Joe Murphy's Blog

Joe Murphy is a professional futurist grounded with an MBA and a degree in Physics with research expertise & experience as a Yale Science Librarian. Obsessed with crafting better questions, I research futures to inform decisions through strategic foresight methodologies. A formally trained futurist through a Master of Science in Foresight, I anticipate & influence significant changes. Instead of a crystal ball, I’m armed with techniques to understand and create future directions by combining data-driven forecasts and creativity to adapt strategy to discontinuous change. The futures studies graduate program trained me in the rigorous practical techniques for very intentional approaches to the future.

The power of the ask: I guide and refine questions to drill down to the right problems. I'm an expert at all stages and types of research: critically seeking, synthesizing, & interpreting information from diverse sources and am fluent in the data ecosystem from creation/organization/management to translation into knowledge. I gained and further developed these research skills through a Master’s Degree in Library & Information Science and five years as a Yale Science Librarian. I applied these skills within libraries and then to experience in the technology sector in a software firm and with leaders in the public sector.
Being a researcher with training through the MLISc degree as well as library experience informed my writing as an author of several books and as editor for several journals and research reports.

Being a researcher makes me a better futurist. The best way to get ready is to stay ready and I maintain critical insight through consuming diverse current media and studying the ecosystems we work in. I am unique among futurists as an exceptional futures researcher through this Librarian experience that makes me accountable to data and an adept judge of when the past, through critical hindsight, is a good indicator of the future.

I completed an Executive MBA program alongside a diverse cohort of fellow students, all experienced managers from across the San Francisco Bay Area, teaching me day-to-day business needs to balance short-term drivers with long-term goals. With this full business school education, I am fluent in the needs of executives, managers, and owners and I apply the tools of strategic foresight to ease uncertainty about the future.
I'm literate in the systems and arts of economics, management, marketing, IT/IS, change, finance, operations, project management, product management, statistics, strategy, innovation, global business, and leadership.

I am a foresight strategist and I sit at the junction of imagination and operations, innovation and finance, creativity and planning, strategy and design thinking, data and stories, research and execution, the present and the future.

A college degree in Physics gave me STEM problem solving frameworks (theoretical, computational, and analytical) to address complex problems, to explore and understand the why and the how, to analyze structure. I apply to my work as a futurist a lesson learned as a scientist: to find the limits of knowledge and contribute there to extend the known and decrease uncertainty. Science’s accompanying sense of wonderment also extends my creativity.

Ethics and values - I consider the future of all stakeholders and all future stakeholders. I am committed to the long-term: long-term growth, ingoing success, and a healthy world for all impacted. My values as a futurist are to help design more sustainable futures for business and people.

Being a reader is amongst me biggest assets as a strategist. Reading widely and deeply improves my emotional intelligence, empathy, and judgment. I read a book or two a week: novels and histories alongside strategy and innovation research. On a daily basis, I read two daily newspapers, poetry, and rom a classic novel. My favorite non-fiction books recently read have been Plutarch’s Lives and Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill.

Always curious, I seek multiple paths to understanding & addressing complicated circumstances through research, systems thinking, and as a well-read generalist & skeptic. Working in a library tied my work as a futurist to data and evidence as much as to the power of narrative. I cannot stop asking questions and I am passionate about asking better questions about our futures. Curiosity is my cornerstone.

- Joe Murphy, futurist, forever a librarian, strategist, and researcher.

Joe Murphy is a professional futurist grounded with an MBA and a degree in Physics with research expertise & experience as a Yale Science Librarian. Obsessed with crafting better questions, I research futures to inform decisions through strategic foresight methodologies. A formally trained futurist through a Master of Science in Foresight, I anticipate & influence significant changes. Instead of a crystal ball, I’m armed with techniques to understand and create future directions by combining data-driven forecasts and creativity to adapt strategy to discontinuous change. The futures studies graduate program trained me in the rigorous practical techniques for very intentional approaches to the future.

