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Scenarios: Improving the Impact of Foresight Thanks to Biases

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Alternative worlds NICForeseeing the future, whatever the name given to the endeavour*, faces two major tasks. First, we have the analysis, the process according to which the foresight, forecast, or, more broadly, anticipation will be obtained. Second, the result must be delivered to and understood by those who need it because they will act on it, to the least integrate the new knowledge received in the decisions they will take**. A huge challenge runs across both those tasks: overcoming the various natural and constructed biases that limit human understanding.

Much thought is usually given to analytical methodologies, which may be seen as nothing else than ways to overcome biases. Analysts commit themselves to many years of study, and force themselves to struggle against those biases, including through their own research and reflections. Managers look for ways to support them through training and constitution of best teams. Teachers and research institutions contribute to this generalised effort, as with, for example, the recent ongoing experiment funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the “Good Judgement project“. Those enterprises are necessary, even crucial, if we want to improve our foresight, as underlined, for example, by political scientist and forecaster Jay Ulfelder.

We tend, unfortunately, to devote fewer efforts to deal with biases related to the second part of our work, the delivery of the anticipation to and its understanding by the recipients or customers.

This is certainly no easy task, as, there, we must deal with an “other” or worse with others. We have no power on their willingness to make an effort to overcome biases, assuming they accept being also prey to biases.

Results may also be obtained through the use of participatory methodologies, such as, for example, scenarios-building, where classical or analytical ways to mitigate biases are sought. This approach, despite its virtue, is limited because of the often busy agenda of decision-makers, or plainly impossible because of the sheer numbers of recipients. In those cases, only remains the final product that must, alone, reach the customer, be read, viewed or listened to, and understood. The strategy regarding biases, thus, must change. Rather than only focusing on struggling against biases, we may as well accept them and, even better, use them to our advantage.

The biases detailed in Heuer’s masterwork Psychology of Intelligence Analysis show us that fictionalized scenario narratives*** are perfect products to take advantage of some of those usual human cognitive traits to achieve our objectives, even more so if they are adequately combined with visual tools.

Playing with the “vividness criterion”

Crisis in ZefraFictionalized narratives obviously directly use this bias that Heuer describes as follows: “Information that is vivid, concrete, and personal has a greater impact on our thinking than pallid, abstract information that may actually have substantially greater value as evidence.” Heuer, p.116, knowing that, according to Nisbett & Ross, vivid information is information that is concrete, imagery-provoking, and emotionally rich (1980).

Among many, one interesting example is the narrative written by Karl Schroeder for the Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts of National Defense Canada in 2005, Crisis in Zefra. The four fictionalized scenarios of Global Trends 2030, use fiction characters and real or fictional organizations that will be familiar to their main readers, U.S. policy-makers, and a type of narrative as well as a design format that will similarly correspond to something very concrete and real for their clients.

Below are two examples of short fictionalized pieces, created out of material generated during a workshop, and aiming at making real threats related to algorithms.

Black out scenario, fictional narrative, algorithm based threat, threat scenario, futures, foresight scenario, fictional narrative, algorithm based threat, threat scenario, futures, foresight, intelligence, spy,

Emphasizing “consistency”

Any good narrative will pay attention to consistency and thus will use the human “oversensitivity to the consistency (absence of contradiction) of evidence and insufficient sensitivity to the reliability of evidence.” (Heuer, pp.120-122)

Using our flawed perception of cause and effect

As Heuer describes throughout chapter 11, generally, story-telling and thus story coherence is usually wrongly favoured over scientific method and scientific findings/research. Meanwhile we display a need for causal explanations, that is indeed best served by this story-telling. Thus a fictionalized scenario narrative built upon a proper scientific model will allow us transforming scientific research into a product that can be attractive to and believed by customers.

This is what led me, among other motivations, and once the model built for the scenarios on the future of the nation-state, to develop the Chronicles of Everstate in a serialized way, rather than to adopt a more classical and shorter form.

Tweaking the “availability rule”

This rule refers to one of the components that leads us to reach flawed estimates for probabilities. Heuer, using work by Tversky and Kahneman (1973), underlines that “’Availability’ refers to imaginability or retrievability from memory. Psychologists have shown that two cues people use unconsciously in judging the probability of an event are the ease with which they can imagine relevant instances of the event and the number or frequency of such events that they can easily remember.” (Heuer p. 147).

