In a world of rapid disruption, artificial intelligence acceleration, and unprecedented complexity, today’s leaders face challenges that no previous generation has encountered. Leading in this environment means developing a new playbook – one built on adaptability, clarity, and a deep understanding of how systems behave under stress. As Robert Greene shares, “The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.”
Today’s leaders, more than ever, need to spend more time and effort gaining a greater environment and/or context awareness, especially in today’s exponentially shifting world and for the impact and challenges those shifts are having on our individuals, teams, organizations, and systems.
Especially as the escalating VUCAness (volatility – rapid or sudden and unpredictable change(s); uncertainty – lack of clarity or a sense of predictability towards the future; complexity – situations with multiple interconnected factors making it difficult to understand cause and effect relationships or predict outcomes; ambiguity – multiplicity of possible interpretations or meanings making it difficult to interpret events, predict outcomes, or make effective decisions) of our organizational environments can be overwhelming to say the least, unleashing heightened feelings of anxiety, worry, stress, frustration, fear, mental fatigue, loss of control, and fear of failure, that can emerge as the rate and pace of change accelerate, and more often than not in unforeseen or unexpected ways.
It is within these environments, that leaders are expected to make quick and timely decisions for their organizations, often based on limited data or information. Decisions regarding complex and adaptive challenges that have never been faced previously, under shifting circumstances and dynamic context, requiring leaders and the organization to be more agile, adaptive and flexible than ever experienced previously.
All of which necessitates leaders and organizations to gather information quicker, create better understandings and clarity, and develop decision processes that allow leaders and the organization to accelerate decision-making processes while navigating unforeseen or ambiguous situations and challenges. Engaging agility and adaptability as a skillset allows leaders and the organization to adjust and pivot from the current path, if needed, as new information and data become available. While improved communication and collaboration processes will minimize misunderstandings, thereby diminishing false or conflicting interpretations or narratives that often arise when there is a lack of clarity across the organization.
While not in any sense new, but since the importance of students acquiring “durable” skills has risen to the headlines recently, we can approach leadership in VUCA environments from that same lens. As it is just as vital that our leaders are investing in acquiring many of these same skills and skillsets. A few of these “durable” or “future” skills are provided below as examples of how to better equip our leaders to thrive and lead in VUCA environments. These durable capacities and competencies allow leaders to better navigate the dynamic, fluctuating and fluid context(s) that they now find themselves thrust into.
Building these skills across the organization creates value, as well as capacity, to better serve individuals and the organization as the digital disruption ramps up through automation and artificial intelligence. Providing people with skills that serve to augment rather than focus on replacing people or positions.
Since there is no secret to what many term as these “durable” or “future” skills, let’s take a look at a few that can better support leaders in navigating the challenges associated with VUCA environments as they lead their organizations into this non-obvious future:
Adaptability, Agility, Flexibility: In today’s constantly changing VUCA environments, the cognitive ability to remain agile, to adapt, and be flexible is paramount to thriving. To quickly learn new skills and adapt to change allows leaders and organizations to manage the adaptive challenges that they are coming face to face with, which is crucial to navigating the plethora of ongoing course adjustments that will need to be made. Openness to learning and experiences will also allow leaders to course adjust and pivot as new data and information challenges the current direction (a skill that many leaders struggle to engage, many maintain the course even when it is heading over a cliff). But not just in data and information, but as technology shifts the landscape, being agile in our learning is a key to retaining relevance.
Communication and Transparency: When clarity is lacking, confusion thrives. When information is lacking or missing, people will create their own narratives, their own stories, and come to their own conclusions. None of which is helpful or positive for a leader or the organization. Leaders must be honest about what they know, and what they don’t know. When leaders share what is known, what is uncertain or unknown, and the “why” or rationale behind decisions, it can lessen the stress associated with VUCA. As well as communicating that decisions are subject to change as the context and environment shift, and or new data or information becomes available. All of which communicates a sense of clarity across the organization. All of which is supported when leaders are active listeners and not just tellers, when they foster opportunities for open and productive dialogue, and find opportunities to accept and embrace feedback. While building relationships and encouraging collaboration across the organization, all of which leads to not only greater individual and organizational clarity, but builds a sense of resilience into the entire system.
Vision and Foresight: Never forget, the future is not a fixed point – it’s a range of possibilities. The future is never singular, it is plural. There is no “one future” we are all marching towards, rather there are a plethora of futures that are emerging. When leaders remain aware of this emergence, of weak or strong signals on the horizon, it creates a great openness towards the future. When leaders engage the organization in future scenarios, it helps the organization to become more aware and open to what is emerging. It prepares the organization to be flexible and adaptive to that emergence, be it expected, unexpected, subtle, or disruptive. While the process of scenario building doesn’t predict a future, it does allow the organizational community to consider the future from a new and different lens, better preparing the community for whatever may come, considered or not considered. From these scenario processes, a vision(s) for a more preferable future can be considered and constructed. Which provides the organization the clarity of a north star to move towards, while allowing them to adapt as circumstances and the current context demands. That sense of clarity in the midst of VUCA cannot be underestimated, as it becomes a beacon in the fog.
