The Art of Future Design — Part II: Deployment, Wholeness, and Impact on Human Beings

By Kristine M. Kawamura, Mario Raich, Simon L. Dolan, Dave Ulrich, and Claudio Cisullo

In this article, we extend the logic that was previously published in Part I of this journal and explain the requirements for a successful deployment of future design. We argue that we must holistically evolve in order to be capable of designing, and living within, the best future design possibilities. We also discuss implementation issues that complement those provided in Part I.

Deploying the Future Design Framework

Overview

Future design work begins with asking the question: “What do we want to focus on?” The answer may be more difficult than it sounds. For example, a team of people may decide they want to focus on designing the future for education. This focus may be general: the generic future of education. It may be specific: the future for a specific age group or market (such as higher education or executive education). It may be geographically targeted: the future of education in Brazil. The direction may (and probably will) shift at any time in the organic implementation of the future design process.

The designer begins by exploring the context of the actual situation. From here, a definition of the key elements, key statements, and key issues of the emerging future and remote future emerges. The deeper and more intense the exploration of the actual situation, the deeper and more intense will be the definition of emerging future and remote future. In order to understand and imagine the fullest expression of the remote future, the designer(s) will need to cluster and mesh all the gathered and imagined insights, information, knowledge, and wisdom from both the actual reality and the emerging future. The latter will include employing tools to reach out to the future, beckon the future, and listen to the future, pulling its insights and wisdom back into the design process moment. A variety of visual models can be created to draw a wide range of insights from multiple intelligence sources (e.g., mind, body, heart, and spiritual) into the wisdom-seeking design process.

As designing moves forward to address the future, the level of confirmed information and knowledge will decrease in proportion to unknown information. The designers’ perceptions will need to be developed so that each member of a team itself will be capable of clearly seeing the future with sincere empathy. Activating heart intelligence will support these processes as well as guide the designers to the most appropriate source of knowledge. These sources may include historical information, international experiences, other people’s views (especially controversial ones), interdisciplinary knowledge, and multimedia medium. Contradictory insights should be especially noted. Key factors to observe, discuss, and creatively address in this process include:

• Do you see linear progression (i.e. more of the same)?
• Do you see natural ageing or decay of current elements?
• How do you measure the probability that actions will occur?
• What level of hype is affecting the situation (tech hype, tech progress, acceptance, applications, etc.)?
• What trends and mega-trends may be converging?
• What black swans and / or jokers may be present?
• What unexpected discoveries and breakthroughs may occur?
• What changes are already occurring today that may lead to future outcomes?
• What is the market drive or demand for the element?
• What are possible points of no return?

The Future View

It will be of the utmost importance to integrate mesh learning and clustering of all insights and information as well as to utilise skills of creativity, intuition, imagination, and dreaming in the process of designing the emerging and remote futures. Using a visual model such as described in Exhibit 1 can help to gather insights as well as to communicate them with greater shared intelligence. This Future View allows the design team to chart a middle way through a range of possible futures including the expected and anticipated future (forecast), the unexpected and unknown future (black swans), the wishful and ideal future (utopia), and the feared and undesired future (dystopia). This model will be used repetitively, with each use allowing for deeper dives and higher flights of possibility.

Direction and Action

The Future Design Framework relies on the development of the direction of the project, the set of actions to lead us there, and the actual implementation of future option(s). Direction, as mentioned in Part I of this article, is the guiding star towards which we are headed. Actions are the choices made in the context of the current reality, emerging future, and remote future that are interrelated and mutually impactful. Direction, once set, will run in parallel with elected and implemented actions. Action operates in a variety of ways based on the designers’ perceptions, biases, and proclivities for implementation. For future design, it is action leading to implementation that will lead to purposeful and meaningful possibility (see Exhibit 2).

From Retro View to Future Navigator

Once the future design description is chosen, the design team will move towards beckoning this future and listening to the future, acting as if this future has already happened. They will then look back in time (even to the present moment) in order to chart the historical decisions and actions that have led to this point. Such a “history” of dozens of years of change will also lead to deeper awareness of both the emerging and remote futures. This process will allow the team to develop a Future Navigator which can help it to navigate towards the future. This method is particularly useful for the creation of disruptive innovation future options (Exhibit 3).