Thus, an interesting narrative – when it is read – will most probably influence the ease with which people can imagine, by themselves, future instances of similar events. We could also wonder if becoming aware of the scenario narrative would affect, though memories, perception of occurrence of such events.

Heuer (p.149), indeed, underlines that the participation to scenario-building exercises impacts estimations of probabilities for participants. Here we suggest that people reading scenarios – or more broadly being exposed to products derived from those scenarios such as films, theatre pieces, games, etc. would similarly be affected.

Using our weakness in assessing probabilities

As judgments concerning the probability of a scenario are influenced by amount and nature of detail in the scenario in a way that is unrelated to the actual likelihood of the scenario (Heuer pp. 156-157), then narrating a scenario or part of it with details will impact the ability of the customer to believe in its plausibility. This should prove extremely useful in convincing recipients to pay attention to potentially least possible futures, in struggling against prejudice and more generally against all organizational and belief-based biases.

Fictionalized narratives are thus a very useful type of products for the delivery of foresight, that we should permanently keep in mind, be it to deliver the result of more or less long scenarios-building processes, as with The Millenium Project 2020 Global Energy Scenarios, or the Global Trends 2030 of the NIC, or in the case of short exercises as shown above for potential algorithms-related threats. Could it also be used for other methodologies, such as  Forecasting?

Comments, ideas and suggestions are welcome!

*The label used signals various assumptions, methodologies, processes, aims and groups of practitioners.

** Even doing nothing is an action.

*** Scenarios are one of the end products of the process known as scenario-building as, for example, presented by Glenn and The Futures Groups and as used here to assess the future of the nation-state. A practical way to write them has been presented with the post “Constructing a foresight scenario’s narrative with Ego Networks.”

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Glenn, Jerome C. and The Futures Group International, “Scenarios,” The Millennium Project: Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0, Ed. Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. 2009, Ch 19.

Heuer, Richards J. Jr., Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1999.

Ulfelder, Jay, Forecasting Round-Up No. 3, Dart-Throwing Chimp, 6 Dec 2012.

Kahn, Herman, and Weiner, Anthony J. The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years. New York, NY: The Macmillan Co., 1967.

Tversky, Amos and Daniel Kahneman, “Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability,” Cognitive Psychology, 5 (1973), pp. 207-232.

Durance, Philippe and Michel Godet, “Scenario building: Uses and abuses“, Technological Forecasting and Social Change », Volume 77, Issue 9, November 2010, Pages 1488–1492, doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2010.06.007

Strategic Foresight & Warning Analysis

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(Update 4 – 22 January 2013) – see below for list of posts in this section.

Strategic Foresight and Warning (SF&W) is at once process and analysis.

By SF&W analysis we mean all methodologies and related issues allowing for the development of an understanding grounded in reality that will generate best anticipatory products, useful to decision-makers and policy-makers for carrying out their mission.

The larger SF&W analytical method can be seen as following the following steps, with use of various methodologies and related challenges for each step:

Strategic Foresight and Warning analytical methodology, foresight analysis, scenariosAn example of what is involved in step 1 is given here with the bibliography and links on the one hand, with the Red (team) Analysis Weekly on the other. A more detailed discussion of step 1 and 6 can be found in the section scan & monitor.

The second (Creating the model I & II) and third (Determining criteria; Variables, values and consistency in dynamic networks and finally Using ego networks in foresight analysis) steps of the foresight part of the method will be developed with the use of The Chronicles of Everstate as example.

Part of the content of steps 2 and 3 may move from one to the other step. If fully dynamic networks with precise timeline and Bayesian networks were constructed, then the first part of step 3 (identify values, timeline and probabilities) would be included in step 2. Here it is part of step 3.

The monitoring part of step 6 is done for various issues through The Sigils, as well as through The Weekly. These real life indications allow checking the validity of the scenario, and updating the model used for each issue, as done, for example, in the section on end of year predictions. They also allow identifying new emerging issues ( the feedback on step 1).