Systems Thinking and Managing Complexity: We live in an interconnected world and understanding that interconnectedness on a variety of levels is a growing competency for today’s leaders. Leaders can’t combat complex and adaptive challenges with linear approaches that were designed to eliminate complicated or technical problems. Complexity can’t be tackled through linear thinking, especially when leaders need to understand the interconnected and complex nature of their teams, tools, resources, strategies, and environments. Technical approaches, in the midst of complexity, most often leads to frustration and dysfunction, and bigger problems. Remember, most complex, adaptive challenges aren’t solved, as much as they are managed. Systems thinking is a process that supports leaders in dealing with growing levels of complexity, helping them see the big picture, moving from a parts-to-whole or holistic approach, using anticipation as a process for preparing for unintended disruptions or consequences, understanding how systems react and behave, and seeing the importance of engaging multiple stakeholders and voices in these problem-engaging/solving processes to improve decision making. Which also includes identifying root causes and underlying causes, not just attending to symptoms, and utilizing these stakeholder interactions to spark new ways of thinking, acting, and innovative approaches to some of the most intractable challenges that we face as leaders and organizations.
The previous are a few of the “durable” or “future” skills that will support today’s leaders towards becoming or being more effective in the midst of these VUCA environments. Engaging a growth and future aware mindset, seeing learnability as a needed skillset to keep pace with the acceleration of change, and as a lens towards continuous growth will remain paramount to helping individuals and the organization stay aware, be more resilient, and thrive in the current “chaotic” context.
However, we can see these emerging signals only in the terms of risk, challenge and disruption. It is also in realizing that these same signals also uncover new opportunities in which leaders and organizations can learn to grow, innovate, and thrive will add tremendous value for the future. Finding these opportunities, removing fears of failure, can allow curiosity, imagination, creativity, and innovation to flourish in the midst of VUCA. All of which makes an organization more resilient in how it approaches the future.
And the more we empower those we lead with the capacity and competencies to anticipate and approach the future in a more effective and positive manner, the more effective we will be as individuals, as leaders, organizations, institutions, and systems.
The future won’t wait. Leaders who invest in building up these durable or future skills – and in empowering those they lead to do the same – won’t just survive the volatility ahead. They’ll shape it.
In a time marked by rapid change, ambiguity, and accelerating complexity, the most effective leaders and organizations are not simply reacting to change – they are preparing for it. In fact, they are creating processes that allow them and the organization to reimagine the future as a strategic asset, rather than a looming uncertainty. With that mindset in hand, one powerful and underutilized strategy in supporting this reimagining of the future, is in the development of future memories: which could be considered as vividly imagined, critically constructed scenarios of potential futures that serve as anticipatory knowledge for the organizational community. Far from being fanciful or speculative, future memories function as cognitive tools for enhancing foresight, decision-making, and organizational adaptability.
Unlike recollections of the past, future memories serve as mental simulations of plausible future experiences. Future memories involve using imagination intentionally – not for fantasy, but as a disciplined and rigorous tool to forecast, prototype, and navigate multiple of potential realities. Leaders must remember, that in the exponentially shifting context of our current circumstances, imagination must begin to serve the organization as a strategic tool in preparing more effectively for a very non-obvious future.
In other words, this concept repositions imagination from a peripheral or just novel mental activity, to a central position in the strategic thinking process. Educational futurists and cognitive researchers alike recognize that the brain engages similar neural mechanisms when remembering the past and envisioning the future. Which is a very important point, especially when trying to imagine very different futures from the present and the past. This neural overlap does, however, allow us to use past knowledge to simulate and test future possibilities – or what we might call “(p)re-membering.”
By embracing this strategy of future memories, (educational) leaders move from the reactive to a more proactive stance towards navigating complexity. Rather than viewing the future as an unknowable mystery, treating it as something we can simulate through scenarios and imaginative processes, enables leaders to develop pathways through uncertainty, that better prepare the organization and the organizational community from future shocks and disruptions. This idea of scenario-building grounded in future memories supports a deeper understanding of: emerging trends, disruptive forces, and societal, technological, and pedagogical shifts.
Along with proactively navigating complexity, future memories processes enhances strategic planning and decision-making for leaders, and across the organizational landscape, as it builds deeper awareness of possible futures that may emerge. By crafting narratives of different futures – plausible, possible, preferable, or desirable, disruptive, and dystopian – leaders can stress-test strategies, identify weak points or challenges in existing plans, and create more robust roadmaps for the future, as well as expanding current mental models that exist in the organization. Decisions are no longer a process made in a vacuum, but against a backdrop of imagined context and consequence. So, not only using future memories to improve decisions in the present, but inviting in a process that gives individuals, the organization, and the organizational community better and deeper understandings towards the decisions that have been and are being made.
Future memories processes increase awareness and make us more perceptive to both the strong and weak signals that are emerging on the horizon. As historian, Roberta Wohlstetter shares from the book Rethinking Strategy, “It is much easier after the event to sort the relevant from the irrelevant signals. After the event, of course, a signal is always crystal clear; we can now see what disaster it was signaling, since the disaster has occurred. But before the event it is obscure and pregnant with conflicting meanings. It comes to the observer embedded in an atmosphere of noise, in the company of all sorts of information that is useless and irrelevant for predicting the particular disaster.” And her classic insight still applies even more so today: it is only in hindsight that signals become clear.
