What makes a scenario persuasive?

If we accept that the future is undetermined, and if we accept that a plurality of futures can emerge from our present state, then how do we distinguish between competing visions of the future? We don't have perfect foresight, despite, on occasion, an 'official future' being given to us as a planning assumption for our future thinking. In which case, if there is no 'true' view of the future, then surely we have to fall back upon those futures which we find more persuasive as a technique to discern the signal from the noise. What is it, then, that makes one scenario more persuasive than others?

The futures cone might help us to order our thinking in this area. To start with, in order to be persuasive, the future has to be possible rather than impossible. There is a sequence whereby impossible futures become possible, but from the immediate future horizon, we have to accept the impossibility of some futures. For example, some science fiction writers talk of inter-stellar travel using 'faster than light' drives of some sort. Given the current state of our technology, and barring the possibility of humanity being gifted such technology, these futures seem impossible for the immediate future. That impossibility could change in the future, but from the perspective of the present, such futures are unlikely to be too persuasive.

If we travel further into the cone, we move from the realms of possibility to the realms of plausibility. If one future is possible because it might happen, another becomes plausible because it could happen. We are now starting to enter an area where we find some futures likely and others less so. We make no comment on the degree of likelihood in this zone, we just note, in an ordinal way, that some futures are more likely than others. The more likely the future is, the more persuasive we are bound to find it. Of course, the assessment of likelihood is a question of subjective probability, which accounts for different people viewing the same scenario with different degrees of persuasion.

The question of subjective probabilities pulls us from the area of plausible futures to the area of probable futures. In this case, we are a bit more certain about a set of future outcomes. Once again, the probabilities are likely to be subjective, but we are at the point where we can be fairly sure of ourselves because we see the set of future events as fairly likely to happen. The danger here is hubris, which encourages us to abandon any lingering uncertainty about the future. This is the zone in which 'official futures' are created.

The final category of futures we need to consider in this context are projected futures. These are futures that arise on the assumption of ceteris paribus, that things more or less progress as they are progressing now. There is a degree of persuasiveness about these futures, particularly in the very near term future, where it is not unreasonable to assume that most things are set. Change takes time to implement and to have an impact. In this moment, ceteris paribus is not a wholly unreasonable assumption. This can make some projected futures fairly persuasive.

What about preferred futures? We have separated preferred futures form the other categories because they blend a mix of likelihood and desire. These are the futures that we want to happen, which may or may not be influenced by their likelihood. These are the futures from which a compelling vision of the future may emerge. Or they may be the futures where we simply disappear in a cloud of wishful thinking.

As with all things, much depends upon out motives. If we are using futures as an aid to strategic planning, then we are likely to dwell in the area of probable and plausible futures, with the occasional excursion into the realms of possible futures as wild card exercises. If, on the other hand, we are using futures as a device for transformational change, then we are less likely to focus on the likelihood of a set of futures than their desirability. We will find some futures more desirable than others and that desirability enters into our appraisal of which futures we find more convincing. We can try to guard against this bias, but bias and choice are part of the human condition, so they can't be eliminated entirely. 

It is, however, an argument in favour of a diverse range of participation in transformative and normative futures. This is hard to achieve in practice because some interest group is bound to be overlooked. A set of scenarios derived from too narrow a base are unlikely to be too persuasive. So what does make a scenario convincing? A more likely and a more desirable scenario will undoubtedly be more persuasive than one that is neither. This is all part of telling a better story.

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

© The European Futures Observatory 2021

How do you measure a return on investment for foresight?

Let's just suppose that we agree that foresight ought to have a return on investment. In that case, how would we go about measuring such a thing? It is entirely possible that we could devise new models of foresight evaluation, but a shorter route would be to take existing models of investment appraisal and to adapt them for the purposes of foresight evaluation. The financial community has a long history of doing just this. Would to be possible to commandeer some of their models to put to work in evaluating foresight?

We have stated before that one of the objections to using foresight as a better aid to strategic planning is the utilitarian nature of the methods used. However, in this case, they can also be a strength. We can readily see that it is worth undertaking a project if the benefits outweigh the costs. It is also true in reverse, an activity is not worth undertaking if the costs outweigh its benefits. In commercial language, it fails to meet the action threshold. There are problems with these approaches, but let's set those aside for the moment to focus on the core of the technique. It might help to examine the cost side of the equation before going on to review the question of appraising the benefits.

This approach is best suited to what the evaluator community calls project evaluation. When reviewing the prospective costs of a project, the starting point has to be what it is that the project hopes to achieve. What is it examining? Over what time horizon? With what deliverables in mind? So many foresight projects go astray because this clear vision of what the project is about is absent at the beginning. A degree of clarity is needed at the outset because that will dominate the structure - and the cost base - of the whole project ahead.

If you are certain what it is that you want to look at, the next question to resolve is who is to be involved in the process. In many respects, that is a question of determining which stakeholders have a voice in the process, and which stakeholders are not consulted. In some projects the core stakeholders appear obvious, in others less so. Those close to the subject being reviewed might expect a voice, whilst those affected by it remotely may not. This involves a balancing act for the project managers. On the one hand, a more diverse group will yield more robust results. On the other hand, including too many voices will reduce the effectiveness of the core of the project. In this sense, a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

At some point the project will have to take a view on tool selection. If we have defined the problem to be examined, if we have determined who will be conducting the examination, we then have to take a view on how the examination will be conducted. This is the point at which we encounter the question of uncertainty. We want to choose the right tool for the job, but we cannot know for sure a priori which is the right tool for the job. We can only say that, on a balance of probabilities that a given tool is likely to yield useful results. 