List of posts

Creating a Foresight or Warning Model: Mapping a Dynamic Network (I)

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Map, graph or network as model:

Once an initial question is defined – in our case, what will be the future of the modern nation-state for the next twenty years – most strategic foresight and warning methods start with building a model that will describe and explain the issue or question at hand. In other words, we construct our underlying model for understanding. As Epstein underlines, making explicit models is nothing else than explicating the hidden model we, as human beings, are using when thinking. Furthermore, in terms of analysis and more specifically intelligence analysis, making the model explicit will help first identifying various unconscious biases, thus allowing minimising them. It will then help defining areas of uncertain understanding, which can then be marked for further research.

What is a map, graph or network?

Most futures or foresight methods start looking for variables (also called factors or drivers) that are part of their model. A variable is a symbol or symbolic name that stands for a value that may vary. Some methodologies then link those variables. The link between two variables represents an influence (A influence B), most often causality. For example, in a model on demographics, one might have as variables birth rate and total population, and a link from birth rate to total population.

Whatever the question at hand, the construction of the model must be grounded in science, i.e. accumulated knowledge and understanding. Brainstorming sessions are crucial but should not dispense with using what others have understood beforehand, even if debates exist. Ideally the model should also be regularly updated to consider new findings.

One may see such maps, for example, in the British foresight product, Dimensions of Uncertainty done by the Foresight department of the Government Office for Science (2010?), notably Annex A.

Actually, maps are nothing else than graphs or networks – in our case directed graphs - and thus will benefit from the long scientific history that is attached to them, from Graph Theory, as graphs started being studied in mathematics with Euler in 1735 to the more recent Network Science. The development of the field has seen the emergence of new tools, such as network visualization software that greatly facilitate working with and on networks. Gephi, open source software, has been used here for the development of the underlying model, considering both its ease, its flexibility and yet its power.

The map and its use

Once the model is built, it is used to develop the scenarios that will constitute the history of Everstate, notably thanks to ego networks as will be explained in a few weeks. It will also give the indicators that are necessary for warning. Were capabilities available, it could be a step towards developing proper simulations that could then be mixed with the narratives.

The map itself, if it is seen as a whole by neophytes, may appear as complicated and difficult to use. It is however not so. It is just a tool and as all tools it demands understanding and training. Computers or mobile phones are far from being simple and yet they are now almost universally used. Once mastered, working with networks greatly facilitates the task of the analyst. It can be used as reference and give support to analytical conclusion, as statistics, trends or indications do. It is indeed one of the purposes of the Chronicles of Everstate to show how simple using a map for strategic foresight and warning is.

In terms of analytical management, a map is an investment. Indeed, once a graph has been properly built for a specific issue, it will most likely remain valid for a large period of time, especially if it is regularly updated with scientific findings. It can thus be used again each time the issue it covers comes into play. For example, if one wanted to do some foresight and warning on pandemics, the future of nuclear energy, of weapons of massive destruction (WMD), or cybersecurity, then at one stage or another the dynamics linked to state and government would have to be introduced and thus the map constructed here for the future of the state could and should be used again.

Constructing the initial model

The core ideal-type model

Rather than attempting to build from scratch the overall graph in all its complexity, it is easier to start building a minimalist core ideal-type model. This core graph will allow understanding the fundamental dynamics at work and then will be used as basis for developing the full model.

In the case of the future of the nation-state, I have started from Weber’s ideal-type, which gives the following graph.

This approach to understanding politics, which, obviously must include the population, a variable so often forgotten, would have helped understanding the 2011 uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East as well as the more recent protests in Europe and the Americas. We may only assume, with hindsight, that, had it been applied to classical F&W countries’ analysis, the likelihood to have been able to foresee the events would have been greatly heightened.

Including dynamics

As the graph shows, s0 (“step 0”) and s1 (“step 1”) have been added to variables, so as to include a dynamic dimension. Indeed as the model was being constructed, tested and revised, it appeared that using uniquely broad static conceptual variables was inadequate. The system constituted by the polity evolves; each action has consequences; the aggregation of all actions, reactions and consequences, as well as creativity, lead to evolution and change…. Read more next post.