Design Skills

There are several design skills that will be helpful in using the Future Design Framework:

• Use constructive feedback (with oneself as well as with members of the design team) to create a thriving, successful design team. This includes several steps: 1) sharing appreciation for what has been proposed; 2) asking questions about its purpose; 3) describing one’s feelings and thoughts about it; 4) presenting one’s proposals for improvement; and 5) mutually dialoguing about the exchange.
• Create a mesh of information and knowledge flows about the core (core business, core issue, core topic, etc.); neighbouring topics; relevant current and emerging contexts; and creative white spots.
  Use direct dialogue, virtual dialogue, and social networks to gather additional info, knowledge, ideas, and insights.
• Create smart questions.
• Create a sustainable flow of information, knowledge, insights, and wisdom, documenting relevant information, knowledge, and wisdom (along with their source).
• Expand perspectives, information sources, skills, and insights about relevant and tangential topics.
• Cluster the information within an ad hoc created framework to uncover hidden patterns.
• Aim to become the most knowledgeable expert about the “topic.”

Specific Steps for Implementation

Here are some specific steps to follow when using the Future Design Framework. Remember that it will be implemented through both linear and non-linear (circuitous) ways. These are summarised in Exhibit 4.

Success Factors for Working with the Future Design Framework

There are several success factors for the designer and team to contemplate and discuss as they work with the Future Design Framework.

A vision: The mindset we use to anticipate the future will guide its creation. To create our most positive future, we believe it is essential to hold a positive, flourishing, and hopeful mindset.

We envision a new world, one with a new society, a new economy, and responsible leadership that focuses on developing a thriving quality of life for all. Old paradigms are replaced with new ones, developed collaboratively and inclusively across disciplines, cultures, and power structures. The fundamental principles for governance and leadership are collaboration, partnership, care, and creativity. The future way of life blends real and virtual worlds; artificial intelligence is used to create a sustainable, decent life for all the inhabitants of the planet. AI-based entities and robots are allies and partners with human beings. Work is redefined and redistributed between highly intelligent machines and robots and human beings. Human work and the parallel understanding of leisure will continually shift, yet we believe both will be an increasing source of meaning and value in people’s lives, organisations, communities, and society.

Constant reflection: This vision cannot occur without numerous questions being reflected upon, again and again and again. Over time, the questions and their answers will change and, in fact, must change, as the context will be ever-evolving. Thus, the skill of reflection and the ability to gather, synthesise, and explore—along with the capability to creatively destruct and mutually integrate information, knowledge, and wisdom—must be developed. Some questions to ponder include:

• How is work defined?
• Who is in charge? Who controls who and what?
• What is the value of leisure? Is human work a necessity or a privilege?
• Can human beings choose their work and “career” path?
• What ethical models can we, and should we, put in place to control technologies and their integration / substitution with work? How can we do this?

Values and ethical decision-making: Given the potential we have as human beings to watch (or even to create) either the destruction or the flourishing of our society and all that we stand and live for, it is time for us to live from our values. Values are the individual beliefs that motivate people to act one way or another, guiding human behaviour. Schwartz has identified basic, universal values that are shared by people across all cultures that are defined according to their underlying motivations.¹ They arise out of three universal requirements of the human condition: the needs of individuals as biological organisms, the requisites of coordinated social interaction, and the survival and welfare needs of groups. These values are categorised into four groups: openness to change (self-direction and stimulation); conservation (security, conformity, and tradition); self-enhancement (hedonism, achievement, and power) and self-transcendence (benevolence and universalism). Some values have intrinsic worth (e.g., love, truth, and freedom), while others describe behaviours or traits that are instrumental, the means to an end (e.g., ambition, responsibility, and courage). Still other values are considered sacred and act as moral imperatives for those who believe in them. This type of values are seldom compromised because they are perceived as duties rather than alternatives to be weighed in decision-making.