This is where the staffing question and the tool selection issue start to become inter-dependent. Some tools require a wider input than others, Some tools require a more intensive time cost than others. It is at this point that we may have to scale back our ambitions for the project because the budget won't support the initial scale of those ambitions. The process of adjustment may tend to be adaptive in how it rolls out. However, if the project is to go ahead, then eventually a compromise will be reached on the cost side. It is then we can turn to the prospective benefits.

We have already stated that the project will have a focus in the future. This could be a forecast of a future state or, more likely, the discernment of the broad contours of the future. The project is likely to aim at producing insights into the future from which we can profit by preparing for that future today. This is an area which can prove to be quite problematic. 

To start with, our view of how the future might unfold could be wrong. There is considerable uncertainty about future states. The prospective benefits to our actions are remote - they lie a long way off from the present - and may not be clearly defined. The benefits are likely to be less quantifiable than the costs and the impact of our actions might not be experienced in quite the way we previously anticipated. We could do the right thing for the wrong reasons and the wrong thing for the right reasons. There is no way of knowing a priori exactly how things will turn out. The future out-turn could be broadly in line with our original thoughts or it could quite equally be very different. The right foresight tools should enhance the likelihood of the former and lessen the chance of the latter, but nothing is guaranteed.

If foresight is a means to gauge a volatile, uncertain, complex, and adaptive world; then the tools it uses are likely to reflect that state of being. This means that when we measure the return on investment on foresight, we ought to include a statement to the effect that the process contains a wide margin of error. At the end of the day it will be up to the client to determine whether or not a specific project is likely to provide sufficient benefits to justify the cost. What the foresight professional can do is to help frame that judgement in a fairly systematic way.

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

© The European Futures Observatory 2021

Should foresight have a return on investment?

This is a peculiarly phrased question, but it is one that is worth bearing with. It highlights a key issue in our motivation for undertaking foresight. There are various motivations for undertaking foresight. One motive could be that it would help to produce decisions that more closely align with where we want to be in the future - an aid to better strategic planning. Another motive could be to use foresight to build a better world - as a vehicle for a transformative future. There are more motives for undertaking foresight, but I want to focus on just these two because they have the feel of polar opposites from which we might learn something. Let's start with the former motivation before looking at the latter.

Foresight as an aid to better strategic planning is unfashionable in some quarters and very fashionable in others. It tends to be sought after in the corporate world, where the futurist is often asked to make the 'business case' for foresight. In terms of justification, we are entering the world of cost-benefit analysis. Where a return from an activity has to be shown in excess of the cost of undertaking it. In this sense, foresight needs to have a return on investment, even if we can't quite quantify those costs and benefits, and despite the eventual costs and benefits existing in an uncertain future. 

The underlying philosophy of this approach is utilitarianism - the social good is enhanced when the greatest benefit accrues to the greatest number of beneficiaries. It is the core philosophy underlying much theoretical economics and it has a number of flaws. To start with, the beneficiaries are not identified. One could argue that unborn generations ought to considered as beneficiaries with an equivalence to current ones. There has been a move in this direction in recent policy developments. However, the most damaging criticism of this approach is that is does not factor in individual rights and has the potential to be the source of grave injustices. The partiality of whose voice counts - and those who are excluded - is the core argument against this approach.

By way of contrast, foresight as a transformational device starts with the individual as the core of its focus. This approach tends to be seen more in community and governmental settings, usually by those who wish to effect profound change. In this case, a project will be endorsed if it can be shown to lead to a better world. It needs to show an absolute positive impact to be worth undertaking. In this sense, a project doesn't necessarily need to show a return on investment. It only needs to show a positive impact.

The problem with this approach lies with how the positive impact is ascertained and in whose interest the positive impact accrues. This is a fairly serious issue. The transformational approach is being adopted to the issue of climate change, which can help to expose some of the flaws arising fro this approach. It is generally accepted that climate mitigation is a good thing and that we need to act today to ensure a better tomorrow. 

Laying aside the issue of whether or not that is true, it does create a distributional problem over who bears the costs of mitigation. So far, where mitigation policies have been implemented, it is the poorer elements in society who have had to bear the greater cost of climate mitigation. This exposes the problem at the heart of the transformational approach. Unless each and every person affected by the policy is consulted, the approach is delivered as a top down policy that has a tone of authoritarianism about it. The 'Guardians' deliver policy to the masses. It exposes the connection between Futurism and Fascism that futurists strive to deny. 

This leaves us in an unhappy place. On the one hand we have an approach that is infused with a corporate bean-counters mentality. On the other hand we have an approach where the great and the good tell the rest of society how they ought to live their lives. In practice, most of us try to find a pragmatic compromise in order to avoid an extreme position. A more balanced approach might be the best way to deal with the question. Should foresight have a return on investment? In a corporate setting it probably should. In a community setting it probably shouldn't.

Stephen Aguilar-Millan

© The European Futures Observatory 2021