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Image: The Seven Bridges of Königsberg, by Bogdan Giuşcă (Public domain (PD), based on the image, GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Chronicles of Everstate: foreseeing the future of the modern nation-state

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As riots and protests have been progressively, and in an accelerating way, occurring in many countries, starting with France in 2005, as public deficits have become structural and entrenched, made more acute by the financial and economic crisis triggered in 2007 by the sub-primes, it became increasingly clear that something was happening at the very heart of our societies. The political systems in which we live are under stress and changes are in the making.

The end of the modern nation-state?

by photographer Yiannis Biliris C.C. 3.0

Those very real events reflect a concern that has been underlined and debated in social sciences, notably international relations theory and political science for a long while, and most often expressed as the impending demise of the modern nation-state and related system. Already in 1977, Hedley Bull in his masterful The Anarchical Society was, among other, testing various hypotheses related to possible future evolutions of political systems. Meanwhile, most foresight products underline the end of the modern nation-state without investigating it. Furthermore, the strength or fragility of the state generates a lot of interest as a growing fragility could lead to civil war, state collapse and generalized warfare. The state is this political entity that is so difficult to define precisely and universally, and yet that we immediately recognize when we deal with it or when it is not there anymore. It is Hobbes’ Leviathan, and, without it, “the life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

The type of state that is prevalent nowadays is described as modern (the modern state), centralized and rational. It is linked to the nation (the nation-state). The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia marks the birth of the modern state system.

As we, human beings, all live under one form or another of state, as it is the guarantor of security writ large, from the protection of foreign enemies to domestic peace to the foundation for material and immaterial security, as fragile states could mean strife and death, we are all primarily concerned by its potential disappearance or by foreseen changes in its form. We must be able to envision its plausible futures.

The question is absolutely crucial because from the answer will depend how we shall deal with all other issues facing us, from climate change to geopolitics through food and energy security among others.

The Chronicles of Everstate: foreseeing the future(s) of the modern nation-state

As Strategic Foresight and Warning (SF&W) is the best analytical method to envision changes and imagine possible futures, it was high time to apply SF&W to this debated and complex issue:

What will be the future of the modern nation-state this ideal-type form of polity into which most of us live nowadays, for the next twenty years?

Developing a specific foresight analytical methodology and an adequate product

The overall project evolved relatively slowly as I also wanted to use the future of the state as a case study to develop and test a foresight methodology that would be built on existing tools and overcome some existing methodological difficulties. This method had to be specifically adapted to national security issues and to incorporate science findings. Meanwhile, I also had to find a way to make it as simple of use as possible, yet without simplifying it to the point that it would lead to erroneous results. Finally, the methodology had to be testable and replicable.

Furthermore, as foresight and warning does exist only in as much as it is delivered, I had to identify who were the customers or clients for the final product, and imagine the best form the product needed to take for those customers. With time, it became increasingly obvious that those clients and users were the contemporary rulers, i.e. the nation and the citizens as well as the civil servants working for the state apparatus that supports the ruler, as explained in detail in concept and philosophy behind Red (team) Analysis.

In terms of method on the one hand, and product delivery, on the other, I soon faced a few major challenges: if the method itself was relatively simple, it could look otherwise if not explained properly, and thus lead to adverse reactions and rejection. Meanwhile, the product itself, the scenarios, stories or narratives, as they evolved, became soon too long to be conveyed through a conventional medium, apart from a book, which would mean a very long delay before publication. Last but not least, events started unfolding at an accelerated pace showing the pertinence of the foresight experiment, but also putting a supplementary time pressure on the whole project.

The Chronicles of Everstate, as will be published here, are an answer to those various concerns. Regularly, every two weeks, Red (team) Analysis will now post a new part of the Chronicles of Everstate, the fictional state created to imagine and tell the story of potential futures for our – very real – states or countries. The new post will be displayed on the home page, then will be accessible, as all posts through the menu (some categories of the menu are currently empty but will be populated with posts as times goes by).

The first post will explain precisely the rationale behind the Chronicles of Everstate, why Everstate, and how to use the concept. As it will be relatively short, the next post will be published the week after. It will open a series of posts that are methodological in focus, dwelling more in-depth into technical intricacies, somehow the nuts and bolts of the methodology, always using the future(s) of the state as example. Then, we shall finally start telling the Chronicles of Everstate; all other posts being at the same time a didactic practical application of the methodology and the development of the various scenarios for the future. In the course of the story, each scenario will be stress-tested against the same set of pressures and events.