Future memories allow leaders to become more sensitive to early signs of change by aligning perception with previously envisioned futures. When a future has been mentally rehearsed, signals that might otherwise be ignored suddenly gain significance. Something that futurists have shown to be true over time, as those rehearsals lessen the shock of unforeseen disruptions, even when the disruptions are not congruent to the current disruption. Rather, it is the matter of those rehearsals and scenarios, and playing in the future, that lessens the stress and shock of those disruptions.
For organizations, this suggests the need for diverse and expansive mental models of the future – to lessen the risk of missing crucial developments and signals as they emerge, especially in the midst of volatile or chaotic change.
Future memories aren’t just some form of creative exercises, they are a form of anticipatory knowledge. Or as Riel Miller reminds us, the power of and importance of anticipation is that it allows imagination to bring the future into the present and is a key to shaping our realities. However, for these memories to have epistemic value for leaders and the organization, these imagined futures must be: coherent, contextually plausible, and grounded in emerging data and trends (reminding us of how imagination, when utilized effectively, is a rigorous and strategic process). When developed critically, these memories support the organization in navigating the liminal space between evidence and possibility – a practice that fosters both insight and innovation.
Educational institutions and organizations can begin to build up and embed these future memory processes into their systems through the use of foresight exercises, such as:
Scenario Planning: which can include identifying key uncertainties and driving forces in your system, creating a set of divergent, plausible futures, and analyzing strategic implications and response strategies for each of those scenarios.
Backcasting and Pathway Mapping: start with a preferred future and map the steps backwards to the present, identify leverage points, policy changes, and innovations required to get there.
Signal Scanning and Interpretation: train individuals and leaders in the organization to detect early signs of change – technological, social, political, build systems to interpret weak and strong signals in the context of future scenarios, embed scanning into team culture, data systems, strategic exercises, and leadership processes.
Imaginative Simulation and Immersive Futures: use storytelling, immersive learning environments, or simulations to help the organization “experience” future contexts, as this not only builds empathy but increases psychological distance, allowing for more strategic decision-making.
Remember, developing sensitivity, perception and awareness to change and signals of change is both a leadership capacity and an organizational competency. Leaders must be able to distinguish between disengagement and indifference for the future, contextualize weak signals with imagined futures, and create space for divergent thinking and metacognitive reflection. By doing so, leaders become sensors of the future – able to connect the dots between the present and the potential, the plausible and the possible, and guide their organizations and organizational community accordingly.
The future does not arrive fully formed and there is no crystal ball that allows us to predict what the future holds. Rather, it emerges through a mixture of signals, context, decisions, and imagination. (Educational) leaders must recognize that what we imagine powerfully shapes what we perceive – and ultimately, what we become prepared for, both as individuals and as an organization.
By crafting future memories, organizations gain more than just speculative insight – the organization acquires a strategic compass, and epistemic toolset, and a cultural practice that empowers both individuals and the organization to shape, rather than merely accept and survive the future as it arrives.
“We will not perceive a signal from the outside world unless it is relevant to an option for the future that we have already worked out in our imaginations.” -Arie de Gues
“The world’s most important and transformative technology will be Ai. It is going to be everything. It’s going to change every industry, every country, every company. Ai is going to be the most powerful tool that mankind has ever invented… And we’re just at the beginning of this journey.”-via Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia
The rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence (Ai) is reshaping and transforming a myriad of different sectors, with education poised to undergo one of its most profound shifts. Meaning that education is no exception and will not be spared the disruptive possibilities accompanying this advancing technology. While Ai’s potential to revolutionize industries is increasingly recognized, its integration into education—particularly the advent of agentic Ai—poses unique challenges and opportunities. Agentic Ai systems, characterized by their ability to make autonomous decisions, adapt to user needs, and engage with humans in increasingly human-like ways, will offer promising innovations for personalized learning, data-driven insights, and educational efficiency. However, it also introduces a range of complexities that educational leaders, policymakers, and educators have to address. The key to navigating this transformation lies not only in understanding the technology itself, but in adopting a proactive stance toward its integration. Central to this preparedness is the concept and practice of foresight—to better anticipate and shape the future of education and learning in response to these emerging technological advancements.
Moving into the forefront of these Ai advancements is agentic Ai, which refers to Ai systems that are capable of independent action, decision-making, and interacting with individuals in ways that mimic human agency. Unlike traditional Ai, which responds to specific inputs or follows pre-programmed instructions, agentic Ai learns from interactions, adapts to user preferences, and evolves based on data. This opens up a new realm of possibilities for education, offering the potential to personalize learning, support diverse student needs, and enhance teacher effectiveness. As Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia adds, “The dream of Ai is not just about machine intelligence but also about giving these machines the ability to perform actions in the world… that’s going to open up new possibilities.”
For instance, agentic Ai systems could assess a student’s progress, identify learning gaps, and tailor content to suit their individual pace and style. Moreover, Ai could help automate administrative tasks, giving educators more time to focus on learning, teaching and student engagement. However, while these advancements hold great promise, they also bring with them a host of challenges for educators, educational leaders, schools, districts, communities, and policymakers, ranging from ethical considerations to the social implications of widespread Ai use in the classroom.
The first step in leveraging Ai’s potential in education is creating greater awareness across our educational systems, from the classroom to the boardroom. Educational leaders, policymakers, and educators must deepen their understanding not only of the capabilities of Ai, but also the profound implications it may have on teaching practices, student outcomes, and the broader educational ecosystem. As Ai continues to evolve, it is essential for educators to recognize its potential to transform classrooms, while also acknowledging the disruptions it may cause. These disruptions may manifest themselves in systems integration, new pedagogical approaches, and the introduction of new ethical dilemmas, such as data privacy and Ai bias.
