Inspiration for this paper stemmed from a desire to make the foresight practice more proactive in transforming the present and creating a better future for everyone. In some cases, it is not merely enough to tell people about what could happen in the next few years. There also needs to be a follow-through or an answer to what people can do to achieve their preferred futures. However, transformation is arguably a difficult task because the world is far more complex today. For example, in the Philippines there are informal meetings to reimagine Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City. The issue is that Katipunan is prone to congested traffic since it hosts people in suburban villages, barangays, malls, schools, and universities. As such, it is a multi-stakeholder issue that cannot be addressed by a single entity alone. In fact, it will need commitment and change from different stakeholders to create a whole new mobility system that does not congest the avenue.
The question then is, how can foresight help in issues like Katipunan’s traffic congestion, and essentially nudge people to realize the importance of collective action? How can the practice of foresight trigger coordination among different stakeholders to create a transformed future?
To answer this question, I have hypothesized that Houston’s foresight framework (Hines, 2017) could support and enhance another methodology called Collective Impact. First conceptualized by John Kania and Mark Kramer, Collective Impact is essentially a systematic process for building and operationalizing long-term collective action (2011). In fact, it believes that organizing collective action is a key approach for finding lasting solutions to wicked societal problems. Likewise, the purpose of this paper is to explore how Houston’s foresight framework can support Collective Impact in its effort to guide different stakeholders in transforming the failing systems that are unable to support their daily lives.
How does foresight support Collective Impact?
How then can the Houston foresight framework support Collective Impact? Well, in his book “Facilitating Breakthrough: How to Remove Obstacles, Bridge Differences, and Move Forward Together”, Adam Kahane said that “The world needs more and better collaboration and therefore needs more and better facilitation.” (Kahane, 2022). Kahane is known for facilitating multi-stakeholder workshops that utilize foresight methods to help people move forward and mobilize collective action. He calls this practice Transformative Scenario Planning, and this facilitative approach to foresight is a clue for how the Houston foresight framework can be useful in getting people together to build a common understanding of their shared problems, a shared awareness of what could happen; but also, to develop a more collaborative mindset that enables them to create a shared vision of change and shared course of action. Rather, this participative method of Kahane has led me to hypothesize that involving different stakeholders in Houston’s foresight framework, could be a way to achieve the five conditions for establishing a Collective Impact initiative, which are: (1) The development of a Common Agenda (2) The creation of Shared metrics (3) The coordination of Mutually Reinforcing Activities (4) Ensuring Continuous Communication (5) and the setting-up of a Backbone Organization that shepherds and ensures that the 4 conditions are in place (Kania et al., 2011). To further illustrate this, the diagram below shows how the various aspects of the foresight practice (highlighted in red) can support the five conditions of successful Collective Impact organizing (highlighted in turquoise).
Figure 1. How foresight compliments Collective Impact
Collective Framing
Allow me now to explain how foresight can support Collective Impact work. To begin, instead of framing a collective issue only through secondary research, the process starts off with convening an informal group that will identify stakeholders of a particular issue. This small informal group will then interview each stakeholder in order to find out the problem’s history and current assessment. Sample questions are: what do you think is causing the problem; who do you think is responsible for this problem; and what are your current experiences with the problem? Secondary research could still complement data taken from these interviews by checking the latest news, studies, and journals on the issue that needs to be solved.
After conducting interviews, the informal group can start convening a formal group of stakeholders to have an initial meeting & workshop. The agenda for this initial meeting should be centered around two activities. First, a discussion about the information garnered from interviews to illuminate the common and diverging perspectives that stakeholders have on the problem. This activity will test the assumptions of stakeholders and more importantly make them more aware about how others experience the problem at hand. They can also discuss and deliberate on questions like, Who are the other stakeholders not in the room, and how do they affect the situation? What does each one do to try and solve the problem? What do the problem owners or the people who experience the problem firsthand really need?
Second, help stakeholders create a map that shows how they are all interrelated and what factors they think are contributing to the problem. The goal of this first meeting is to create a shared understanding of their common problem. Without a common understanding of the problem, stakeholders will not be able to come together and create a shared preferred future nor a shared course of action.
Scanning Trends, Issues, Projections, and Plans
The succeeding workshop involves engaging stakeholders in the process of discovering emerging change. Depending on time and complexity, the futurist can either feed stakeholders information about the future or capacitate them to do so. Thus, there can be a whole workshop on finding and analyzing signals of change, but also what Trends, Issues, Plans, and Projections (TIPPs) are relevant for their issue.