The power of the ask: I guide and refine questions to drill down to the right problems. I’m an expert at all stages and types of research: critically seeking, synthesizing, & interpreting information from diverse sources and am fluent in the data ecosystem from creation/organization/management to translation into knowledge. I gained and further developed these research skills through a Master’s Degree in Library & Information Science and five years as a Yale Science Librarian. I applied these skills within libraries and then to experience in the technology sector in a software firm and with leaders in the public sector.

Being a researcher makes me a better futurist. The best way to get ready is to stay ready and I maintain critical insight through consuming diverse current media and studying the ecosystems we work in. I am unique among futurists as an exceptional futures researcher through this Librarian experience that makes me accountable to data and an adept judge of when the past, through critical hindsight, is a good indicator of the future.

I completed an Executive MBA program alongside a diverse cohort of fellow students, all experienced managers from across the San Francisco Bay Area, teaching me day-to-day business needs to balance short-term drivers with long-term goals. With this full business school education, I am fluent in the needs of executives, managers, and owners and I apply the tools of strategic foresight to ease uncertainty about the future.

I’m literate in the systems and arts of economics, management, marketing, IT/IS, change, finance, operations, project management, product management, statistics, strategy, innovation, global business, and leadership.

I am a foresight strategist and I sit at the junction of imagination and operations, innovation and finance, creativity and planning, strategy and design thinking, data and stories, research and execution, the present and the future.

A college degree in Physics gave me STEM problem solving frameworks (theoretical, computational, and analytical) to address complex problems, to explore and understand the why and the how, to analyze structure. I apply to my work as a futurist a lesson learned as a scientist: to find the limits of knowledge and contribute there to extend the known and decrease uncertainty. Science’s accompanying sense of wonderment also extends my creativity.

Ethics and values – I consider the future of all stakeholders and all future stakeholders. I am committed to the long-term: long-term growth, ingoing success, and a healthy world for all impacted. My values as a futurist are to help design more sustainable futures for business and people.

Always curious, I seek multiple paths to understanding & addressing complicated circumstances through research, systems thinking, and as a well-read generalist & skeptic. Working in a library tied my work as a futurist to data and evidence as much as to the power of narrative. I read novels and histories alongside strategy research and a daily newspaper. I cannot stop asking questions and I am passionate about asking better questions about our futures. Curiosity is my cornerstone.

– Joe Murphy, futurist, former librarian, strategist, and researcher.

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One year ago I delivered an invited presentation about strategic foresight, here is an update. What has changed for me as a futurist and as a manager, what has changed for the CMTC community one year later? 

Last year I had the honor of being invited to present at the 2015 Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in New Hampshire for an audience of educators aka heroes. I presented about methods for applying Strategic Foresight (the tools of futures studies).

I believe that we have an obligation to approach our futures strategically to ensure the best outcomes for those we are accountable to.

Here are my slides from the talk 

This presentation followed the major methods of conducting Futures Research:

Insight: Research conditions of the current coherent era & stakeholder analysis.
Hindsight: Research discrete milestones & key characteristics of the past era.
Establish expected “Baseline” Future: Projections, trends, the current era extrapolated. This normative future is not the most likely to play out because of complexity. This is where foresight begins. 
Futuring Alternative Futures: Scan for indicators of change leading to different outcomes. Multiple plausible futures because each path contains uncertainties.
Preferred Future: Visioning the aspirational image of your future among the alternatives.
Designing: Prototypes etc to achieve this goal.
Adapting: Strategy. 

Updates:

I would now guide one institution through the process and let their journey and findings tell a story and test/revise the methods. Futures work is not about talking heads. My professional philosophy of foresight is to empower through asking questions and share competencies to build a culture of foresight. In one section included in the slides we crafted a live mind map to frame the major changes and together scan the ecosystem. The entire strategic futures process can and should be that communal. 

I would now add stakeholder and salience mapping to consider the needs and pressures of all partners, boards, students, parents, government bodies, regulations, etc. We include these players as sources of external change as well as researching their own futures as we co-evolve in an interdependent system. 