Blog post, active reading and struggling against the persistence of beliefs

The regular publication under blog post format and thus the possibility for users and readers to interact is a specific feature that I wished to introduce in the project. Indeed, as human beings we are all prey to many cognitive biases, and it is one of the many challenges of SF&W to try to mitigate them. Among those biases, the persistence of beliefs and erroneous information may be one of SF&W’s chief enemies (Anderson, Pepper & Ross, 1980). Anderson, Pepper & Ross suggest two ways to overcome this persistence of beliefs: “Would such perseverance effects be eliminated or attenuated, for example, if subjects could be led, after debriefing, to consider explicitly the explanations that might be offered to support a contention in opposition to their initial beliefs? Alternatively, could subjects be “innoculated” against perseverance effects if they had been asked, at the outset of the study, to list all of the possible reasons they could imagine that might have produced either a positive or a negative relationship between the two variables being studied (cf. Slovic & Fischhoff, 1977)?“

Building upon those two ideas, it is crucial to include within the foresight product itself an element that create and prompt active reflection. Futurists, when they develop future scenarios for businesses underline the necessity to engage decision-makers during the analytical process, through brainstorming for example, for the same reason.

However, with strategic foresight and warning for national security, it is hardly possible to use the same device. Policy-makers have tight agendas and little time available for participating in analytical processes. Furthermore, models, as we shall see soon, are too complex to allow for such an approach. To try doing it would be similar to ask users to learn programming and then participate in software development before to use a word processor. Finally, addressing also citizens forbids small groups brainstorming at analytic level for the sake of speed, cost and efficiency. Meanwhile, the fact that most people never interact, including over the world wide web, had to be considered

Something else had to be imagined, which is experimented here: to give clients – fundamentally readers – the possibility to interact directly with the product itself – but at their will and without letting the project depend upon those interactions – through:

  • comments;
  • active reading made possible by the way the method works and the narrative is developed (as will be seen with the next posts);
  • the format of accumulated blog posts that will allow, with time, navigating at will among various parts of the stories and thus develop other scenarios, according to the specific needs of users.

Finally, the blog posts/website format also aims at preserving the experimental, flexible and evolving character of the Chronicles of Everstate that has become one of the features of the project and could very well be a necessary characteristic of a Strategic Foresight and Warning analysis adapted to our contemporary world.

Welcome to the Chronicles of Everstate!

References

Anderson, Craig A., Mark R. Lepper, and Lee Ross. “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1980, Vol. 39, No.6, 1037-1049.

Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. London: MacMillan, 1977.

Gross, Leo (January 1948), “The Peace of Westphalia“, The American Journal of International Law 42/1 (1): 20–41, doi:10.2307/2193560.

Revisiting timeliness for Strategic Foresight and Warning

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To exist, foresight products as well as warnings must be delivered to those who must act upon them, the customers, clients or users. Furthermore, they must be provided in a timely fashion. This criterion of timeliness is extremely important. It means that customers or users will have enough time to decide and then implement any necessary course of action as warranted by foresight.

Timeliness: enabling the coordination of response

Timely reflections (Image by Stanley Howe – CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Most often, the challenge of timeliness is thus understood as stemming from the need to conciliate on the one hand the dynamics which are specific to the issue, object of anticipation, and on the other the related decision and coordination of the response.

Let us take the example of Peak Oil, i.e. the date when “world oil production will reach a maximum – a peak – after which production will decline” (Hirsch, 2005, 11) which implies the end of a widespread availability of cheap (conventional crude) oil. The phenomenon is now well documented and relatively widely recognized, from scientists’ reports, associations, institutions and books (see, for example, the creation of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas in 2000 , Robert Hirsch report (2005), the Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP), Thomas Homer Dixon, Michael Klare or Jeff Rubin), to web resources such as The Oil Drum or Energy Bulletin to finally the International Energy Agency (IEA – it recognised the peaking of Peak Oil in 2010, e.g. Staniford, 2010), despite still some resistance by a shrinking number of actors.

