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I have been emphasizing the need for futurists and foresight to better deliver on client needs and expectations for the last two decades. I sought out a position as an organizational futurist because I was perplexed by the difficulty our clients were having in making use of our consulting work. A lot of my work as an organizational futurist was around translating foresight work and exploring for ways to get it through the system. In my teaching, I have certainly brought with me this perspective of being almost manically focused on client needs.
Like any good thing, too much can be harmful. I’m specifically thinking about instances where a client does not have a clear identified need or objective; where they just want to explore; to see what they don’t know; to get a sense of what’s out there. If you go back to them with clarifying questions, they don’t have the answer, because they don’t know either. And it seems like this lack of clarification can have an almost paralyzing effect. Being trained to respond, it can be challenging to create. And it’s not just students. I have been part of conversations in the past where teams were hesitant to take a project without clear objectives, seeing it as something of a trap or a loser.
I need to do a better job of preparing my students for these kinds of projects — let’s call them “explorations.” Of course, there have been many explorations going on. But my sense of it is that we did much more of the “explorations” twenty years ago than today. I’d argue that we actually bring the most value on these, or that we are the most differentiated from others in being able to handle pure explorations. We get to create to a greater extent and this is where we really shine. For my part, I need to adjust the emphasis in my teaching. Anyone else? Andy Hines
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