Hello friends.
It has been a while. This weighs on me. I wish I could share thoughts with you every day. Instead I’ve been writing tens of thousands of words for client studies that very few will ever see.
Some of the ideas I shared at the beginning of the year regarding dream thinking and functional fiction are still incubating, but taking much longer than I had hoped to come to fruition.
Today, instead of writing a few paragraphs about one thing, I’m going to write a few sentences about a lot of things. These are things I’ve been thinking about these last couple months and are mostly half baked, though this is why I’m sharing them with you – perhaps in the cocoon of your context these ideas can go from ugly caterpillars to beautiful butterflies. Do what you will with them.
So without further ado, here we go.
What’s the future of work? Wrong question. The better question is ‘what is the future of life, and what role should work play in it?’ In my mind, this is a far more compelling question and accounts for the fact that human existence is far more than work, and that our lives outside of work implicate our performance at work. If organizations are willing to ask their employees what kind of life they want to live, they will inevitably design work experiences exponentially increase engagement, performance, and fulfillment.
Someone yesterday asked me how they could bring people together to innovate on a process. My answer:
Build a sandbox.
Sandboxes are for playing. Make believe. The construction and deconstruction of landscapes. In sandboxes, toys are welcome. Ok ok, I’m not advocating for actual sandboxes, merely metaphorical ones.
A sandbox can exist in a conference room, a zoom hangout, a liminal space, or in a colleagues garage. They work best when time boxed, meaning they run from this time to that time. Usually less than a week is best. Sandboxes are always staffed with a facilitator. The sand in this metaphorical sandbox is the acutely defined problem to be solved. The sandbox has whiteboards, pens, paper, post-its, toys (I like legos), and snacks. Then, you invite people to play, with only two rules – first, every sentence spoken in the sandbox must start with “what if?,” and second, every response to another person must start with “yes, and…” It is important to remember that sandboxes exist outside the realms of viability and feasibility. They are most effective when untethered from constraints.
When you are done with your sandbox, step back and look at what everyone made. I guarantee you the innovation you’ve been looking for will be found in the sand scribbled all over the walls.
A few conversations lately have me realizing just how many few spaces we have to express our uninhibited self. Asking myself where I find this space has lead to some radical insights into my own sense of self, how I show up, the masks I wear, and what I need in life to cultivate authentic, healthy, and honest self expression.
Throughout history, every culture has had prophets. We all know the big names – Buddha, Jesus, Moses – but there are thousands of others throughout history who have represented the voice of marginalized or oppressed peoples. They live lives in sub-communities that contradict the dominant socio-political economy, they stand up to power, they articulate and communicate visions of alternative realities that are fairer and more just, they are curators of unconventional bodies of knowledge. Prophets always embrace a value system or worldview that becomes the primary paradigm of society generations later – think Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Harvey Milk. First wave feminism and the surrealism movement of the early 20th century were hotbeds for prophets whose impact is still felt today. Prophets are not pundits, but poets who tap into traditions of art and artifact to make their visions accessible and scalable. Today prophets are all around us (and the GOP seems to be allergic to them); it is imperative we pay attention. We must not dismiss ideas that don’t fit the current system. History has shown that the imagination of prophets today is the reality for all of us tomorrow. Look for, and listen to, prophets.
What if we thought of organizations as organisms? Instead of systems of production and profit organized functionally into HR, real estate, IT, sales, etcetera, what if we organized ourselves by the functions of organisms – homeostasis, metabolization, reproduction, sensing, and adapting? How might the lens of metabolization, for example, reshape our understanding of how natural and human resources such as emotional energy are consumed to produce nourishment for the organization and the [market] ecosystem in which that organization exists? This is a conversation I’d love to explore with more of you over wine some evening this summer.
Value. What it is. How it is created. Who creates it.
I’m no economist (not even close), but more than ever I’ve been thinking about the notions and systems that constitute value creation and exchange. Not only are systems of value become more and more distributed, but they are moving to smaller and more intimate platforms where customers are creators. There is growing disinterest in monopoly as tokenization becomes more contextual to niche markets with their own rules for exchange, such as markets for social value in the startup industry. Additionally, the value of data has traditionally been captured by private enterprise, but that paradigm is being flipped with the data dignity movement and data unions. In other words, the economic, brand, and consumer value of privacy is rapidly increasing. Finally, the pandemic has highlighted more than ever the relationship between conditions of value and created value. As the conditions of ‘work’ have changed, we’ve reconsidered long standing notions of productivity. Turns out productivity is not an issue of where for knowledge workers, it is an issue of how; great conditions of value for employees are characterized by flexibility, autonomy, and rest among other things.
As someone who has been labeled (by those on the outside of my work looking in) as a futurist, I have reflected a bit on what this means for my postdisciplinay practice of research and strategy. One big idea continues to jump out – I am not interested in predicting the future, I am interested in projecting the future. There is no singular future. At this moment there are an infinite number of futures (plural). Some are possible, some are probable, even fewer are preferable. To attempt to predict these futures is fine and ok and useful in many cases, but there are many far more qualified than myself to do that work. I’ll leave the business of prediction to the Amy Webbs of the world. Projection on the other hand is more concerned with what we want, rather than what will be. Projection is concerned with imagining the world we want to build and inhabit. This world is not an extrapolation of the past, it is a vision for alternative realities that are more restorative, more just, more peaceful. The tools and methods of prediction are different than those of projection, though they are both often labeled futurism. For those working in the futures space, it’s important to know what kind of futurism you are practicing, and ensure those you are working with are aligned.
As I said at the beginning, these are fragments of ideas that have yet to become beautiful butterflies. Do what you will with them, and let me know how it goes!
As always, I’m grateful you’ve joined me on this journey. Feel free to share with others who may be interested in exploring these ideas.
More soon,
Joel
Ugly Caterpillars
I always found the ideas of evolution and ambivalence deep, especially in the context of psychological thrillers, the most interesting genre by my standards. Dostoievski's Mr. Goldyadkin, Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and even Francis Dolarhyde in Red Dragon. They are all characterizations of our both/and nature, not the either/or dichotomy we use whenever we face a crossroads. It's simpler to imagine we can be either a saint or a devil, not all (and everything in between) at once.
I think with proper stimuli, people's inhibitions can be put in the position of subliming. It's not just about the two rules you outlined. Maybe it's also about the rule not to be judged by your teammates and yourself... although that's a tough one to achieve because it's tacit, not explicit. How would I know if X is not judging my very twisted 'What if...?' In addition, perhaps there's a path towards an honest state of sublimation through voluntary exposure to your 'out-of-yourself' self. Kind of like what happens when someone wants to overcome arachnophobia. It's a step-by-step process that happens in familiar environments. This sandbox must be the inhibited caterpillars' cocoon, they must feel comfortable in it before they let go of inhibitions - and, arguably, that doesn't necessarily happen because there will always be the social norm constraint.
P.S Cool matrix. It made me think about my English-speaking ability. As a Latino, I'm very aware that I am inhibited every time I speak in English (upper left quadrant). Does that make me one step closer or one step away from my raw uninhibited self? What would Joel Fariss write under a pseudonym? We can talk about these topics whenever you wish.
excellent read!