I now with additional training could add:

Systems dynamics to account for the complex interrelationships internal and external to our organizations.
Traditional Strategic Planning with additional future-oriented methods.
Statistical Forescasting. 
Economic Analysis. 
Ethical Reasoning. 
Probabilistic Planning and Management. 
Design Thinking: I balance these systematic methods with Design Thinking as a guide through the process while emphasizing strategy elsewhere.

With these methods we have the analytical, the creative, the people-centered, and the strategic methods for investigating and guiding our organizations’ futures. These are techniques that I have learned in my graduate study within a Master of Science in Foresight through the University of Houston as well as through an Executive MBA program at SFSU. My approach to strategic foresight is built upon my years of experience as a Librarian: accountable to the information, beholden to a value-based mission, expertise in the landscape of data as well as the formulation of questions. Questions are key. Questions to get to and through problems. 

As a future-oriented manager my mission is to help us foresee and prepare for the futures, not tell it. Thank you deeply for having me be involved in the CMTC conference and to the wonderful teachers whom I met. I deeply appreciate your work.

 – Joe Murphy, from Librarian to Futurist Manager

Popular Mechanics recently published an article, “How to See the Future” by Lara Sorokanich about the work that Futurists do and the Futures Studies degrees that qualify many of us futurists. Below are my reflections and further information from my perspective as a graduate student of foresight to expand on the article’s subtitle, “It turns out it’s possible to earn a degree in Future Studies. We’ve got the Cliff’s Notes.” Glen Hiemstra, the futurist interviewed for the article, very generously shared further insight with me about which I wrote previously. 

Predictions?:

The article starts off the way many futurists caveat their own presentations: “If history has taught us anything, it’s that people who try to predict the future are often spectacularly wrong.” And follows with “And yet somebody’s got to do it”. Enter the Foresight Professional. AKA Futurist. 

Most Futurists do not make predictions, as pointed out in this article (“futurists use science and data to figure out what the world might look like in 20, 50 or 100 years”). Predictions are yes/no judgments about discrete occurrences. I leverage statistical forecasts as one element in a discipline that addresses uncertainty. Futurists, especially those trained in Foresight, seek the futures, always plural, alternatives to the assumed path and align strategy with the organization’s preferred direction amongst the multiple alternatives. 

“Futurists”:

The value proposition of a professional futurist’s skill set applies well beyond foresight work to leadership and management of all stripes. It is said by organizational researchers that the role of a CEO is to consider the future. Maximizing this synergy of fields is my mission behind studying for both an MBA and an MS in Foresight: combining numerical forecasts with scenario planning, creativity, visioning, and strategy. The vision and the doing. The research and the dreaming. 

Trends:

Trends are vectors that point with a direction and a value. X is growing by Y. Trends are dynamic current events that carry an assumption of but not a promise of continued trajectory. I have learned that the role of researching and measuring salient trends in foresight is primarily to set the baseline future. The expected future if things keep going the way they are. Where are things going given the trend we watch now? Then, as with a forecast, futurist seek underlying assumptions and indicators of divergent paths. What are the trend’s limits, what factors amongst stakeholders propel or arrest them, and do they lie as a tangent on a curve? What would break these trends and what happens to the web of players and to our planned future when this occurs?  

Trained futurists generally research at long time scales to account for complexity and seek plausible alternatives to what the trends now seen tell us. This is one of the strengths of combining Foresight with Library & Information Science: the context and limits of each type of information along with research literacy. 

Futurist Glen Hiemstra shared in the article the three questions he applies to trends: Is the potential future technologically feasible? Is it economically viable? Is it socially and politically acceptable? Applying the three tests explored below to observed trends gives great insight into their longevity.

Please see “Popular Mechanics Article On “Real Occupation” Of Futurists & Insights From Glen Hiemstra” for Glen Hiemstra’s detailed approach to futures work which he shared with me. His foresight approach generally follows the stages of:

Forecasting
Developing pictures of possible futures
Defining preferred futures

We see from Glen that seeing the future includes visioning it. Designing preferred futures is a key aspect of foresight work. Glen addresses anticipatory thinking, environmental scanning, scenario planning, visioning, strategies, and more.

Following are my own approaches to the three tests/questions posed in the article. 