By azrainman http://flickr.com/photos/azrainman/991225765/ – CC-BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Notwithstanding other impacts, Hirsch estimates that 20 years of a “mitigation crash program before peaking” would have allowed avoiding “a world liquid fuels shortfall” (Hirsch, 2005). Assuming that oil peaked in 2006, as evaluated by the IEA, if we had wanted to have an energy mix of replacement for the now gone cheap oil, then we should have decided implementing and then coordinating a response… back in 1986. Thus SF&W on this issue should have been delivered some time before 1986.

Obviously, this did not happen, even if one starts finding rare articles regarding Peak Oil earlier (e.g. the 1974 miscalculated warning for a global Peak Oil happening in 1995 by M. King Hubbert (Wikipedia ‘Predicting the timing of Peak Oil’) and much later Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrere, “The end of cheap oil,” Scientific American, March 1998). Why?

Timeliness, credibility and biases

Jack Davis, writing on strategic warning in the case of US national security, hints at the importance of another criterion linked to timeliness, credibility:

“Analysts must issue a strategic warning far enough in advance of the feared event for US officials to have an opportunity to take protective action, yet with the credibility to motivate them to do so. No mean feat. Waiting for evidence the enemy is at the gate usually fails the timeliness test; prediction of potential crises without hard evidence can fail the credibility test. When analysts are too cautious in estimative judgments on threats, they brook blame for failure to warn. When too aggressive in issuing warnings, they brook criticism for “crying wolf.”

For Davis, credibility is the provision of “hard evidence” to back up foresight. Of course, as we deal with the future, hard evidence will consist in understanding of processes and their dynamics (the model used, preferably an explicit model) added to facts indicating that events are more or less likely to unfold according to this understanding.

Credibility is, however, also something more than hard evidence. To obtain credibility, people must believe you. Hence, biases of the customers, clients or users must be overcome. Thus, whatever the validity of the hard evidence in the eyes of the analyst, it must also be seen as such by others. The various biases that can be an obstacle to this credibility have started being largely documented (e.g. Heuer). Actually, explaining the model used and providing indications, or describing plausible scenarios are ways to overcome some of the biases, notably out-dated cognitive models. Yet, relying only on this scientific logic is insufficient, as shown by Craig Anderson, Mark Lepper, and Lee Ross in their paper “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information.” Thus, other ways to minimize biases must be imagined and included, that will most probably involve time. The possibility to deliver the SF&W product will be accordingly delayed.

Credibility and more broadly overcoming biases are so important that I would go further than Davis and incorporate them within the very idea of timeliness. This would be much closer to the definition of timely, according to which something is “done or occurring at a favourable or useful time; opportune” (Google dictionary result for timely). Indeed there cannot be timely SF&W if those who must act cannot hear it.

If the SF&W product is delivered at the wrong time, then it will be neither heard nor considered, decisions will not be taken nor actions implemented.

More difficult, biases also affect the very capability of analysts to think the world and thus to even start analysing issues. We are there faced with cases of partial or full collective blindness, when timeliness cannot be achieved because SF&W analysis cannot even start in the specific sectors of society where this analysis is meant to be done.

This is most probably what happened for our example of Peak Oil. If a model existed, created by M. King Hubbert, the initial miscalculation led to some loss of credibility as those denying peak oil underlined and still emphasize, even though King Hubbert model was not wrong. Analysts in SF&W in the early 1980s were more preoccupied with the Cold War than concerned by anything else. Afterwards, the system that had won against the Communist world could not even be thought not being perfect. Such highly disturbing threats that could question the prevalent worldview could not be envisioned. Had they been, they would most probably have been discarded first by policy makers then by political leaders. Furthermore, a host of actors had interest in a permanence of the ideological setting, which would have made the possibility to see a very early foresight work on peak oil develop very remote indeed (I am emphasizing here unconscious reactions and “deafness,” not hidden maneuvers).

Timeliness as the intersection of three dynamics

Thus, to summarize timeliness is best seen as the intersection of three dynamics:

  • The dynamics and time of the issue or problem at hand, knowing that, especially when they are about nature, those dynamics will tend to prevail (Elias, 1992)
  • The dynamics of the coordination of the response (including decision)
  • The dynamics of cognition (or evolution of beliefs and awareness) – at collective and individual level – of the actors involved.