Values underlie ethical decision-making, a process that involves weighting values against each other and choosing which ones to elevate.² For the process of designing the future, pundits, scholars, and leaders of many disciplines — including the sciences, technology, medicine, arts and humanities, literature, business, government, etc.—recognise that it is the time for defining our values and ethical decision-making. Ethical decision-making, too, is a collaborative process that must be undertaken by people of different cultures, backgrounds, disciplines, and levels of power. Here, again, are reflective questions that must be pondered upon in this process:

• Who will / should be involved in the definition of values and ethical decision-making?
• What values (shared, intrinsic, instrumental, and moral imperatives) matter, both today and in the future?
• How will we conduct, manage, and lead from the ethical decision-making process?
• How do we stay abreast of the changing context and its impact on values and ethics?

Generational involvement: Throughout the ages, each generation has tended to view the world and all its challenges and opportunities with different mindsets and behaviours from other generations.³ Great events in history affect the lifestyles of a generation and affect different generations differently. Generational behaviour also affects how and when we participate as individuals in social change or social upheaval as well as how we see our present reality, our future, and our past. Baby boomers, for example are idealists, loathe narcissism and self-satisfaction of their peers yet are also self-centred in orientation. Gen X-ers are self-reliant, self-sufficient, and sceptical and don’t trust in the permanence of things. Millennials are confident and goal-oriented. They respect egalitarian leadership, seek an integrated work / life balance, and are oriented to the collective self. Gen Z-ers are more protective, self-taught, and self-aware in their orientation. Furthermore, different generations also have different views of technology. Whereas millennials are technology-dependent and hyperconnected through mobile devices, instant messaging, and texting, Gen Z-ers have developed with the personalisation of technology and content—a capability that will enable this generation to self-educate and experience individual growth across their lifetime.

As we contemplate, envision, and design the future, it will be necessary to collaborate in cross-generational teams, extensively leveraging young people and new generations of young people over time so that we benefit from their new perspectives, values, and mindsets.

Transformation of perception: To be capable of designing the future, we will need to overcome the limitations of human beings to perceive the reality around us so that we can create anew. This will require us to activate new sources of intelligence, imagination, intuition, and dreaming.

For this to happen, people will need to learn how to “deform” or detach the perceptions we hold that are mere projections arising out of stored neurological patterns that influence our views, behaviours, and decisions. These stored patterns are deeply layered, conscious and unconscious, built and reinforced over time, affecting our world view and all that we claim to be true. How often do we actually question how we see, why we think the way we do, our judgements, cultural and personal biases, values, and truths that we hold most dear? Our embodied worldview colours our view of everything we see and do and define our mental comfort zone, which feels safe and familiar; our framing of the possible and impossible; our likes and dislikes; our expectations of ourselves and others. We are controlled by the human habit of projecting the past upon the present as well as the future, generalising experiences and preferences, expecting other people to concur with our views.

To get meaningful insights about the future, it is necessary to transform our nervous systems so that we are capable of seeing from the present moment (releasing our attention to both the past and future projections); exploring relevant actual context; and listening to the emerging and future context. Listening to the future will require holding empathy for the future and the people we work with, crossing space and time, while simultaneously being capable of increasing our ability to work within increasingly complex systems and webs of knowledge.

How do we most easily and sustainably achieve this level of neurological change? It starts with heart intelligence.⁴ By accessing the power of the heart with practices and tools, those biases, prejudices that are locked in our nervous systems can be transformed, allowing access to our higher cortex, the part of the brain where values, flexibility, and systems thinking reside. Through the heart, we can access intuitive intelligence and heart qualities such as care, compassion, dignity, peace, calm, joy, and love while also enabling us to activate empathy so that we create a sincere relationship with the future.

As heart intelligence supplements mindful intelligence and even spiritual intelligence and we deepen our capacity for handling complexity, we can also pour in more information, knowledge, and wisdom by studying, and reflecting on, our history, international experiences, and other people’s views (even if controversial).⁵ We may also be able to integrate new sources of knowledge and experience such as artificial intelligence and the metaverse.

From here, imagination and dreaming are born.⁶ We are able to leave our mental comfort zone —our home base of paradigms and expectations—and venture to the beyond, a new universe of ideas and concrete realities, hope, and possibilities. This is a bold undertaking, not just an intellectual adventure but a visionary, mindful, heart-filled, and spirit-led journey: the middle way through the opposing lenses of dystopia and utopia.