Is the potential future technologically feasible?

An organization like Google’s X may follow up with, “what will we do to make it possible?” As a futurist also trained in science and business, I add the follow up questions of: who will this benefit down the road, who is working on this technology, what does the market look like, what are the barriers to entry, to whom is it a strategic technology and market, whose life will this improve, what innovations in efficiencies etc. are needed? My education in physics helps to resolve how the conceived technology fits into the structures of science as we know them to be now and what needs to be researched and developed. Being technologically literate aids me in judging what is viable and available now, what obstacles to expect in further developments, and how to strategize around barriers. Being fluent in current events helps me consider the societal elements that impact the diffusions of technology.

Is it economically viable?

My professional training in both Foresight and Business Management informs on if we can and how we can make the future vision economically viable. How do we balance long and short-term priorities? The futurist in me examines the alternative futures that make it viable. The business student in me ask what revenue will it take to make palatable the costs? Where is the break even point? What partnerships can be forged? Who are the stakeholders and which have leverage? What tangential industries will it launch? Who has something to lose and can arrest the advancement of the field? 

We can graph at what price points technologies will catch on in what markets as lower bounded limits and set indicators for when it will be ready for mass consumption. Futurists also scan for changes in factors that may shorten this calculus and plan for contingencies. 

As I gain economic and financial literacy through my Executive MBA study (as well as through reading the Wall Street Journal etc. daily) I become better at judging conservative growth under current and possible scenarios to balance my futurist mindset. It is a challenge and an adventure bridging future-oriented and economist thought.

Is it socially and politically acceptable?

Is it ethical and how does corporate social responsibility factor in? Is it culturally viable now and will it be in the future? Are values and attitudes shifting and when/will social shifts make the idea widely acceptable? 

I am equipped to apply frameworks for ethical reasoning to advancements and I have developed professionally under the value system of librarianship. Libraries, sitting at the junction of technology, content, and people balance change and tradition and the needs of academia and the public sector. I have lived in the context of social justice, am culturally aware, and steeped in current events. I consider the foresight perspective for political and regulatory issues. Foresight aided by library and information science teaches us to scan via the perspectives of multiple parties and the sector categories of STEEP (social, technological, economics, environmental, political) while the MBA study leverages stakeholder maps and graphs of their influence. 

These three above questions are great for any organization to ask and can be accompanied by an ethical reasoning model, foresight’s spiral dynamics, or even McLuhan’s tetrad (what does it enhance, reverse, retrieve, obsolesce?).

These questions also expand my developing mission of strategizing for future stakeholders and for the future of all stakeholders. 

Thank you, Popular Mechanics and author Lara Sorokanich for the insightful piece on futurists and for covering the work of futurists.  Thank you Glen Hiemstra for generously sharing your insights with me and elucidating that key area of futurists’ work of preferred futures. http://www.futurist.com/

– Joe Murphy, from librarian to futurist + MBA

Sorokanich, Lara. “How to See the Future.” Popular Mechanics. 15 Aug. 2016. <http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/news/a22354/how-to-see-the-future/>.

Popular Mechanics published an article by Lara Sorokanich about Futurists. The article, “How to See the Future,” discusses the work that Futurists do and the Futures Studies degrees that qualify many of them.  I reached out to the interviewed Futurist, Glen Hiemstra, and he shared deeper insights with me below.

“Enter the futurist: you probably never knew the job existed, but it is the totally real occupation” whose professionals leverage data and research methods to determine how systems will evolve. The August 15 2016 Popular Mechanics piece discusses futurists and how they apply foresight to corporate, government, and academic environments.

“Futurists”:

Many people’s titles today include the term “Futurist.” Yet it is a small field of professional futurists, those with degrees in strategic Foresight or who work primarily in foresight. This article cites the Association of Professional Futurists http://apf.org/, of which I am a member, as composed of around 400 of these futures experts.

Trends:

The author of the article focusses mainly on the trend facet of futuring and asks futurist Glen Hiemstra of http://www.futurist.com/ “what he looks at when spotting trends.” Mr. Hiemstra starts with these three questions or tests to apply to trends:

Is the potential future technologically feasible?
Is it economically viable?
Is it socially and politically acceptable?

