aliving, it's about a memory,
memory record, you know.
Nice.
Imagine my son being, you know,20 years from now, he gets to
read books that his dad wrote,you know, he gets a little know
a little bit more about me andmy my take on the world.
(51:30):
And I think you're right withthe sh with FuturePod, it's it's
you know, it's to become that umdata bank because there's a lot
of people that you know, theconversations, those people will
be gone at some point and it'llcarry on.
So I think it's a wonderful wayto have that legacy.
So uh, you know, for us, I justwant to say thanks for being on.
(51:51):
And if people want to find you,obviously FuturePod, I can do
that one for you.
But where else, uh where elsecan they find your work?
SPEAKER_01 (52:00):
Um again, probably
again, I'm on LinkedIn, again,
posting about Future Pod, butagain, just reach out to the
pod.
Um, and if anybody, and and Imake this call, I'm is that if
anybody thinks they'd like to beon the pod, um then yeah, drop
me a line and say, hey, I thinkI've got something worth saying.
There's a fair chance, you know,I'll chat to you.
(52:20):
Because as I said, this isreally I mean, Future Pod, when
I started it, and I and I don'twant to use the eye too much.
When we started Future Pod, thebig thing that we wanted to do
was honour the people who'dbuilt the field who were still
around.
That was that was number one.
So it was about interviewingpeople while I was still above
ground so they could put intheir own words what it meant,
(52:42):
why they did it, how that kindof stuff.
Then it became well, why don'twe then give a shout out to the
people doing work now?
And okay, fine.
So we'll become a littleplatform, a little kind of you
know, soapbox for people thatare currently doing it.
And then the third thing thatemerged was um could we inspire
people to get into it?
Yeah.
So to me, that's if people youknow want to use FuturePod,
(53:08):
because it's not mine.
It's just something I startedwith a couple of other people,
and I'm happy to keep it going.
But FuturePod's there if peoplethink it's useful.
I was delighted to have you comeon and you approach me, which
was the wonderful thing, becauseand because you approached me,
then I've then followed up andand yeah, so so so to me it's
(53:28):
about we shouldn't be shy aboutthis.
I that's one of the things Ithink you learn as a people is
don't be shy.
Don't be shy.
SPEAKER_03 (53:37):
It it's funny you
say that before we sign off.
The one thing that I learnedmaking um Browncoat's
Redemption, uh it's a film, afan it's a years ago, 15 years
now, 15, 16 years.
Um I I went from being what ifthey say no?
And it's uh my my co-creator,he's like, Well, what if they
(53:58):
say yes?
SPEAKER_02 (53:58):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (53:59):
And that was because
the worst thing they can say is
no, but it's like, what if theysay yes?
It's like you just gotta ask.
You just gotta just gotta be outthere.
Because no one's gonna drag youout there.
No one's gonna, you know, tellyou to do it.
And you know, we're all acommunity.
And there are maybe people hereand there that are not as I
would say friendly in thecommunity or connected in the
(54:21):
community, but generally myteachers are a good bunch of
they're a good bunch of people.
Yeah, not true.
SPEAKER_01 (54:27):
I agree completely.
SPEAKER_03 (54:28):
Yeah.
So well, everyone check outFuture Pod and find Peter on
LinkedIn.
He is an amazing and friendlyindividual, and as you can tell,
knowledgeable and uh quite quitea uh quite a deep thinker.
So thank you again, Peter.
Thanks, Dave.
Goodbye.
SPEAKER_00 (54:43):
Thanks for listening
to the Think Forward Podcast.
You can find us on all the majorpodcast platforms and at
www.thinkforwardshow.com as wellas on YouTube under ThinkForward
Show.
See you next time.