Transformative and meaningful innovation and entrepreneurship:

Intelligence, intuition, imagination, and dreaming are key ingredients for transformative innovation — the tool of entrepreneurship that energises the creative destruction process and enables the creation of something new that creates significant and lasting change. To be transformative, innovation and entrepreneurship deliver meaningful value and sculpt the paradigm of meaningfulness for people and society.

Responsibility and partnership: No longer will it work to ignore, or pretend to not see, the crises we are facing. As human beings have created most of our most critical global issues, it is up to us to solve them. This will require great work by courageous people representing a multi-coloured and multi-layered tapestry of capabilities, experiences, and sociocultural backgrounds—all of whom are stakeholders in our shared and future world, all of whom offer unique value for creating solutions and designing the future. We see three pathways to success:

• Conduct transformative innovation via entrepreneurship, focused on delivering financial, social, human, and planetary impact.
• Create communities built on partnership rather than the old paradigm of domination.⁷ Communities will include both digital and virtual ones while partnerships will include both human-to-human and human-to-intelligent machine collaborations.
• Develop heart-, purpose-, and action-centered communities—fueled by shared values and inspired with new sources for intelligence, imagination, intuition, and dreaming—that are able to create a new future out of our current experiences of breakdown, crisis, and destruction.

A Model of Wholeness for Human Beings

The human being is a most miraculous creation of nature. Every individual is a unique and highly complex system who lives within a relational web with other unique, complex human beings. The human system is vast and diverse, a microcosm within the macrocosm of the universe. Both the individual and his or her groups have the incredible potential for learning, being, and creating, all of which are rarely fully developed. In order to design the future, each human being will therefore need to continue to evolve as a complex, whole, and integrated Self as well as member of multiple communities.

The human experience operates at multiple levels, all of which originate with the Self (see Exhibit 6). One useful conception is the “mind-body-soul” connection that incorporates multiple elements of wholeness. A whole person has personal and professional lives that interconnect, and mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual spheres that influence and interact with each other. Thoughts and feelings affect one’s physical well-being, which, in turn, impacts one’s thought process. One’s spiritual well-being brings a sense of purpose and meaning in life, including morals, ethics, beliefs, and faith, and sets the overall context for mental, emotional, and physical well-being. The power of heart intelligence integrates with, and balances, the intelligence of the rational mind, empowering resilience and well-being, and serving to heal stress, bias, and emotional patterning stored in the nervous system.⁸

Although mind, body, and soul do not operate alone, it’s useful to look at their foundational roles and contributions to the human experience. The mind is the home of knowledge, wisdom, consciousness, and choice. It is the home of rational intelligence and the intellect as well as cognitive and meta-cognitive capabilities. From here, understanding, imagination, and free will is born. Within the heart lies feelings and emotions, heart qualities and values, and the foundation for heart intelligence.⁹ Here, emotions and values interplay. By activating positive, regenerative emotions such as care, compassion, calm, respect, dignity, joy, and love, one can bring coherence to one’s neurological system and being. By activating heart intelligence, one can access one’s higher brain functions as well as higher self and wisdom. One is also capable of creating true connection and relationships with other people. The body is the home of the physical aspects of life: the beating of the heart; the circulation of the blood; the five senses; and sensuous aspects of love. The body holds the person’s physical characteristics and attributes as well as embodied mind, competencies, and emotions. Within the body, one feels from the gut and experiences the range of toxic to energising moods.

There are many overlaps in this inner system. Intuition arises within the heart and body. Entrepreneurship incorporates the mind and heart. Purpose is borne within the mind, heart, and spirit. Wisdom encompasses and integrates all the contributions of the heart, mind, body, and soul.

The Self incorporates the whole being in the statement, “I am.” Bigger than Descartes credo (“I think, therefore, I am”), the Self integrates the inner context of self with external reality. This holistic being manifests in everything from one’s unique fingerprint and personal presence to one’s presence within the dynamic, transforming community of other Selves. The Self also mirrors, embeds, and is embedded in the Higher Self, placed at the transcendence level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—the very highest and most inclusive or holistic level of human consciousness.

It is out of this system of the Inner Context of the Self that meaning is made. Every aspect of the Self (mind, body, spirit) seeks meaning, yearns for expression, and longs for purpose. Human beings are born for meaningfulness that is embedded in our cells, breath, and spirit.