I reached out to Glen Hiemstra after reading the article and he has generously shared with me further information on his three pronged approach to futures work: forecasting, developing pictures of possible futures, and defining preferred futures. This last area, defining preferred futures, is a key aspect of foresight work and is Mr. Hiemstra’s area of expertise at http://www.futurist.com/.

Glen Hiemstra Generously Shared the Following Insights with Me:

I have always defined futurist work as consisting of three major streams:

1-Forecasting – developing methodologies for anticipatory thinking and then making observations about probable futures –  trends and developments – best exemplified by the various forms of environmental scanning.

2-Developing pictures of possible futures, best exemplified by scenario planning and also by science fiction writing. Exploring “what if” possibilities.

3-Defining preferred futures, a process for assisting organizations (or individuals for that matter) to envision preferred futures and then refine those images into a preferred vision and from there into a set of strategies or steps that will move them in the preferred direction. This activity may, and usually does, involve preliminary steps that involve the first two forms of futurist work.

My own work has involved all three primary activities. I am an avid consumer of those who specialize in forecasting or imagining possible futures, and I work with clients to make sense of the patterns of change and opportunities that these forecasting and imagining activities produce. In some of my work – presentations for example, or certain workshops – the task starts and pretty much ends with an exploration of future trends and their strategic implications.

With some clients, normally involving a deeper involvement, there is a desire to produce a new vision and plan, and in these engagements we spend time developing images of preferred futures, and then sorting and refining those images until we produce a true new vision for the preferred future. We define that as a picture – it may actually involve visual as well as word images – that describe where the organization wants to be on some time horizon. Behind that vision we might identify the enduring organization values – if the vision describes where the organization wants to go, the values answer the question “why would we want to go there?”

While a preferred future vision can be developed in a single retreat or workshop, most often such work involves deeper engagement with an organization over time, with a series of retreats, workshops and meetings. Often there is some process for involving not just a task force or management team, but also for seeking input from a wider circle within or even from everyone in an organization. The vision work then usually leads to a process for defining values, mission, strategies, actions and some kind of follow up or monitoring process for tracking how well the organization is doing in seeking its vision.

-Glen Hiemstra

 

Visioning the future that we want is as critical as seeing the alternative futures hinted at by the trends. These value propositions contributed by foresight work are becoming widely recognized in a world of change.

Thank you, Popular Mechanics and author Lara Sorokanich for the insightful piece on futurists and for covering the work of futurists.

Thank you deeply to Glen Hiemstra who went above and beyond in responding to me and elucidating that key area of futurists’ work of preferred futures. http://www.futurist.com/

 

– Joe Murphy, from librarian to student futurist

 

Sorokanich, Lara. “How to See the Future.” Popular Mechanics. 15 Aug. 2016. <http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/news/a22354/how-to-see-the-future/>.

Reading Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance this week unexpectedly influenced my philosophy of strategic foresight. I was struck by much, including these snippets which add perspective to foresight

Consistency and Conformity:

On the topic of consistency, Emerson’s words balance the ego tied to accuracy of futures work with the professional maturity to revise and update. 

“The other terror that scares us from self trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict something you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day.”

I am reminded of the importance to measure the accuracy of our forecasts honestly before and after and to be held accountable for them. But that is forecasting.

In Foresight we research the recent past and the current era and we plot the normative future from there. This normative baseline future is what everyone knows to be THE future yet is one strand in the cone of plausibility. In the “thousand-eyed present” we see a multitude of possibilities alongside this baseline. Conformity to prior predictions may block our vision and our perspective. How can we see the big picture if our mental model is tied to one path?

Emerson’s insight adds gravitas to the importance of being willing to see new alternative futures and not focus solely on an expected accepted future. The value of strategic foresight is most evident in researching alternative futures.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.”

Foresight professionals use visioning heavily and strategic foresight lays a significant focus upon challenging assumptions. An extremely creative focus for a strategic discipline.