To successfully integrate Ai into education, a proactive approach is necessary. This approach includes understanding the technology itself and anticipating its impact on educational systems. Rather than waiting to react as Ai unfolds, educational leaders must take intentional steps to shape its role in the classroom and across the system. This shift from a reactive to a proactive stance is crucial, as it allows stakeholders to guide the direction of Ai’s integration while addressing its potential challenges head-on. As Thomas Friedman shares, “In the future, being able to work alongside machines, especially Ai, will be a critical skill. We need to prepare our students not just for jobs, but for lifelong learning in an Ai-enabled world.”
While not as prevalent in the educator and educational leadership vernacular, one of the most valuable tools for creating insights into navigating the complexities of Ai in education will be found in the practice of foresight. Foresight is the process of anticipating future trends, technological developments, and societal shifts, and preparing for them strategically. In the context of Ai, foresight involves identifying early signals (weak and strong) of change, understanding the risks and opportunities posed by emerging technologies, and planning for the integration of Ai in ways that are both ethical and effective.
For educators and policymakers, foresight allows for delving into a deeper understanding of the potential impact of Ai on various aspects of education and learning in the future. By examining the broader cultural, social, and pedagogical implications of Ai, foresight enables decision-makers to shape policy that not only supports the effective use of Ai but also safeguards against its potential negative consequences. This proactive approach is essential for ensuring that Ai enhances rather than detracts from the educational experience.
Foresight also plays a key role in utilizing scenario planning to better prepare for a variety of futures. By considering multiple future scenarios—ranging from the widespread adoption of Ai tools to the potential risks associated with their misuse—educators and policymakers can develop strategies that are flexible and adaptive in their integration approach. This foresight-driven approach equips educators, educational leaders, and policy makers with the tools they need to navigate an Ai-driven future, ensuring that educational systems are better prepared for a variety of possible outcomes. Or as Sal Khan shares, “The future of education is personalized, driven by technology. But it’s not about replacing teachers, it’s about enabling them to be more effective and help students reach their potential.”
As AI continues to permeate the educational environment, it will bring with it a host of ethical, social, and pedagogical challenges. Educators will need to grapple with questions of data privacy, algorithmic bias, and the potential for Ai to reinforce existing inequalities. Moreover, there is the concern that Ai could undermine the core human elements of teaching, such as empathy, creativity, and relationship-building. As Ginni Rometty, former CEO of IBM adds, “The biggest challenge with Ai isn’t the technology, it’s understanding the implications and making sure we put it to good use.”
Foresight can help educators anticipate these challenges and develop practices, strategies, and frameworks for addressing them. For example, by considering the ethical implications of Ai early on, educational leaders can implement policies that prioritize transparency, accountability, and fairness in Ai systems, as well in policy. Foresight also enables educators to think critically about how Ai might alter teaching methods and student-teacher interactions, ensuring that the human aspects of education are preserved even as technology begins to play a greater role in education.
Furthermore, foresight encourages educators to stay informed about emerging trends in Ai and technology, ensuring that they are not caught off guard by new developments. This ongoing awareness will be crucial in maintaining a balance between technological innovation and the values that underpin education, such as equity, inclusivity, and student well-being.
The arrival of agentic AI (one of those emerging technological trends in Ai) in education presents both challenges and opportunities. However, through foresight, educational leaders can shape the future of education in a way that maximizes the benefits of Ai while addressing its potential risks. By anticipating technological shifts, understanding the implications of Ai, and planning for its integration, educators, educational leaders and policymakers can ensure that Ai serves as a positive force in education. As author and computer scientist Jaron Lanier shares,“We are at a crossroads where Ai could be a tool for empowerment, but it could also turn into something we don’t control…”
Rather than reacting to AI’s arrival as it unfolds, foresight empowers the education sector to proactively guide its integration. This means shaping policies that support ethical AI use, designing curricula that incorporate AI-driven tools effectively, and providing professional development opportunities for educators to navigate this new and emerging technological landscape. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that AI enhances educational experiences for all students, enabling them to learn and grow in a rapidly changing world while preserving the human qualities that are fundamental to education.
Which aligns well in supporting California’s recently signed bill (AB 2876), which is aimed at integrating Artificial Intelligence (Ai) into the K-12 and higher education systems (tools, technology, and curriculum). The bill is part of an effort to prepare students for the future of work, where Ai is expected to play a major role. Here are some of the key points of this California bill:
1. Ai Education in K-12 Curriculum: the bill mandates that Ai literacy be integrated into the state’s K-12 education curriculum, which includes ensuring students are taught fundamental concepts about Ai, its applications, and its ethical implications.
2. Ai Curriculum Development: the bill encourages the development and implementation of Ai-focused curricula to teach students the basics of Ai, its ethical implications, and its potential on various industries as it aims to prepare students for a future where Ai plays a significant role in the workforce.
3. Teacher Training and Resources: the bill emphasizes the need to train educators on how to teach Ai concepts effectively and integrate Ai into their teaching methods, which includes providing teachers with resources, workshops, and ongoing professional development.
