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WHAT IS THE CHALLENGE?
GETTING THE QUESTION RIGHT
The world is not more complicated or
complex today than yesterday; when
it comes to seeing and acting in any
specific situation it is capacity that
makes the difference, not the absolute
number of permutations or even
unfamiliarity. What seems complicated
to a child may seem like child’s play to an
adult. In particular, what matters is the
sophistication of our sense-making: our
ability to discover, invent and construct
the world around us.
To date, considerable effort has
been made to improve sense-making
capabilities. Policymakers call on
familiar and intuitive methods of
everyday experience (preparation and
planning), as well as techniques (such
as forecasting, horizon scanning,
scenarios, expert opinions) considered
adequate based on past perceptions of
our needs and capacities. Nevertheless,
the perceived proliferation of so-called
“wicked problems” in recent times
has added to a mounting sense of
uncertainty, and called into question
both the decision-making value of these
business-as-usual approaches as well
as their sufficiency in accounting for
complexity in practice.
Recent advances in understanding
complexity, uncertainty and emergence
have opened up new ways of defining
and using the future. The question is
therefore not how to cope with a universe
that seems to be getting more complex,
but how to improve our ability to take
advantage of the novel emergence that
has always surrounded us.1 We need to
bring our capacity to use the future into
alignment with both our perceptions of
the complex, emergent reality around
us, and our aspirations.
Futures Literacy — Embracing Complexity and Using the Future | Riel Miller
Riel Miller
Futures Literacy —
Embracing Complexity and
Using the Future
If policymakers want to address complexity, they must define and
then use the future more effectively, argues futurist Riel Miller.
Opinion
ETHOS | Issue 10 | OCTOBER 2011
24
ANTICIPATORY SYSTEMS AND THE
THREE DIMENSIONS OF THE FUTURE IN
THE PRESENT2
In practical terms, embracing complexity
means, at a minimum,3 thinking about
the future in terms of anticipatory
systems, and being able to distinguish
three types of future. It is failure to
do so appropriately that more often
than not muddles the sense-making
processes supporting policy formation
and implementation.
Since we live in an anticipatory
universe,4 characterised by time and
motion, it is not surprising that many
phenomena and organisations exhibit
or contain anticipatory systems. Thus
trees lose their leaves in anticipation
of winter and humans plant crops in
anticipation of hunger. Understanding
the future from an anticipatory
systems perspective takes into account
animate and inanimate, conscious
and unconscious mechanisms for
integrating the non-existent future into
the present.
Once the diversity of these “futures
in the present” can be uncovered, the
next step is to distinguish the three
dimensions of such futures.
Contingency
Contingency futures are phenomena
expressed within a system that emerge
due to the intervention of an extra-
systemic event. One can prepare for
or pre-empt a contingency future,
but when it happens, it arises from
an exogenous force. This potential
of the present rests on the threats or
opportunities posed by external forces.
Threats can take the form of predators or
disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes,
pandemics or other wildcard events.
Contingency futures can also be positive
such as winning the lottery or having
resources beneath desert sands suddenly
become valuable.
Contingency futures can be
imagined and even calculated
probabilistically. Although statistics
and odds are just informed guesses and
“black swans” can pop up at any time,
human beings have become fairly good
at preparing for contingent futures.
We use simulation and rehearsals
(emergency drills) to generate adaptive
capacities (open minds, transparency,
good communications) that allow us
to react to contingency futures that
emerge from outside forces.
Optimisation
Optimisation futures are things we
believe can be “caused” to happen in
the future through premeditation and
planning, generally in circumstances
where the rules and resources are
assumed to be fixed. The idea is to
impose our will on the future —
Futures Literacy — Embracing Complexity and Using the Future | Riel Miller
ETHOS | Issue 10 | OCTOBER 2011
25
imagining, if “all goes well”, that we can
“colonise” tomorrow so that it conforms
to our desires and expectations. Here,
the potential of the present is like
a chess game, with many possible
permutations and alternative paths,
but the ends, means and rules of play
are given. Farmers plant seeds with the
expectation of a future crop, knowing
full well that many factors can intervene
in the meantime: from locusts and war
to good weather and enough “hands” to
bring in the harvest.
As with contingency futures, humans
have become pretty good at managing
optimisation futures. Even when efforts
to shape the future may only be partially
successful, we have generally offered the
rationale that the end (e.g. having food to
eat later in the year) justifies the means
(imposing a plan).
