Co-creating future realities
3 traps we fall into when engaging with the future and how to overcome them
“What future do we want?”
This was the topic I was asked to speak to when I was invited in late 2021 to present at the UniberZiutatea (UniverCity) seminar of Mondragon University in Bilbao, Spain. I was delighted by the invitation. As a practitioner of collaboration and new ways of organizing, I have long been curious about the story, model, and evolution of the innovative Mondragon cooperatives. Mondragon University is one of these cooperatives, and its boundary-breaking notion of UniberZiutatea entails that the city should become a part of the university and the university should work collaboratively with and for the city.
This particular seminar focused on how to influence global crises from local standpoints.
As the seminar approached, I was reflecting on why the question I had been assigned felt uncomfortable to me and why I was struggling with how to speak to it. Surely, this was not an unfamiliar question to me. It’s a question that’s probably asked every hour every day in a change-oriented workshop somewhere in the world, and I have been working for over a decade with diverse multi-stakeholder groups on many topics to understand and influence the future.
While this question “What future do we want?” is very common in the space of social change, it contains three traps that were causing resistance in me. Here are the three traps and an alternative approach that entails a different mindset and the development of a new set of capabilities.
Trap #1: “Want”
The first trap is the word “want”. The implication being if we can only clarify what we want, we can make it happen. Where there is a will, there is a way, right? Unfortunately, the future of our society cannot be designed like a birthday wishlist.
When working with the future, it is crucial to understand the difference between fantasy and imagination. Asking about the future we want invites wishful thinking and may lead us to engage in fantasy, meaning it can actually disconnect us from the present reality and encourage us to simply make up the future. In this case, we project our highest hopes and desires onto the world, rather than engaging with our reality as it is and perceiving its true potential.
Unlike fantasy, imagination is not about making something up. Rather, it is about interacting with the real world with a sense of curiosity and wonder, tapping into genuine possibility, and activating our creative capabilities to contribute to transformation. Fantasy would for example be to make up an ideal city and project it onto one’s own, dreaming of one’s city magically transforming into the one we have created in our minds. If we don’t subject our fantasies to scrutiny, they remain a fata morgana that is seductive but does not actually move us further, or may even keep us trapped and passive, attached to an illusion. Imagination, on the other hand, is seeing one’s own situation with new eyes. It requires immersing oneself in one’s place, getting to know its particularities, its people, its heritage, its resources, in order to perceive not only how it is today but what it can possibly become in the future.
To say that the focus on want is misguided is not to negate the importance of will. There is a difference between connecting to what we want (which hints at entitlement and is often associated with something we would like to receive from the external world) and connecting to our agency and our will, which comes from within. Will is about finding our contribution, stepping into our role, and having the commitment and determination to stay the course even through difficult times. Will is fundamental — without it we get nowhere. Focusing on “want” on the other hand can paradoxically deprive us of agency and shift our attention to the others whom we can blame for standing in the way of our desires.
Furthermore, the focus on want implies that what we want is necessarily ‘good’ while for a healthy society there are certain things people may not want or may actively reject (such as paying taxes) that are nevertheless necessary for the good of a larger collective. We may find the will to pay taxes, even if we don’t want to.
Trap #2: “The future”
The second trap is the word “future”. It implies that there is a singular future that can and will be chosen. It is common to think of time as linear, where there is a present moment as one point on a line and a future moment which is a later point on that line. However, when we look towards the future from the vantage point of the present, the future is actually a broad field of potential. There is not a singular, linear future. Rather, there is a multiplicity of possible futures and among them, there is not only one future that is acceptable or desirable.
Through an approach called “transformative scenarios”, my colleagues and I help diverse stakeholders to engage with multiple possible futures. We build understanding of the difference between the projected future, which is the direction we are headed in if we don’t change course, and the many other possible futures that we can access through expanding our awareness and applying our imagination. While we may push the edges of possibility, we explicitly and deliberately avoid going into the space of the preposterous futures, which is the space of pure fantasy.
Based on this understanding, we help people to craft multiple future narratives, whether desirable or undesirable from different points of view. We have found that the exercise of engaging not only with the future we want, but also with the futures we don’t want is crucial in alerting us to risks and challenges, as well as to the implications of inaction and continued habitual behaviour.
An exercise of mapping multiple possible futures leads to an expansion of imagination and a flexible opening that allows us to detach from fixed fantasies and desires. It also allows for discovering overlaps between different people’s desired futures that might be missed if each person insists on only one vision. This is not an easy process; it can be messy, confusing, and conflictual. But it creates a basis on which we can engage with new partners and possibilities in collectively shaping the future that comes to be.
Trap #3: “We”
The third trap is the word “we”. Often we say “we” without interrogating who “we” is. When we say “what future do we want”, are we assuming that there is a “we” that is aligned, wants the same thing, and knows what is best for a society? That there is an objective or agreeable view of the good future, if only we can identify it?