4. Ethical and Responsible Ai Use: the bill includes provisions to ensure that Ai is used ethically in education, particularly in terms of data privacy, security, and avoiding bias in Ai algorithms, and encourages students to consider the societal impacts of Ai technology.
5. Equity and Accessibility: the bill stresses the importance of ensuring equitable access to Ai resources for all students, regardless of socioeconomic status or geographic location, including addressing disparities in technology access and providing funding to under-resourced schools.
6. Preparation for the Workforce: the long-term goal is to prepare students for careers in Ai and technology fields, which includes both technical jobs, as well as non-technical jobs where Ai tools are used in industries such as healthcare, business, law, and the arts.
7: Student Access to Ai Tools: the bill emphasizes making Ai tools accessible for hands-on learning, which could involve using Ai-powered software, creating opportunities for project-based learning, and exposing students to Ai technologies they may encounter in real-world careers.
8.Pilot Programs and Innovation: in addition to the broad curriculum changes, the bill supports the development of pilot programs in schools to experiment with innovative Ai teaching methods, which can provide a testing ground curriculum improvements and educational technologies.
The overall intention behind the bill is to give students in California a strong foundation in AI, not just from a technical standpoint, but also in terms of ethical understanding and the impact of AI on society. This aligns with the state’s broader efforts to stay at the forefront of technological innovations while ensuring that its residents are equipped with the skills needed for an AI-driven future. As Assemblymember Marc Berman adds in a news release, “AI has the potential to positively impact the way we live, but only if we know how to use it, and use it responsibly. Children and young people today must navigate a world — and job market — transformed by fast-moving AI technology. We have a responsibility to ensure that all students, no matter their future profession, understand basic AI principles and applications, that they have the skills to recognize when AI is employed, and are aware of AI’s implications, limitations, and ethical considerations. This new law will equip all California students with the skills and training they need to be safe, ethical, and successful users of AI as it becomes more mainstream.”
And as Fei-Fei Li, Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Ai adds,“We need to teach the next generation of students not just how to use technology, but how to understand it, how to think critically about it, and how to use it to enhance human flourishing.”
In many ways, the key points of this California bill (AB 2876) aligns with how we can begin to proactively prepare educators and educational leaders for the coming impact of an Ai subfield, such as agentic Ai. Beginning with considering some of the following:
1. Building Ai Literacy: to prepare for the possible coming era of agentic Ai, educators must first build a basic understanding of Ai technologies. This includes not only understanding how Ai works, but also grasping its potential ethical, social, and pedagogical implications. Professional learning and development programs should focus on Ai literacy, empowering teachers to integrate Ai tools effectively, and assess their impact on the classroom. This will also include educators needing to understand the ethical challenges Ai introduces, including issues around data privacy, algorithmic bias, and the potential for technology to disrupt traditional educational models.
2. Integrating Ai into Pedagogy: Ai should be seen as a tool that complements, rather than replaces, traditional pedagogical practices. Educators can use Ai-driven tools to personalize instruction while maintaining their role as facilitators and guides to enhance learning. So, while an intelligent tutoring system might help students master a particular skill, the educator’s role could shift to fostering higher-order thinking and encouraging creativity. To support teachers in integrating Ai into their teaching, professional learning and development programs could provide opportunities for experimentation and hands-on experience with Ai tools. Collaboration between educators and Ai developers will be essential to ensure that these tools align with educational values and meet the specific needs of students and teachers. Which has not always been the case with integration of technology.
3. Advocating for Ethical Ai Implementation: As Ai becomes more integrated into education, educators must advocate for ethical practices in its implementation. This involves ensuring that Ai systems are designed with fairness, transparency, and equity in mind. Teachers should have opportunity to be involved in the decision-making processes surrounding Ai adoption, helping to ensure that Ai tools align with the educational values of equity, inclusivity, and student well-being.
4. Supporting Lifelong Learning: Given the accelerated pace of Ai development, educators will need to embrace lifelong learning to stay current with technological advancements. Continuous professional learning and development focused on Ai, data science, and educational technology will be crucial for teachers to remain effective in their roles. As with educators, lifelong learning will also be essential for students, as they must be prepared to thrive in a world increasingly influenced and enabled by Ai.
As Reid Hoffman, Co-founder of LinkedIn reminds, “The challenge with Ai integration is not just about scaling technology – it’s about making sure the structures we have in place can keep up with the pace of innovation and handle the disruptions that will come.”
The emergence of agentic Ai offers significant opportunities to enhance personalized learning, increase operational efficiency, and support educators in their efforts to meet the diverse needs of students. However, its integration into education also presents important ethical and pedagogical challenges, particularly in terms of bias, over-reliance on technology, and changing teacher-student dynamics. Chris Anderson, Head of TED reminds us that, “The biggest challenge with Ai is figuring out the right balance between enabling it to do great things and ensuring it doesn’t go off the rails. We must consider the ethical, social, and psychological impacts.”
To prepare for the coming era of agentic Ai, educators must prioritize Ai literacy, engage with Ai tools thoughtfully, embrace new pedagogical approaches, and advocate for the ethical use and integration of Ai in education. By doing so, educators can harness the power of Ai to enhance the learning experience while maintaining the human-centered values that have long been the foundation of effective education. As AI continues to evolve, it is essential that educators embrace change, adapt their practices, and remain focused on the ultimate goal: ensuring that students receive an education that is equitable, engaging, and empowering, in the face of an increasingly AI-driven world.