We do not rely upon past data alone to create futures. We do not ignore data either. We seek to not be limited by the push to maintain consistency over accuracy. Yes yesterday I forecast X but new information today reveals X+y to be more likely.

In foresight accuracy should be viewed separately from how visions of the future deviate from past trends. We do not let past visions dictate current futuring. There may be a public or organizational burden to stick with past forecasts over revising and updating futures. However, as with forecasting, the best futurists edit and revisit because futures work is most successful iteratively in a culture of foresight. 

Here Emerson adds support to what contemporary thinkers say makes a skilled forecaster, “Forecast, measure, revise. Repeat.” (Philip Tetlock in his book Superforecasting:The Art and Science of Prediction which I wrote about for the Houston Foresight program http://www.houstonforesight.org/?p=4537)

“These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from sufficient distance and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future.”

This passage may help understand that long range perspectives reveal the trend lines around which local deviations cycle. Keep focussed on a strategy despite the temporary deviations. To me it also illuminates the statistical measures that all plausible futures center upon. It also touches upon the role of mission in futuring. Visioning and futuring and finding preferred futures all inform mission but are also guided by it.

“If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now.”

We can reach the future we want by designing our will by character now and back-casting our path to that future. Honor is resilient and timeless. Values are anti-fragile. Set vision with the character of our preferred future and add that momentum to this flywheel.

On Diversity of Perspectives:

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

When we design future visions on our own we craft futures that look like us and reflect our biases. Expanding our exposure helps us to see alternative futures. The optimum balance is to be grounded by strong values as we let in a multitude of visions.

Takeaway:

The past and the patterns within it are a great guide not to be discarded. They also are not a law. Deviations, disruptions, and discontinuous change are strong forces connecting past to future. That is why foresight is a necessary companion to forecasting. 

These lessons from Emerson and more are helpful for me as I face the challenge of balancing data-based forecasts of my MBA world with the imaginative futuring of my Foresight studies. 

Again we owe thanks to Emerson.  “live ever in a new day”

 – Joe Murphy, a futurist with the perspective of a librarian.

The transformational leader motivates creative questions and solutions. The foresight professional asks how alternative futures could happen.

In The Art and Science of Leadership, which we read for an MBA leadership seminar, Nahavandi describes the three elements of Transformational Leadership as: charisma and inspiration to implement vision, intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration.

This 2nd element, Intellectual Stimulation, is an area foresight does exceptionally well. Intellectual stimulation in the transformation leadership context is about motivating to solve problems creatively, to “question existing values and assumptions and search for new answers.”

Futurists (Foresight Professionals) scrutinize assumptions and encourage the seeking of innovative explanations and solutions. We do less of telling the future and more of building mental and organizational models to question and to innovate. I learned during the Association of Professional Futurists’ “Global Futures Festival” that a good metric for the success or usefulness of a foresight project is how well it challenged mental assumptions. This culture of foresight is ready for constant change as we go beyond the near term forecast which is measured by the accuracy of the prediction.

Futurists address obstacles in this questioning manner: we seek to understand the current state of affairs, scan for indications of the future, identify baseline and alternative futures, envision to open the range of possibilities and develop preferred futures, design prototypes to achieve the vision, and enable the generation of options to alternative futures.

A transformational leader empowers creative problem solvers who question. Finding and selecting a future path comes from creative questions. Getting beyond the assumed, and less likely, future takes searching for answers that do not rely so heavily upon current assumptions. It takes leadership to inspire the carrying out of vision.

This matters to me as I combine leadership and futures studies in my Foresight and my MBA studies. This matters to organizations because transformational leadership bridges inspiration and results with an empowered creative team, allowing for adaption to externalities and making required adjustments.

A leader equipped with foresight methods and skills and an organization with a culture of foresight is effective in the face of change.

