Anything is possible
Imagination and narrative power.
It's possible to create a shared vision (and guideposts) for the future and the new narratives that give it cultural, political and social life. This vision and the narratives that shape it could be called a “Narrative North Star.”
A Narrative North Star helps light up the space to explore news narratives that sustain communities, as Kristen Grimm spoke to in A Better World Ahead Means Shaping Emerging Narratives Now.
The pandemic is a portal wrote Arundhati Roy. But so are societal shifts shaped by decades of dominant narratives: extreme inequality, racism, mass species extinction, rising sea levels and more.
Do we proceed using stories grounded in the deep narratives that got us here? Or do we take from those narratives the values they offer to people beset by complexity and uncertainty? Can new narratives offer people security? Systems scientists Jessica Flack and Melanie Mitchell recently wrote about crafting a better future amidst uncertainty.
In The Story of the Impossible Train, Phoebe Tickell shows us how good results are possible in even impossibly bad situations. But we must imagine alternatives first.
Leaders in other issues are prompting us to call for bold policy changes by imagining new ways of being together. César Rodríguez-Garavito wrote Post-pandemic futures, hope, and human rights to call for new visions and actionable hope. In Mass Decarceration, COVID-19, and Justice in America, Deanna Van Buren & F. Javier Torres-Campos call out a crisis of imagination in criminal justice. Futures work can offer a new vision and narrative maps for reaching that vision.
A note: the world ahead is not created from scratch. We move with and build upon the narratives and values and histories we have. We do this together. It can be messy, not sterile. It is hard work. Not something that comes neatly out of a box. Panthea Lee shared a thread on co-creation, design and the future means. Worth reading.
Why You Future
A March, 2020, story covers decades of futures work by Royal Dutch Shell [Malcolm Harris, New York]. The goal was to make better forecasting decisions about exploration and investment. But also to better control the dominant narratives about fossil fuel use in an environment (both figurative and literal) growing intolerant of fossil fuels.
In Learning from the Future [ Harvard Business Review], J. Peter Scobic tells leaders to use strategic futures work to take advantage of uncertain times like the pandemic. Scobic reference Shell’s scenario planning by the US Coast Guard. The work is about power, Scobic writes:
Organizations don’t just prepare for the future. They make it. Moments of uncertainty hold great entrepreneurial potential...It takes strength to stand up against the tyranny of the present and invest in imagination.
Imagining and putting shape to new worlds is essential to strong narrative projects as we recently wrote in Our futures now: Turning imagination into narrative power.
Below are several examples of work being done by organizations, companies and others. One of our favorites – as aspiration, inspiration and a tool for narrative change – is A Message from the Future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
How About Scenarios?
We see a lot of it happening in the wake of COVID-19. Introducing Our COVID Future: The Long Crisis Scenarios, Alex Evans and David Steven write:
If we can create plausible stories about different futures, we create a foundation for decision makers, campaigners, and communities to influence the process of change.
Evans and Steven describe each scenario as a choice between “collective action and polarisation.” The future scenarios we see highlight narrative conflict. On one hand we choose to face uncertainty through individualism, scarcity and nationalism that creates enemies. On the other we recognize uncertainty as opportunity to learn from others and be ambitious enough to care for everyone.
Other scenarios popping up in recent months include:
What will the world be like after coronavirus? Four possible futures An economist’s perspective on the fragility of today’s economy and the narratives shaping the economy’s role. [Simon Mair]
The New Possible and What’s Next. Largely focused on the “future of work,” it identifies the broad, systemic stress created by rapid change and uncertainty. And the value of talking with others about uncertainty and possibility. [McKinsey]  |