In reality, when we are working with societal change, whether at local, national or global levels, there are inevitably many different interests, needs, and values at play. We unfortunately can’t solve complex problems in a systemic way by only talking and working with allies and preaching to the converted. Many attempts at collaboration fail either because differences in values, interests, and logic get in the way, or because the influence in the room is too limited by the narrow focus on participants who agree with one another.
It is important to acknowledge that every individual is always a part of multiple “we’s”. I have the “we” of my family, the “we” of my community, the “we” of my nation, the “we” of my gender, the “we” of my company, and so forth. The different “we’s” that I am a part of may among themselves already have conflicting needs. For example, my company might like me to travel to an extent that my family disagrees with. Extrapolating this to a diverse group of people trying to achieve something in a social change effort, we cannot just form a “we” with a singular purpose, that is disconnected from all the other “we’s” that the participants also have commitments to and which lead them to have different interests. As we consider the field of possible futures, a question to consider is who benefits and how, and who does not? What are the implications for different actors? This is not to say that all interests are equally valid, but we ignore them at our peril.
In my experience, it is possible to form teams across such divergent interests. My colleagues and I bring together diverse stakeholders who are all somehow influencing and influenced by the same problematic situation — for example a faulty education or health system, violent crime or conflict, or a deteriorating environment. They may agree neither on their precise definition of the problem nor on their prescribed solutions, but they know that the status quo is unsustainable and that change is needed. These diverse stakeholders work together on common tasks in spite of their disagreements, and in the process they build mutual trust and transform their understanding. They build a “we” that acknowledges the other “we’s” that they are also a part of. Often they can agree to shared actions even if they have different reasons for pursuing these actions.
This kind of teamwork across divergent interests requires building collaborative muscle through practice in dialogue and co-creation. It requires an ability to simultaneously embrace conflict and connection, to take responsibility for your own role, and to discover a way forward in an emergent process. A “we” can be formed, even in situations when people don’t all “want” the same thing.
An alternative approach
The above reflections on how to approach co-creating future realities point to a set of enabling factors for such efforts.
1. Form new collaboration spaces
In order to collaborate for lasting change, stakeholders who hold different roles and domains of knowledge need spaces where they can work together over time around specific challenges of their city or society. These spaces are not the space of a traditional office or classroom, and they are not oriented only towards learning but rather towards integrating learning and action. They are generally created around a shared challenge, and may carry different names, including for example social labs, policy labs, learning labs, collaboration platforms, and regulatory sandboxes. In these spaces, the knowledge generated by universities, think tanks or other knowledge actors can be leveraged for impact, and the specific needs of the city, the society, and its diverse stakeholders can in turn inform research and learning agendas.
2. Build capability
Co-creating future realities together across different values, interests and logics requires a set of capabilities that go beyond content knowledge. In particular, it requires exercising and practicing radical collaboration and imagination, two sets of capabilities that are often de-emphasised in a traditional school or university setting. These capabilities are challenging to learn and not to be taken for granted. Processes and programmes can be developed whereby the need for these capabilities is made more explicit and where they can be deepened through specific exercises as well as learning by doing and reflecting on practice.
3. Re-perceive reality and its potential
If we want to avoid the trap of fantasy and activate the imagination, this most definitely requires getting out of the classroom and out of our comfort zones. Physically going to unfamiliar places, listening to people we wouldn’t normally speak to, escaping our social media bubble — there are many forms of immersion in reality that can help us to see with new eyes and challenge our assumptions.
Interestingly, scenario work is essentially a method for re-perceiving the reality that is currently in a process of becoming. It is about articulating the potential that is contained in the present, and requires a deep familiarity with the trends and emerging novelties present in the here and now. Using that learning to trace multiple future trajectories can help to identify key opportunities for intervention and change.
4. Experiment and collaborate together over time
If the aim is actual impact in the city or society, the insights that are generated must continually inform action. Collaboration between knowledge actors such as universities and societal actors can ensure that such action is grounded in past learning and informs future learning through action-learning cycles. Continued work in teams of diverse stakeholders can build capabilities and trusting relationships that are more likely to sustain collaboration over time. This, however, requires giving attention to the “how” of collaboration — explicit design of the collaborative process and structure and check-points to consider and adjust how the collaboration is working. Assuming that collaboration will be smooth and easy can lead collaborations to fail that could otherwise have been highly impactful.
The need to think and act differently
Through the sum of our actions and inactions of today, we are all already co-creating the future reality that will come to be. There are aspects of the future that we are currently co-creating that are desirable. There are other aspects that are not and which we may tend to avoid because the truth hurts. Can we pause to ask ourselves collectively and along with others who hold different perspectives: What future reality are we currently co-creating? What possible future realities can we imagine, given the realities of the world today? What does this mean for the role that we each, as individuals, groups, or institutions need to play today in order to move towards a more healthy, just and sustainable city, community and society?
From global to local level, complex societal transitions are currently required in order to meet human needs within the planet’s natural boundaries. This is not a time for getting lost in hope and fantasy. It is a time for looking reality in the eyes with courage, activating creativity, playing our role, and collaborating with others in new and more radical ways.
(Illustration by Kathryn Gichini)