  -Joe Murphy, Librarian, Foresight Leader

Nahavandi, Afsaneh. The Art and Science of Leadership. Paramus, US: Prentice Hall Australia, 2014. P
Hines, Dr. Andy. “A Foresight Competency Model.” Hinesight for Foresight. 28 Sept. 2016. Web. http://www.andyhinesight.com/foresight-2/a-foresight-competency-model/.
“Association of Professional Futurists – What Is a Futurist?” What Is a Futurist? Association of Professional Futurists, http://profuturists.org/.

Four years ago I gave this keynote presentation for the Library 2.012 Worldwide conference. The conference is still ongoing and is now known as Library 2.016: Libraries of the Future.

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(2012 keynote on trends and library futures by Joe Murphy)

The emphasis of this presentation given as an industry thought leader was on approaches to technology change and included a snapshot of tech directions in late 2012 shared in this global online symposium. Since then I have pursued training as a futurist. Here is some hindsight from the perspective of foresight.

What would I do differently today now that I am a futurist?I would insert forecasts accountable to accuracy and expand into this exploration the visioning elements of futures work. I would add a note on each area of technology and change to articulate what it could mean if trends continue or if they diverge, identifying which are expected versus ifs. I would add more about the economic and cultural aspects of these changes and discuss the role of technology in the central mission of libraries. I would present a vision for libraries’ role and leadership and make clear the central strength and focus of libraries in the context of change’s whirlwind.I would establish methods to measure and track the impact of technologies and alerts as indicators for their influence upon the library and its key stakeholders. I would also elevate input from leaders in the library industry.

 

 

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http://www.slideshare.net/joseph.murphy/library-2013-murphy-trends-and-futures-lib2013

I went on to present many more keynote talks about the future and libraries, helping to build the futures of libraries via ideas and then directly as Director of Library Futures with a leading library technology firm. One year later I was asked to return to the 2013 conference as distinguished presenter and focused on securing robust roles for libraries in the future.

Since then I have pursued futures studies as a trained futurist as well as executive MBA study. I now focus on strategic decision making. I, for example, am now better prepared to inform strategy considering these observed and foreseen changes.

It strikes me how many of these slides are in line with organizational futures (“reiterated reincarnation” from change management, the structure vs the model for forecasting), especially with my commitment to future patrons and partners and the future of them. The ethics of librarianship shape me as a research-driven foresight professional with the mission of advocating for our future stakeholders.

Thank you again for letting me participate as a keynote presenter and member of the community.

 

Joe Murphy, Librarian and student of futures studies

Foreseeing Impacts from Inventions

When swimming goggles were widely introduced in the 1970s they doubled or even tripled the time that swimmers could spend training because the swimmers’ eyes were now better protected. Swimming world records were quickly overtaken.

Foresight from development to impact:

A futurist observing developments in sports technology products might have anticipated the impacts on the users’ performance and thus on international competition, endorsements, and tangential investments.

Foresight for problem solving:

Applying foresight strategy within the field may have lead to asking how performance could be improved and mapped the time that swimmers are able to spend training as a constraint to be addressed. This would entail challenging the assumption that the status quo was unchangeable and that performance had room to grow. 

Foresight professionals/professional Futurists seek out preferred futures and analyze strategy to get there – faster swim times by identifying the barriers or watching for opportunities to leverage. Foresight also entails analyzing how a development will change what is possible and how the futures of stakeholders may be impacted. The overlap between foresight and product innovation is strong. 

Process:

A foresight strategist would map the baseline expected future: swimmers can expect to swim at the current speeds in the undisrupted future. 

The futurist would ask what an alternative future might be: One alternative is that swimmers can increase their speed. The futurist would ask what might this mean to the stakeholders and to the ecosystem? More records broken, more endorsement, more media coverage, more people wanting to swim competitively.

Then the futurist would ask, how right this come about? What would it take to get there? What changes should we look out for that may enable this future? How would a swimmer be able to reach greater speeds? More training or different techniques. What would allow more training? Changes in pool chemicals, swim technology including better eye protection. 

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Foresight work Swim goggles example

Futures strategy requires scanning, aka researching current events, insight into the field and its stakeholders, and thinking in systems to know how a structural change will impact the behavior and limits of the system.