Nevertheless, this is an important step because stakeholders can begin identifying what is driving their common future. For example, if the group is focused on ensuring food security for the next generation, then trends could suggest that population growth and environmental issues are driving a future where their food security is constantly threatened. They may also start orienting themselves with signals that could change their problem for the better (or even for the worse). For instance, could they find a new technology that can transform the system that is producing their problem? Or is there a new technology that will threaten or hamper their problem? Is there a new idea or policy that could solve the root cause of their complex problem? Are one of the stakeholders developing something that may help other stakeholders in the initiative? Or is there an emerging issue?
These workshops will break the mental barriers of stakeholders. Introducing them and opening their eyes to change that they may not have noticed before. This will take them out of their silos and nudge them to imagine how things could be different. In fact, change is under everyone’s noses, and discovering these inputs and drivers is one way to let people acknowledge that our world is not static.
Futuring Plausible Futures
Now, as people become more open to possibilities, the next workshops would be to co-create scenarios. The goal is to engage stakeholders in outlining the plausible futures that the signals of change and TIPPs may be suggesting. It is important that they not only have a shared understanding of the problem but also a shared awareness of how their domain may change. In this sense, they must all be prepared for the plausible futures that may occur and risks that will hamper their common problem.
There are already examples of stakeholders collaborating and creating scenarios together. Take the Mont Fleur exercise conducted by Adam Kahane for South Africa. Here, many different stakeholders were brought together to discuss the future of their country (Kahane, 2013). It was successful in the sense that it informed the policies of government officials and strategies of other sectors (Kahane, 2013). Ultimately, it contributed to the country’s transition away from apartheid or legalized racial segregation in their country.
This case study from Kahane shows that it is possible to bring different stakeholders into a foresight process. It also exemplifies how it could be used to help mobilize and organize collective action. In fact, there are benefits to engaging different stakeholders in a foresight process. For example, it makes preferred futures more holistic because each stakeholder in the workshop will naturally represent their organization or community.
Visioning towards a Common agenda and Shared Metrics
Moving on, after building the scenarios with stakeholders, the next step is to start translating the workshops into action. A group of stakeholders can start this by building a shared vision of change and a shared course of action. Thus, the first step is co-creating a preferred image of the future and a Common Agenda (or key goals and strategies) to achieve it (Kania et al., 2011). Backcasting could be utilized in this step. It is a tool that helps people envision a preferred future and then work backwards to outline what needs to be done to achieve it.
Now, the feasibility of this tool in a multi-stakeholder setting can be seen through the case of stakeholders from Hungary’s Higher Education (Géring et al., 2018). Utilizing a participative backcasting process, students, teachers, and external stakeholders were able to identify strategic opportunities, illuminate conflicts of interests, and most importantly take part in planning for the future of Higher Education. In this case, it was a perfect tool for helping different stakeholders co-plan for their shared preferred future.
Backasting may also help in achieving the second step, which is establishing Shared Metrics that can measure the progress of future initiatives. This is important because people need to understand whether their activities are working or not. If stakeholders were to measure success differently, then this may lead to different reports about their initiatives. Some may think that their key strategies are working, while others may not. Ultimately, failure to establish key Shared Metrics will make the Common Agenda illusory (Kania et al., 2011).
Now, achieving these two conditions for a successful coalition has no real recipe (Cabaj, 2017). However, what is important to remember when arriving at these two conditions is that different stakeholders must be involved. From business owners to public servants to community members who experience the problem firsthand.
Designing Mutually Reinforcing Activities
At this stage of the Collective Impact process, a useful tool in the foresight practice is Designing. In this step, the focus is on co-designing and prototyping solutions that are aligned with a Common Agenda. Normally, to be in line with the Common Agenda, the solution must be designed to reinforce and help the whole collective. In other words, the solutions must directly or indirectly help other stakeholders in the coalition. Thus, if a coalition believes that creating a policy is one way to achieve their goals, then the policy they imagined should be mutually beneficial.
Note that the solutions do not just have to be a new policy. It can also be a new technology, business model, or even service. Nevertheless, the goal is to create prototypes of possible solutions, test them, and iterate them as needed.
Adapting through Continuous Communication
The next steps involve monitoring the Shared Measurements set in the visioning process; and continuously communicating or updating the stakeholders about change that is occurring. For example, stakeholders need to make reports on the progress of their programs or projects. They must also foster a culture of accountability by keeping tabs on each other’s progress, but also struggles, and challenges. Besides this, Paul Schmitz, a Collective Impact practitioner, also suggests that there needs to be adaptive leadership that fosters:
…continuously learning and adapting work based on data and changes in the external environment in pursuit of ultimate results. It may also include managing one’s team or organization through change by signaling early that change is coming, communicating clearly why it is important and how the decision was made, acknowledging tradeoffs or losses that may result from the change, clearly describing the responsibility of team members will have in the change, and having empathy for different people’s comfort or stress with change (Schmitz, 2021).