To understand each dynamic is, in itself, a challenge. Even more difficult, each dynamic acts upon the others, making it impossible to truly hope to achieve timeliness if the impact of one dynamic on the others is ignored.

For example, if we continue with our initial case of Peak Oil, having been unable to even think the possibility of Peak oil in the early 1980s has dramatically changed the current possible dynamics of the response, while both the cognitive delay and the absence of previous decisions and actions have orientated the dynamics of the issue towards some paths, while others are definitely closed. Any SF&W delivered on this issue now is quite different from what would have been delivered 20 years ago, assuming it could have been heard.

To acknowledge the difficulty of finding the timely moment, and the impossibility to ever practice an ideal SF&W in an imagined world where everyone – at individual and collective level – would have perfect cognition is not to negate SF&W. Answering this challenge with a “what is the point to do it now as we did not do it when things were easy/easier” is childish. On the contrary, fully acknowledging hurdles is to have a more mature attitude regarding who we are as human beings, accepting our shortcomings but also trusting in our creativity and capacity to work to overcome the most difficult challenges. It is to open the door to the possibility to develop strategies and related tools to improve the timeliness of SF&W, thus making it more actionable and efficient:

  • Creating evolving products that will be adapted to the moment of delivery;
  • Using the appearance of groups, communities, even single scholarly or other work on new dangers, threats and opportunities as potential weak signals that are still unthinkable by the majority;
  • Developing and furthering our understanding of the dynamics of cognition and finding ways to act on them or, to the least, to accompany them;
  • Participating fully in the current effort, which has just started within societies, at re-designing decision systems and response capabilities.

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References

Anderson, Craig A., Mark R. Lepper, and Lee Ross, “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1980, Vol. 39, No.6, 1037-1049.

Campbell, Colin J. and Jean H. Laherrere, “The end of cheap oil,” 
Scientific American, March 1998.

Davis, Jack, “Improving CIA Analytic Performance: Strategic Warning,” The Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis Occasional Papers: Volume 1, Number 1, accessed September 12, 2011.

Dixon, Thomas Homer, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of civilization, (Knopf, 2006).

Elias, Norbert,  Time: An Essay, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)

Hirsch, Robert L., SAIC, Project Leader, Roger Bezdek, MISI, Robert Wendling, MISI Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation & Risk Management, For the U.S. DOE, February 2005.

International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Outlook 2010.

Klare, Michael, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004; paperback, Owl Books, 2005).

Klare, Michael, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated, 2008).

Rubin, Jeff, Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, Random House, 2009.

Staniford, Stuart, “IEA acknowledges peak oil,” Published Nov 10 2010, Energy Bulletin.

“Delivery” of Strategic Foresight and Warning “products:” learning from the social and mobile web?

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As Cynthia Grabo underlines, a warning does not exist if it is not delivered. Similarly, a foresight product – or risk assessment or horizon scan – has to be delivered. Furthermore, if foresight and warning are to be actionable, then clients or customers – those to whom the product has been delivered – must pay heed to the foresight, or warning. What they decide to do with those is another story, but from the point of view of SF&W, they must receive them, know they have received them and as much as possible consider them.

by Philip Devere, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons

Strategic foresight and futures’ efforts, as well as related literature, with a few exceptions, have rarely focused explicitly on this specific part of the overall process. Yet, it is crucial. As a first step, it has much to learn from the warning part of the activity. Then, both strategic foresight and warning may also have much to learn from the mobile and social networking approach that is being constantly imagined and re-imagined.

Learning from warning

In a nutshell, the – ideal – approach that strategic actionable foresight must learn from warning underlines that:

  • Clients or customers must be identified – mapping is a must.
  • Warning officers – and thus strategic foresight practitioners too – must learn to know their customers and develop overtime a trusting relationship with them
  • Products can thence be adapted to customers
  • Products must be delivered to customers and related necessary channels of communication created if need be
  • Feedback on delivery and products must be asked customers, hoping the latter will have time to provide them.