Exploration-Discovery
However, the potential of the
present goes beyond contingency and
optimisation futures. A top-notch plan
to improve the product line and beat the
competition may be rendered entirely
obsolete as novelty emerges. Toyota may
beat GM because the way it plans its
production of cars is better than that of
GM, but the decline of the automotive
era can leave both high and dry. Of
course, emergence- driven systemic
transformation need not be fatal, but
the question is how to perceive it and
use it. The first step is to recognise this
distinctive category of the future.
Exploratory futures are those aspects
of the present that need to be discovered.
Exploration is about “seeing” the present
differently; novelty and discontinuity
are hallmarks. Exploratory futures are
about identifying and making sense of
phenomena that emerge like the Big
Bang: part inspiration, part legacy, part
chance, and part mystery. Exploring this
dimension of the potential of the present
is a delicate and ephemeral balancing
act when compared to optimisation
or contingency, and depends on the
paradoxical, even contradictory task
of building scaffolding that enables
“rigorous imagining”.
The danger is that formal,
preconceived sources of inspiration,
intended to enable discovery, are all
too often exactly what snuffs it out. By
insisting and imposing the patterns,
words, and ideas of the past on the
present, the new and not-yet-meaningful
cannot be invented and brought into our
sense-making processes. Exploration is
not about the paths not taken — which
are only the possibilities of the past
brought to life by the present. Instead, it
is about futures unimagined and hence
a present that does not yet make sense.
Until recently, most deliberate
systems for anticipating the future
Futures Literacy — Embracing Complexity and Using the Future | Riel Miller
ETHOS | Issue 10 | OCTOBER 2011
26
have only addressed the first two
dimensions of the future: both of which
can be understood in ways that largely
ignore complexity. It takes all three,
incorporated into our anticipatory
systems, to see the rich potential of
the present.5
MAKING EXPLICIT OUR ASSUMPTIONS
ABOUT THE FUTURE
There is nothing unusual about making
explicit the “assumptions” underlying
policy choices: this is just best practice.
In general terms, a “good” policy
process will have explicitly considered
the nature of the model(s) being used
(and hence its assumptions — including
ones about the future), although the
details of such an analysis may be in the
background documentation rather than
in the main text.
However, all too often the
assumptions that underlie a model
used to conduct a policy analysis are
constrained (for a variety of reasons)
to either:
(i) simple presentations of why
the assumptions are considered
“reasonable” simplifying depictions/
predictions of “reality” in the present
and future, or
(ii) descriptions of “givens” that are
considered exogenous to the model
— imposed by an outside force of
some sort and usually assumed to
apply in the future.
Such limitations do not pose
much of a problem when it comes to
“contingenc y” and “optimisation”
futures, since in such cases the subject
is already constrained by specific
operational or current configurations
of the system — no changes in the
conditions of change need to be taken
into account.
Such is not the case when trying to
address complex phenomena rife with
emergent novelty. These problems pose a
design challenge — how to live with and
use the creative novelty of the universe.
The challenge is to find practical ways to
use the future as part of the process of
discovering and creating the present.
This is different than meeting
the implicitly optimisation-oriented
challenge posed by Douglass North
when he pointed out that most of the
models being used for policy analysis are
ergodic,6 failing to incorporate changes
in the conditions of change. North was
highlighting the fact that most policy
analyses, rooted in attempts to estimate
what will happen in the future, still fail
to consider how the policy goal might
change or be achieved differently under
different conditions or when looked at
in the light of other models.
Instead, we should abandon the
effort to try to be so clever that we can
choose the right model, find the right
data, or make the best guess. There
Futures Literacy — Embracing Complexity and Using the Future | Riel Miller
ETHOS | Issue 10 | OCTOBER 2011
27
is no way to outsmart the complexity
of reality; unforeseeable novelty is a
certainty. Instead, the approach should
be to try and develop the capacity to use
the future in a range of different ways,
and not be limited by prediction or by
narrow conceptions of a desired future.
It is about being Futures Literate.
FUTURES LITERACY AS THE CAPACITY
FOR IMPROVISATION
A Futures Literate policymaker is able
to identify and distinguish different
forms of the “potential of the present”;
to use the future in the same way
that an accomplished reader can
distinguish and invent (co-create)
many meanings from a given text. As
a specific approach, Futures Literacy
(FL)7 focuses on the capacity to discover
and invent anticipatory assumptions.
FL enhances the sophistication of our
anticipatory systems.