We can thus extrapolate important conclusions:

• Life is a permanent quest for meaning and meaningfulness.
• Meaning is contextual, born in, and affected by, the interplay of internal and external contexts.
• Meaning can bring us closer to transcendence.
• People hunger for transcendence.
• We can experience meaning on many different levels within the maze of life: individuals, group, team, community, society and even humanity.
• Life offers a networked, complex maze of diverse and purpose-filled, meaningful relationships.
• Our quest for meaningfulness results in purpose, contribution, and the legacy that we leave to our children and our children’s children.

The Path(s) to Meaning

There are many paths to meaning. One important path is creating value through living one’s values. This practice adds value to one’s life, community, and society. Another path is creating and living one’s dream life (based on one’s core values) using intuition, imagination, and a little bit of fantasy and fiction. The direction can be large and more “esoteric” in nature, such as making the world a better place, educating, or mentoring the next generation. Or it can be more job-specific, such as playing a role in the production of pharmaceutical products, delivery of health services, or the creation of an art form. Meaningfulness is an important indicator of value; values are an important driver of meaningfulness.

Over time, as we move from observing how things are to wondering why things are the way they are, wisdom grows. We discover the difference between having and being. We uncover what really matters. We recover life’s meaning. This shift in values and questions may occur from the natural ageing process. Often, it is the result of a dramatic life change, a crisis, a monumental event that shakes us to the core, splits us open to reveal a hole within, a question never asked, an answer never found, a part of oneself that is yearning to be born. All of a sudden, we become aware of our life, the meaning of our life, the limited time we have yet to be here. We reflect on all the time we have drifted through life, living a life that others have expected. We appreciate the value of the present, the now, the living that occurs in the sacredness of every present moment. We wake up to an inner command: it is time to design one’s own purposeful life.

Summary and Conclusions

By gathering all our insights, imaginings, intuitions, and contextual information into this model, we can begin to chart the middle way for designing a desired future. Multiple iterations of this entire process will serve to expand the possibilities for the future, giving the team the opportunity to collaboratively co-create the future of education, as an example. This co-creative process must take into account the expected and anticipated future (forecast), a wishful and ideal future (utopia), an unexpected and unknown future (black swans), and a feared and undesired future (dystopia).

We know that we stand on the precipice of change. With one foot in the past and another in the present, our eyes scan two horizons: to the west lies the setting sun; to the east, the rising sun. The competing pulls urge us to let go of the pure rule of traditional paradigms, the “Western civilisation” as we have known it, while it beckons us to anticipate the new, to wonder what lies on the other side of the eastern horizon. We sense the possibilities. From contextual analysis, we see the dawn of major breakthroughs in astrophysics, elementary physics, biosciences, and medicine, many supported by advanced technologies. Perhaps the discoveries and innovations made in this era may be as great as those made 100 years ago by Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Rutherford, Hubble, and many others.

Living in today’s transforming world demands great imagination, intuition, courage, and intention. In this present moment, we stand on the precipice of great possibility and great harm, encouraged by the work of hope-filled leaders and our own desire to live meaningful lives and to create a better world. Bubbles of joy, inspiration and love beckon us forward—all of us, every human being—to contribute our dreams and capabilities in the design, co-creation, and innovation of today and tomorrow. To walk the journey, we need the right arrows in our quiver: shared values, a targeted direction, a range of actions, and integrated understanding of the complex context involved in designing the current, emerging, and remote future. As we contemplate the future and the impact of the disruptive forces surrounding us, we know we must seek positive energy and hope over lack of control, fear of change, and the unknown in order to move forward.

Though it is unseen and unknown, the future is and can be born in our imagination. As students, learners, leaders, and human beings, we have the ability to leverage the poignant possibilities and achievements of the Cyber-Age to newly imagine society and economy. The emerging world view and awakening values will guide us in walking through the messiness of change we are living through today: high volatility, increasing uncertainty, growing complexity, and heightened stress and ambiguity. The creative process requires stepping directly into the creative void, experiencing the breakdown in order to achieve breakthrough, and allowing the future to speak to us, to pull us forward to what is yearning for creation.