If those steps are followed then we have improved the likelihood to see our customers paying heed to foresight and warning products. Many challenges, however, are lurking behind those apparently simple steps, potentially hindering the best completion of each of them. First and foremost, the various biases, as summarized by Heuer, that alter the understanding of any human being, will be at work. They will affect not only customer but also analyst and officer in their relationship to customers, as astutely pointed out by Woocher.

Learning from the social and mobile web: from Taylorism and consumerism to the 21st century

Without entering into the specifics of each bias and each challenge, which is more than a blog post can do, I would like here to suggest that the social and mobile web could help us with this specific phase of the SF&W process. It could not only by give us new capabilities but also, and primarily, a new philosophy.

Moving from customers to users

Usually, chains of command and hierarchical structures define who gets SF&W products. They have been established over time, exist and are necessary as such. Yet, as far as those traditional existing “customers” or “clients” are concerned, most usually policy-makers and decision-makers, could it be worthwhile to change our mind-set, not seeing them anymore as “customers,” but, instead, as is done by the mobile and social web, considering them as users? Customers are those to whom one sells products or services, if we pursue the analogy (with all the potential biases this imply, as for example studied by Nolan, MacEachin, and Tockman).

Meteorologist at work at the Storm Prediction Centre de Norman, Oklahoma Source: NOAA

Users refer to a different universe. It imply that we provide them with tools (concrete or immaterial), instruments that are first and foremost useful and of value to them; devices that are needed to construct, to act, that will be helpful in the accomplishment of their mission. The emphasis moves from something that can be useless, that can been thrown away or disregarded and that is separated from the person who must buy it, to a long-term relationship, to the consideration of the other and its needs first – or rather the needs of its mission. This would be somehow adopting the first core principle of Google’s philosophy.

If we adopt the user’s approach, then we can start our process of identification again, with a fresh mind:

  • Are we sure that all the necessary, actual and potential users have been identified?
  • Would other people benefit from using SF&W?
  • Would it be a useful tool for them? Would it be necessary that they used it?

Those questions are more difficult than it appears for polities as they also touch upon democracy on the one hand, and power on the other.

First, in a representative democracy, policy-makers are those who are elected, and decision to act (or not act) should remain in their hands. Thus, care will be taken when or if new users are outside the nexus of elected representatives to see the democratic process respected.

Second, SF&W is (or should be) an essential tool of power, of might (the German Macht – verb machen = do) in its meaning of doing something. Thus, identifying new users may potentially lead to power struggles and care should be taken in advance to mitigate such drawback.

Moving from product and delivery to tools and reception

Currently, once all the policy-makers and decision-makers are known, then the most advanced practitioners design specific format and delivery – seen as a unified process – for the product, according to clients. The form and the delivery must be adapted to customers and will achieve the aim to get their attention and raise their awareness.

By National Weather Service Aviation Weather Center (http://aviationweather.gov/products/swm/), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

If we move to users, then product becomes tool, the emphasis on delivery can switch to reception, and then one should also think about the use of the tool.  An overall strategy, centered on the actionable use of SF&W can thus be imagined, designed and implemented.  One will have to ask questions such as

  • In which circumstances and how would the users use the tool?
  • Which form should this tool have to best be used by them?
  • What are the best channels that will give the best possible reception by the user? Considering the difficulty of changing mind-sets, which is one hurdle SF&W must always overcome, this question is particularly important as it will also lead us to try identifying how the users think, the dynamics behind cognition, including most opportune moments, what and who has influence on their thinking.

Once we switch to the users’ approach, then the capabilities of the social and mobile web can be fully integrated and adapted to SF&W. We shall examine specific ideas in future posts.

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Grabo, Cynthia M., and Jan Goldman. Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning. [Washington, D.C.?]: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Joint Military Intelligence College, 2002.

Heuer, Richards J. Jr., Psychology of Intelligence Analysis, Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1999.

Nolan, Janne E., and MacEachin, Douglas, with Kristine Tockman, Discourse, Dissent and Strategic Surprise Formulating U.S. Security Policy in an Age of Uncertainty. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University, Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 2007.

Woocher, Lawrence, “The Effects of Cognitive Biases on Early Warning,” Presented at the International Studies Association Annual Convention (2008).