“What we’re seeing is the start of a new era, where Ai is no longer just a tool, but a partner in every sense of the word.” -via Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia
“What’s the point of education if it doesn’t prepare you to adapt to the rapidly changing world.” -Sir Ken Robinson
The future of work should be a critical concern, and in many ways, also a unique responsibility, especially for educators and educational leaders (as well as students, families, communities, etc.), because the rapid pace of technological, social, and economic changes will directly impact how students experience their careers and lives. As society and the world rapidly (and sometimes turbulently) changes, it’s essential that young people have opportunity to develop the skills, mindsets, and adaptability required to thrive in an uncertain and dynamic job market, which makes the future of work both a challenge and an opportunity for schools, districts, and the educational system. By focusing on adaptable skills, fostering lifelong learning, addressing equity gaps, and encouraging ethical and entrepreneurial thinking, the educational system can ensure that students are not just ready for the future of work, but are equipped to shape it in a way that benefits individuals, industries, and society.
One of the most important things that the educational system needs to understand about the future of work is that the pace of change is accelerating, and as a result, the nature of work itself is rapidly evolving.
This means that the skills, knowledge, and mindsets that students need to thrive in the workforce are constantly shifting, as well. What we are seeing is that the future of work will be shaped by rapid technological advancements, requiring students to be adaptable, tech-savvy, and equipped with both technical and just as importantly, soft (human) skills. The educational system really must begin to prepare students for careers that may not yet exist (a mantra we’ve heard for years, but is quickly evolving into a dynamic reality), while ensuring they can work alongside automation, Ai, and other technology and technological tools in a flexible, ethical, and responsible way. So, not only must the educational system prepare students for the specific careers that exist today (as well as those that don’t yet exist), it must also begin to equip them with the adaptability, lifelong learning habits, and the ability to navigate a world of rapid and continuous change.
This becomes especially important, as we witness the world of work transforming under such dynamic shifts as automation, artificial intelligence, skills obsolescence, and even gig and remote work. From these shifts we see that some jobs are disappearing, while other and new ones are appearing, and the same goes for skills, skillsets, capacities, and competencies. And it is not just that change is accelerating, it is that change remains constant companion alongside that acceleration. Meaning that the future we are preparing for, may look drastically different from the one we are inhabiting today – remind us that nothing stays static for very long, and the ability to learn and evolve will be mandatory in this non-obvious future we are facing and moving towards.
And feigning certainty in the face of uncertainty will not take us where we need to go…
Rather, we are going to need to ask questions, deeper and more difficult questions than we’ve asked in the past. If we really want to change, to take on the heavy lift of real transformation, we are going to need to ask questions that we are currently not asking of ourselves and of our organizations. We are going to have to deeply determine what questions we need to be asking, that we currently have not even considered or are not yet asking. Whether we are ready to tackle them or not…
Be assured, this is not just about reimagining (a term that has risen in significance in organizations, and thereby become somewhat meaningless along the way), but incorporating imagination and foresight as strategic resources to drive the process of transformation forward. In the same way we have had to come to grips with soft (human) skills being as or even more important than the hard skills, we will have to see how imagination and foresight need to be incorporated and engaged, both as individual and organizational skillsets moving forward, if we are to better prepare our youth for very non-obvious future.
Imagination is increasingly being recognized as a key driver of innovation, creativity, and strategic thinking (which in most organizations, would have been unheard of ten years ago). As the world changes rapidly, the ability to envision new possibilities and think outside of the core and beyond the status quo has become an essential resource for leaders, entrepreneurs, and individuals, as well as teams and organizations. As Albert Einstein previously shared, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.” Or as John Maeda adds, “Imagination allows us to perceive reality in new ways and unlocks the potential to solve problems that once seemed insurmountable.” For what seemed insignificant (imagination) in organizations not too far back, we are quickly watching it become a crucial asset to the creative, innovative, and strategic processes that lead to new possibilities for the future.
By incorporating imagination as a strategic resource into educational planning, educators and educational leaders can unlock the vast potential for creativity, innovation, problem-solving, adaptability, and forward-thinking practices in decision-making, curriculum design, and community engagement. Imagination is not just about creativity in the traditional sense; it is about envisioning possibilities, breaking free from established boundaries, and generating new and better solutions to rising adaptive challenges that are being faced.
Imagination allows educators and students to think beyond current limitations and create learning spaces that encourage exploration and experimentation (spaces that are often limited or missing in many educational environments). Imagination allows educational leaders to paint a bold compelling vision of what education can be in the future. It can help shape the long-term vision of a school, district, or educational system, as educators should not only plan for current needs but also imagine future possibilities and how education can evolve in response to societal, technological, and environmental changes.
By imagining a transformed educational system, leaders can identify new opportunities, reimagine learning experiences, and ensure schools are preparing students for an uncertain, evolving world. A future, forward-thinking approach can help schools and districts to anticipate the kinds of environments educators and students will need to thrive in the future, such as flexible, technology-enabled, and collaborative spaces.
