To help ensure the future is one we want to inhabit, CIOs need to stimulate deep thought and animated debates about our shared path forward.
People who use technology, lend me your ears. The future is not the product of inexorable macro forces that you have no control over. The future lies firmly in the hands of human choice.
Each and every one of us gets a vote on what the future looks like. As 20th century French philosopher Henri Bergson reminds us, “Men do not sufficiently realize that their future is in their own hands.”
Future scholars are concerned that society is on the cusp of abdicating its agency about the future, deferring lazily and ill-advisedly to the fevered make-me-richer schemes of celebrity CEO Ahabs chasing white-whale futures of limited relevance to the rest of us. (For example, one hecto-billionaire advocates extraplanetary adventures, another touts virtual reality fantasms, and many insist we are preordained to a future of AI domination.)
If we — the people of IT — do not aggressively insert ourselves into the decision-making processes associated with what the future looks like, we risk having the future stolen from us.
Creating the future — versus just showing up for it — is hard work. It entails wrestling with the paradox of having to think rationally about massive uncertainty. Rationality involves explaining how the world works and why it works the way it does. We have to be rational about the end points we set for ourselves and the tactics via which we attempt to achieve them.
CIOs are uniquely positioned to precipitate the conversations that reduce the conundrums of the future to clear, well-reasoned choices. Several deficits, however, stand in the way of the rational, disciplined agenda-setting processes necessary to create a future most of us want to inhabit. Here’s a breakdown of those deficits and how CIOs can address them.
Agency deficit
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that what’s to come has not yet been determined. We still have a say in what the world five, ten, or fifty years out looks like.
Getting IT staff and users in your organization to believe this is a challenge, but storytelling, empowerment, collaboration, and engaged communication can help underscore the fact that each person can help make a difference.
Imagination deficit
While the shape of the future is potentially infinite, science-fiction writers find it hard to escape a troika of end points:
- A Rachel Carson-meets-The Jetsons utopia as depicted in Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia
- The postapocalyptic dust of Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz
- The dark, damp dystopia of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner
Nick Foster, formerly head of design at Google X, suggests crafting at least four future scenarios: Could Should Might Don’t.
Any future we hope to build has to address with nuance the dreams and nightmares that matter most to stakeholders.
The stories we tell about the future need more detail. How many pre-Internet/social media slide decks included the pathologies of surveillance, echo chambers, fake news, racist algorithms, sexist trolling, or data breaches?
Engage stakeholders to address today’s realities and their future consequences and help foster discussions to imagine how we can help give rise to a future worth working toward.
Future attention deficit
Are we allocating enough time to think and debate about the future? Have we actually budgeted time to spend imagining multiple futures?
Is the time we have set aside for this kind of “futuring” focused appropriately?
From my perch as a practicing futurist, I have found the vast majority of time spent on the future tends to be split between extremes — what is the absolute worst thing that could happen, what is the best thing that could happen, what is the strangest thing that could happen. Attention gravitates to utopian fantasies or dystopian nightmares. We have to have more choices than “a country of geniuses in a data center” or “a country of Stasi agents in a data center.” The furthest ends of the bell curve are probably not the best place to spend precious “future time.”
Barbara Cooper, the now retired CIO of Toyota Motors USA, brilliantly had her teams focus on the mundane rhythms of daily life five and ten years out. Just as a thought experiment, has anyone in your organization asked: What will we be doing a thousand years from now? What does 3026 look like?
Passion deficit
Do people really care about the direction we are collectively heading? Much has been written recently about the growing doomerism/nihilism of disparate demographic cohorts. High apathy, low institutional trust, coupled with growing isolation and disengagement stand in the way of future building efforts.
CIOs can do their organizations and society in general a huge favor by crafting a future narrative that addresses critical behavior-driving issues for their stakeholders: In the future we are building, where do I stand relative to others? Will I have control over my situation? Am I part of something that matters?
Our future narrative has to be compelling enough to induce stakeholders to put their hands on their oars (I was a coxswain in college), recognizing that every stroke has consequences.
Situation awareness deficit
Most organizations are not fully aware of the future trajectory they are currently on. What you are doing today is where you are going tomorrow. As such current behaviors may be misaligned to the outcomes you prefer.
Take the time to help your staff and stakeholders lift their heads, look around, and discuss. They’ll likely have a lot worth sharing.