Working through structured
conversations that treat the future
as an explicit part of shared sense-
making, FL approaches complexity not
by abandoning assumptions about the
future, but by better understanding
the different kinds of futures we use
when we make decisions and enhancing
the richness of each. FL encompasses
traditional techniques for discovering
what might happen in the future —
contingency and optimisation futures
that are depicted with the help of a
vast range of familiar predictive and
probabilistic methods. However, what
makes FL distinctive is the integration
of anticipatory systems and the different
categories of the future into each phase
of the action-research processes of sense-
making and making sense.
As indicated in Figure 1, the foresight
process must be designed using a
threefold framework that pays equal
attention to:
1. Narrative — developing sense-making
frameworks and stories that are
meaningful to the participants in
the process and “targets” decision
makers relevant to the process;
2. Collective intelligence — generating
evidence through action research
that uses imaginary futures to
invent and create collaborative maps,
enabling all participants to bring
Futures Literacy — Embracing Complexity and Using the Future | Riel Miller
FIGURE 1. FUTURES LITERACY AS A
LEARNING PROCESS
Narrative
Capacity
Capacity to
Reframe
Collective
Intelligence
(Interactive sense-making)
ETHOS | Issue 10 | OCTOBER 2011
28
the World Futures Studies Federation. He
has worked in the Ontario Civil Service
and the OECD, and is widely published on
topics ranging from the future of the global
economy, the financial sector, the Internet,
education systems, to social equity. Riel
holds a PhD in Economics from the New
School for Social Research, New York and
can be reached at www.rielmiller.com
NOTES
1. Reality is not more or less emergent from one moment
to the next, even if the dominance and stability of systems
and hence degrees of openness and adaptation vary over
time and context.
2. Adapted from: Miller, Riel, “Which Anticipatory System
for University Foresight,” Chapter 6 in The For-Uni Blueprint:
A Blueprint for Organizing Foresight in Universities, Executive
Agency for Higher Education and Research Funding,
(Romania, 2010).
3. In my view, there are three necessary components to
being able to effectively “use the future” for decision-
making. Understanding all three is what I call being
Futures Literate and entails a practical grasp of a)
anticipatorysystems, b) the three ontological aspects of
the future, and c) scientific sense-making capabilities. As a
capacity, Futures Literacy provides a command of the “design
principles” that can be applied constantly in order to use the
future to embrace complexity.
4. For an exploration of this topic, and a discussion of “what
is the future”, see Special Issue: Anticipatory Systems and
the Philosophical Foundations of Futures Studies, Foresight,
Vol. 12, No. 3, Emerald, 2010.
5. This is a way of connecting a multi-ontology reality with
a multi-epistemology design for action. See Aaltonen M.,
The Third Lens: Multi-ontology Sense Making and Strategic
Decision Making, (Ashgate, 2007).
6. “Ergodic” describes a model or system that remains
stable over time. To use the terminology of Karl Popper, an
ergodic system is one in which there is no “ch ange in the
conditions of change”.
7. Riel Miller, “Futures Literacy: A Hybrid Strategic
Scenario Method”, Futures: The Journal of Policy, Planning
and Future Studies, 39 (Elsevier, May 2007), pp341-362, and
“From Trends to Futures Literacy: Reclaiming the Future”,
Centre for Strategic Education, Seminar Series Papers, No.
160 (Melbourne, Australia, December 2006).
their deep and specific knowledge
into the “story”;
3. Reframing — usi ng “rigorous
imagining” to develop and question
the theories and models that define
the variables and relationships,
metrics and definitions being used
to make sense of the present (note:
pattern recognition/data mining
is insufficient).
The point of FL is to become
more adept at inventing imaginary
futures: to use these futures to
discern system boundaries, relationships
and emergence; to invent and detect
changes in the conditions of change;
to rethink the assumptions we use to
understand the present. The emphasis
is on the imaginary: since the point is
not to test present assumptions against
some predictive future, but to use the
future to question, unpack, invent what
is going on and what is doable now.
By increasing our capacity to
improvise and be spontaenous, live with
permanent ambiguity and novelty, FL
frees us up to go beyond the predictable,
and enables us to embrace complexity.
Riel Miller is a faculty member in the Master
of Public Affairs, Sciences-Po, Paris, France,
a board member of the Association of
Professional Futurists, and a Fellow of
Futures Literacy — Embracing Complexity and Using the Future | Riel Miller
ETHOS | Issue 10 | OCTOBER 2011