The future of education will likely be shaped by these unpredictable forces – so leveraging imagination can help schools and educational systems anticipate and adapt to these changes in meaningful ways. Futures thinking encourages educators and educational leaders to explore how current trends and emerging technologies might shape future realities (foresight). By integrating this thinking into the curriculum, educational leaders can ensure students are prepared for challenges and opportunities that may arise. Tools and processes such as scenario planning and storytelling are powerful ways to encourage imaginative thinking to visualize different futures and consider how our decisions and actions of today might then shape these outcomes. All of which foster a greater sense of empathy, critical thinking, and the ability to think through multiple possibilities.
Imagination thrives in diverse, collaborative environments where different perspectives come together to solve problems and is often sparked by exposure to diverse perspectives and thinking. Educational leaders should encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration, which can allow for more expansive and diverse thinking to evolve and emerge, as well as allowing space for people’s creativity to be brought to the problem, from different angles, in working with peers from different backgrounds and disciplines.
Imagination requires the freedom to fail and the courage to explore new ideas (experimentation and discovery learning). It thrives in environments that encourage experimentation, risk-taking, and failure as part of the learning process. Educators and educational leaders can strategically plan for these types of environments, and cultivate a culture where creativity is valued and where everyone feels safe and empowered to explore, make and learn from mistakes, and innovate.
While we don’t often touch on imagination and data in the same space, imagination doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it needs to be informed by data and an understanding of current and emerging trends. Educational leaders should use data to anticipate future trends in the workforce, technology, and society, and then use their imagination to engage in creating proactive solutions to these adaptive challenges.
Whereas, in accompanying imagination, foresight provides processes and ability to anticipate and prepare for future possibilities and challenges. It’s a key quality for strategic thinking, innovation, and leadership; helping individuals, teams and organizations navigate uncertainty and create more sustainable and impactful futures. As it is best to remember that the decisions we make in the present, not only affect the present, but will have deep ramifications and implications for the future. Foresight allows us to peer out into the horizon, looking for those weak and strong signals of what is or may be coming. Horizon scanning that can help us make better decisions in the now, that can lead to a better, or more preferable future. As FEMA shares in their Strategic Foresight Initiative, “Forecasting is the development of plausible and varied future scenarios. It is not predicting, but rather narrating a wide range of potential future conditions. This iterative imagining of potential futures strives to encompass the extensive realm of uncertainty around future change. The key requirement of successful forecasting is imagination. The uncertainty facing emergency management is vast, and an effective tool for preparing for such unknowns is unhindered creativity in imagining the realm of the possible.”
In that way, foresight plays a crucial role for educators as a process for enabling them to anticipate the skills, mindsets, and tools that will be needed in an ever-evolving and non-obvious future. By staying ahead of trends in technology, business, and society, educators can consider those skills and mindsets that will be needed in the future by our students, allowing them to integrate critical thinking, creativity, digital literacy, futures literacy, emotional intelligence, and adaptability into the curriculum and learning.
By using foresight to anticipate and analyze future trends, educators can ensure they are not just teaching students the facts of today but preparing them with the tools and mindsets they will need to adapt and thrive moving forward. Foresight empowers educators to design curriculum that is adaptable, forward-thinking, and closely aligned with the skills and competencies that will be in demand, helping students succeed more positively and effectively in an uncertain and ever-evolving work environment. As Jane McGonigal puts forward, “The more we imagine the future, the more we can create it. And the better prepared we will be to fact it when it arrives.”
In a time when it is essential for educational leaders to create adaptive, forward-thinking, futures literate educational systems, incorporating foresight into those planning processes supports considerations of how to better prepare students for the current uncertainty of the future. Foresight helps educators and educational leaders to better anticipate future trends, assess potential challenges, and leverage emerging opportunities to shape a resilient and relevant educational environment. Especially when it is crucial to move away from reactivity towards determining a much more proactive stance towards the future.
Educators can begin by regularly engaging in strategic scanning of the external environment to identify emerging trends that could possibly or eventually have impact and effect on students and education futures. This could include technological innovations, societal shifts, labor market changes, policy developments and societal/global shifts and events.
But it doesn’t end with horizon scanning, foresight includes creating a culture where innovation is embraced, and adaptability is built into the organizational mindset. Educational leaders should foster an environment that values creative problem-solving, flexibility, and preparing both staff and students for rapid change. Furthermore, every planning process should be underpinned by a long-term vision for education. Educational leaders should align their decisions with the needs of future generations, emphasizing a forward-facing approach that prioritizes adaptability, lifelong learning, and skill development that aligns with the constantly evolving future of work.
However, foresight also requires an external perspective. Educational leaders can continue to build partnerships with industry, business, institutions, and government, to gain insight into future needs and innovations. These collaborations can help bridge the gap between what is taught in schools and the skills that will be needed in the workforce, both today and tomorrow.
Foresight also involves creating different scenarios based on current data and trends. Educational leaders can use data analytics and forecasting tools to create multiple possible future scenarios and plan for various contingencies. This can support schools and districts to better prepare for uncertainty (proactive), whether that involves changing workforce demands, technological disruptions, or shifting societal needs.
Educators and educational leaders should always be working to ensure that the curriculum is constantly evolving to integrate future-ready competencies that will be important in the world of work. This includes skills such as critical thinking, creativity, digital literacy, futures literacy, global citizenship, and emotional intelligence – skills that will help students adapt to future challenges and opportunities.