Here, Schmitz gives a clear emphasis on the need for a leader that can build consensus among the other members of the coalition about potential changes that are emerging, and help others understand the implications of their decisions. Nevertheless, this function fits perfectly in the condition that there must be Continuous Communication among stakeholders.
Ultimately, this is an important step because people need to maintain accountability and understand whether they are achieving their preferred future or not. They also must understand if they are headed toward a future that is less desirable. In this case, they need to start adapting their strategies and revisiting their common agenda to see what is or is not working.
The Futurist’s role in the backbone
Now, in organizing Collective Impact, Kania and Kramer emphasize that it is of vital importance that there is a backbone support that manages all five conditions of successful Collective Impact coalitions (2013). This could be likened to a coaching staff with a head coach of a team sport that figures out how best the different members of the team can play cohesively to win their games and ultimately the championship. A critical member of the backbone or a coaching staff is someone who can think and frame future scenarios and the corresponding alternative measures that will make sure that whatever happens in the future the team is ready to adjust and continue to play at a high level of performance. A coalition backbone therefore needs futurists who can provide or develop within the backbone the adaptive and transformative leadership skills needed for coalitions to sustain effectiveness. In fact, one of the challenges that Collective Impact tends to deal with is sustaining an initiative long enough for systemic change to occur.
To put this into perspective, Collective Impact Forum suggests that initiatives tend to run from 5 to 15 years (Schmitz, 2021). Within this time frame, the coalition needs not only to be adaptive but also agile to mobilize and sustain initiatives towards their envisioned desired transformed future or Common Agenda. The development of these adaptive and transformative leadership skills critical to the success of the coalition’s efforts can be provided by Futurists since they are (1) comfortable and actually operate in the same long time frame that most initiatives tend to last; (2) Adaptation is in their DNA since they are constantly monitoring change and have the necessary processes to prepare people for constantly changing contexts; and lastly (3) it is also in their nature to manage and facilitate change among organizations, by helping them craft strategies, visions, and pressure testing these strategies too.
Conclusion
All in all, this paper outlines how each step in Houston’s foresight framework can complement Collective Impact initiatives. In fact, similar work is already being done in institutions like Reos Partners headed by Adam Kahane, and the School of International Futures. Thus, case studies from these two organizations are signals that foresight can play an active role in fostering collective action.
Down the line, there is an expectation that more insights will be unraveled on how foresight can complement Collective impact initiatives. For instance, it would be worth noting how the dynamics of the stakeholders will evolve over time and whether they will possess more adaptive and transformative mindsets because of their appreciation and understanding of the foresight practice.
Furthermore, it would also be interesting to see how foresight can support Collective Impact issues like Katipunan’s mobility system, which again needs major transformation. In this case, expect reports on how foresight supported Collective Impact initiatives, in the near future.
References
Cabaj, M. (2017). Shared Measurement: The Why is Clear, the How Continues to Develop. Tamarack Community. https://www.tamarackcommunity.ca/hubfs/Resources/Publications/Shared%20Measurement%20Paper.pdf?hsLang=en-us
Géring, Z., Király, G., Csillag, K., Kováts, G., Köves, A., & Gáspár, T. (2018). Vision(s) of the University. Applying Participatory Backcasting to Study the Future of Higher Education. Journal of Futures Studies, 22(4), 61–82. https://doi.org/10.6531/JFS.201806.22(4).0005
Hines, A. (2017). Updating framework foresight with six APF competencies. Hinesight….for Foresight. https://www.andyhinesight.com/updating-framework-foresight-with-six-apf-competencies/
Hines, A., & Bishop, P. C. (2013). Framework foresight: Exploring futures the houston way. Futures, 51, 31–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2013.05.002
Kahane, A. (2022). Breaking through constraints. Stanford Social Innovation Review: Informing and Inspiring Leaders of Social Change. https://ssir.org/books/excerpts/entry/breaking_through_constraints
Kahane, A. (2013). Transformative scenario planning: Working together to change the future. Berrett-Koehler.
Kania, J., & Kramer, M. (2011). Collective impact (SSIR). Stanford Social Innovation Review: Informing and Inspiring Leaders of Social Change. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/collective_impact
Schmitz, P. (2021). 10 dangers to collective impact (SSIR). Stanford Social Innovation Review: Informing and Inspiring Leaders of Social Change. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/10_dangers_to_collective_impact
Affiliation
Camilo Maria Ricardo Q. Lopa | Master’s Student at University of Houston – lopacarlo04@gmail.com