The proposed Future Design Framework can be applied to designing the many dimensions of the future that lie before us: humanity, society, and planetary survival; business, organisations, teams, and leadership; global, regional, and local issues; social, economic, and cultural challenges; a single life, a family, or nation; or even the future of change itself. Over time and space, the role of information, knowledge, and facts will be replaced by the fruitful outcomes of intuition, imagination, and dreaming. Our ability to handle complexity will improve; our fear about the future will decrease. Our capacity for future design will improve, the more we practise it ourselves and with others. As human beings living in human societies, we have the great capacity to learn, creatively destruct, and transform—standing tall while walking the middle way to our shared future that is born of imagination rather than destiny.

About the Authors

Dr. Kristine Marin Kawamura is currently a Clinical Full Professor of Management at the Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate University (California, USA). She is also the CEO and founder of Yoomi Consulting Group, Inc., a leadership success and organisational transformation company. Her research, as well as her overall purpose, is focused on transforming leadership, organisations, societies, and individual lives with Care—a core resource for creating extraordinary connection, authenticity, resilience, and engagement in organisations and unlocking new levels of human, technological, and societal impact. www.cgu.edu/people/kristine-kawamura/ or https://yoomiconsulting.com

Dr. Mario Raich is a Swiss futurist, book author, and global management consultant. He has been a senior executive in several global financial organisations and an invited professor to leading business schools, including ESADE (Barcelona). He is the co-founder and Chairman of e-Merit Academy and Executive Director at”Raich Futures Studies” in Zurich. In addition, he is a member of the advisory board of the Global Future of Work Foundation in Barcelona. Currently, he is researching the impact of cyber-reality and artificial intelligence on society, education, business, and work.

Dr. Simon L. Dolan is currently a senior professor and researcher at Advantere School of Management (Madrid) and the President of the Global Future of Work Foundation. He was formerly the Future of Work Chair at ESADE Business School in Barcelona. He taught in many North American business schools, such as Montreal, McGill, Boston, and Colorado. He is a prolific author, with over 80 books on themes connected to managing people, culture reengineering, values, coaching, and stress and resilience enhancement. He has also published over 150 papers in scientific journals. He is an internationally sought speaker. His full CV is at: www.simondolan.com

Dr. Dave Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor at Ross School of Business, the University of Michigan, and Partner at the RBL Group (www.rbl.net), a consulting firm focused on helping organisations and leaders deliver value. He studies how organisations build capabilities of leadership, speed, learning, accountability, and talent through leveraging human resources. He has written over 30 books and 200 articles on talent, leadership, organisations, and human resources.

Claudio Cisullo is a Swiss entrepreneur. During his entrepreneurial career, he founded and established over 26 companies in different business segments globally. He is a Board member of several internationally renowned companies. He is the founder and owner of the family office, CC Trust Group AG, and also the founder and Executive Chairman of Chain IQ Group AG with headquarters in Zurich. Chain IQ is an independent, global service and consulting company.

References

1. See Source: Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An Overview of the Schwartz Theory of Basic Values. Online readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116, p. 9.
2. An interesting innovative methodology to assess dominant values has recently been designed and offered by Simon L. Dolan (co-author of this chapter); see: www.learningaboutvalues.com. Furthermore, there is a recent innovative online app enabling the assessment / audit of the ethical conduct of members of any organisation (see www.myDOVA.com).
3. See https://www.nhhfa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Conference_Handout_Martin_2019.pdf and Strauss & Howe (1991) Generations. Morrow & Co: New York.
4. See the work of Kristine Marin Kawamura, co-author of this article, for research on the power of heart intelligence to transform biases and integrate multiple intelligence and knowledge sources. http://www.yoomiconsulting.com/
5. Ibid.
6. For guidance, Melissa Allen describes simple ways to develop imagination. https://www.ideatovalue.com/crea/melissaalles/2016/04/10-surprising-ways-develop-imagination/
7. See the work of Riane Eisler: https://centerforpartnership.org/resources/riane-eisler/
8. See the work of Kristine Marin Kawamura, co-author of this article, for research and services related to the development of heart-centered leadership capabilities, regenerative emotions, and heart intelligence. http://www.yoomiconsulting.com/
9. Ibid.