By Caroline Phily, and the IPK Team
IPK had its 2nd internal foresight session recently, hosted by Caroline Phily, who has joined the IPK team as a Managing Director and will support IPK to structure its growth ambition.
The objective of the session was for IPK to stay ahead of upcoming changes in the field of facilitation, coaching and training, and to set intentions for a future we want to help shape.
Using the three-horizon framework to understand the forces behind change
The three-horizon framework was developed by Bill Sharpe, from the International Future Forum. As a systems thinker, Bill Sharpe developed this facilitation process to help take actions in a context of high uncertainty, as an alternative to more static roadmaps or scenario building exercises.
The three horizons framework (see graphic below) helps us to grasp the dynamic nature of change, and to understand the various forces at play at a set moment.
The first horizon represents the current mainstream system, the dominant paradigms, and beliefs we are living in. Sharpe describes the first horizon as one where actors have a managerial mindset: making the system function and spending energy for it to sustain itself.
The third horizon represents the future system which will become the norm. As illustrated in the graph, part of the third horizon already lives in today’s reality and is carried by visionaries’ minds.
The second horizon represents the transition phase from today’s status quo to tomorrow’s new reality. It is made by entrepreneurial minds, who are prototyping and testing new concepts, some of which will fail and some of which will pick up.
The beauty of this framework is that it helps actors hold and understand different yet complementary perspectives. We need managers for the current system not to fail too quickly and enable courses of actions to continue. Yet, we also need visionaries to tell the story of the upcoming possibilities, and entrepreneurs to pave the way towards the future.
Applying it to the context of IPK
Developing the three horizon is a three steps process:
Two main topics emerged from our internal discussions.
The field of facilitation is forever transformed since the pandemic and the acceleration into the virtual space. There will be no return back to a world where we assumed that transformative and participatory processes can only happen in a face-to-face environment. Connection and collaboration tomorrow will take place in a virtual world, but what we call virtual today is probably quite different from what “virtual” will be tomorrow. We pictured a future where the distinction between devices and physical reality may be blurry, and where the next generation of virtual reality and holograms will make gathering and meeting a totally new experience.
The technological divide is a risk which needs to be carefully addressed if we want to contribute to a world which values diversity and equity. We realised that we should not assume that technology will be able to replace what physical interactions can provide, especially when engagement with the civil society is so crucial to fight against the polarisation of society. Let’s not forget that internet access is still highly unequitable. And even if everyone were connected, we should not assume that we all talk the same technology language and that cultural differences will be smoothed out by just being in the same Zoom call.
Being entrepreneurs, we asked ourselves how we can contribute to the rise of a technological world which talks to our values of embracing complexity, serving the human spirit and leveraging diversity. We harvested interesting ideas we hope you’ll see going live as IPK continues its innovation journey.
Please contact IPK for further information, or a discussion about using foresight tools and discovering paths into the future, together. You can reach us at info@i-p-k.co.za.