Joe Murphy Librarian, Futures Studies Student/MS in Foresight +EMBA  

Source: “Why Do Swimmers Break More Records than Runners?” BBC News Magazine. N.p., 13 Aug. 2016. Web. <http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37064144>.

The connection between foresight and management is elemental to the nature of leadership.

I interviewed Bruce Rosenstein, author of Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way via Google Hangouts about the confluence of management and futures studies via the futurism mindset.

 

Bruce and I explore in this video conversation his book, Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way, and its emphasis through study of Drucker’s teachings, that we can “never really prepare for the future unless you have a future-focused mindset.”

My passion on this topic is sparked by my career trajectory as a business futurist in graduate programs for both Futures Studies (MS in Foresight) and an Executive MBA.

Create Your Future … analyzes management thought leader Peter Drucker’s work “through the lens of how it applies to the future” and extends Drucker’s lessons to discovering and turning today’s disruptive trends to advantage. Drucker himself was preoccupied with the future and wrote commonly about a future-oriented mindset. Yet Drucker’s writings on the future spanned many texts, discussed together here in Rosenstein’s book.

When I first began an MBA program, I read Drucker’s 600-page magnum opus Management and knew immediately this interface between futures studies and management was where I belong. Peter Drucker was the foremost thinker on management whose books were the foundry for it as a modern discipline. Here is Bruce’s guide to Peter Drucker’s writings on the future http://brucerosenstein.com/a-mini-guide-to-peter-druckers-writings-on-the-future/

“The first job of management is to identify & anticipate impacts,” Drucker, Management.

Major elements of Drucker’s thoughts on the future as gathered by Rosenstein in this book include:

The future is a mindset (keeping the future in mind when making management decisions because the big idea of leadership is getting to a more desirable future).
“Get over the idea of uncertainty.” We cannot assume that the future will be an extension of today. The concept of “the future that has already happened” as an inevitability from what is happening and whose full import has not yet been felt.
Librarians are very well placed to help people and organizations find the future re scanning for hints of what is in place now.
Organizations should be structured for constant change – get over the idea that change is a bad thing.
Change agents are change leaders.
Systematic abandonment – decide what has outlived its usefulness, paired with ongoing improvement of core purpose.
Risk – there is risk in everything. Acknowledge but don’t be paralyzed by risk.[image error]

This interview formed part of a book club for fellow MS in Foresight students with the University of Houston and it overlapped and enriched my business management studies in an Executive MBA program through SFSU.

The biggest takeaway from this book for me and from this interview was that Foresight and leadership complement each other and that the future is a management issue.

Management + Foresight

We converse from the shared perspective of Libraries as we both have focused on library futures and library leadership. Bruce has serious chops in Library and Information Science with 21 years of experience as Librarian and Researcher for USA TODAY. Bruce was also a lecturer at the Catholic University Department of Library and Information Science. I came to know Bruce through library management seminars which I spoke at and sponsored when attendees repeatedly recommended that I as a library futurist in a Director position connect with Bruce and read his books.Note the connections to and takeaways for librarians and libraries that Bruce mentions herein.

Bruce Rosenstein’s books, Create Your Future the Peter Drucker Way and Living in More Than One World provide deep leadership insight, mostly derived from his research into and with Peter Drucker, the “father of modern management.”

The role of leaders is to create a vision for the future and help the team get there.

Bruce and I also overlap in the foresight field. Bruce attended and shared insights from the 2016 World Future Society conference http://brucerosenstein.com/3291-2/

Follow and learn from Bruce. He has a lot to offer each of us http://brucerosenstein.com/ , check out the book https://www.amazon.com/Create-Your-Future-Peter-Drucker/dp/0071820809/, and engage on Twitter @brucerosenstein

After watching the interview (https://youtu.be/292DgiQPD7I), where else do you see management and foresight/futures studies connecting and what areas need further growth? Also please let Bruce and I know what you think after reading his books.

YouTube (Joe Murphy, Librarian) – https://youtu.be/292DgiQPD7I
Vimeo (joemurphylibrarian) – https://vimeo.com/179056667

 – Joe Murphy Librarian, Business Futurist student