Finally, including students in the foresight process will be vital and beneficial. By involving students in discussions about their future careers, the challenges they might face, and the skills they’ll need, educators can create an active learning environment that prepares them for the future. By integrating foresight into their planning processes, educational leaders can create more resilient and adaptive educational systems that better prepare students for the challenges and opportunities of the future. By anticipating trends, fostering innovation, collaborating with external partners, and embedding future-ready skills into the curriculum, they can ensure that their schools, districts, students, families, and communities are not only prepared for the future – they can actively shape it. As Jane McGonigal shares, “The most powerful thing we can do to prepare for the future is to engage in activities that help us imagine new possibilities. Whether through games, simulations, or storytelling, creating new futures is how we create new realities.” For which she adds, “By imagining the future in multiple, unexpected ways, we build the mental flexibility we need to thrive in times of rapid change.”
Both imagination and foresight, as we can see, will both be important as tools, abilities, competencies, and mindsets, as we begin to prepare our students, parents, communities, schools, districts, and systems for a future of work that is not as obvious now, as it might have been in the past.
While foresight helps us gaze into the future, it does not attempt to predict the future. So, as we consider the shifts that seem to be having the greatest impact on the future of work, it is with the realization that disruption change could be hiding right around the corner.
But for now, let’s work with the trends and signals, both weak and strong, that seem to be moving at us with the most impact moving forward.
First, and probably foremost, which stands out as being the most significant shift having the greatest effect on the future of work is the rise of automation and artificial intelligence (Ai). This technological transformation (disruption) is reshaping industries, job roles, and the very nature of work itself. Ai and automation are not only automating repetitive and manual tasks, but also enhancing decision-making, creativity, and even interactions. What is even more interesting, is that the effects of this shift are already seen as profound, and we are still only in, what many say are the earliest stages of what is possible. Making us continuously need to consider (scanning the horizon for weak and strong signals) of what may or will be the ramifications of those coming possibilities.
For now, here are some key impacts of Ai and automation on the future of work:
The adoption of Ai and automation represents the most significant and far-reaching shift affecting the future of work. It’s not just altering individual roles but reshaping entire industries, societal norms, and the global economy. While the transition presents challenges – especially related to job displacement and reskilling – it also offers enormous potential for innovation, productivity, and new job creation. As we continue to integrate Ai into work processes, the ability to adapt and leverage these technologies will be key to success in the future of work. Ultimately, we will have to decide how we will let these tools shape us and our future. As Kai-Fu Lee shares, “Automation will not only be a tool for transforming productivity, but it will also shape human potential by enabling people to do work that adds value.”
As educators and educational systems, we can’t ignore the impact that automation and artificial intelligence will have on our students, both now and in the future. Beginning with its impact on job roles and industries, from healthcare to truck drivers, realizing these shifts and trends can help guide students in selecting career paths and educational paths that are more resilient to automation, and for now, Ai. Educating students about emerging fields will also become increasingly important moving forward. As Marc Benioff of Salesforce shares, “We’re not going to have fewer jobs; we’re going to have different jobs. It’s just a matter of whether we’re able to make the transition and reskill ourselves.”
Automation and Ai are demanding that our youth become more adaptable and continuously aware of and updating their skills, skillsets, and competencies, especially as new tools, platforms, and technologies emerge. It all emphasizes and importance for lifelong learning and a mindset of continuous improvement and growth, as well as the ability to work alongside and augment our abilities with these technological skills. Future workers will need to be able to pivot quickly, stay current with trends in their industry, and learn new technologies as they emerge. As Jensen Huang of Nvidia adds, “Ai doesn’t replace humans; it enables humans to do what they do best: solve problems.”
Which necessitates the growing importance of digital literacy, especially as automation and artificial intelligence are deeply intertwined with digital technologies, making digital literacy a foundational skill in the future of work. Whether basic technical skills, understanding how Ai works, the principles of Ai and machine learning, data science, privacy concerns, biases of algorithms, or the ethical implications of Ai, understanding and awareness will all be crucial moving forward. By incorporating digital literacy across all subjects, educators can help students develop a mindset that is both tech-savvy and ethically informed. As educator R.W. Fountain shares, “Digital literacy is no longer optional; it is a necessity for success in the 21st century.”
And the effect of automation and artificial intelligence doesn’t end there, as it will continue to permeate our mindsets and skillsets, from critical thinking and problem solving, to creativity and innovation, emotional intelligence and collaboration, and technical proficiency and entrepreneurial thinking. To successfully prepare students, educators must first develop their own awareness and understanding of automation and artificial intelligence. By understanding the potential impact of these technologies will have on jobs, fostering key mindsets such as adaptability and creativity, and providing students with the technical and emotional skills needed to thrive, educators can ensure that students are not only better prepared for the future, but capable of considering how to shape it. As automation and artificial intelligence continue to evolve, so too must our approaches to learning and education, ensuring that the workforce of tomorrow is equipped to navigate an increasingly complex and automated world.
And while the focus above was on automation and artificial intelligence, because of the dynamic and disruptive impact it is presently evoking across the future of work, there are a variety of other shifts that are also creating their own effect on the future: from remote and hybrid work models, the gig economy and freelance work, including more recent focuses on well-being and mental health, as well as upskilling, reskilling, and lifelong learning. The future is changing in some dynamic and often unforeseen ways, alongside a plethora of shifts that are currently making their mark and creating change across all of society.
We have to start somewhere, and foresight can be a process that provides a greater awareness of, and imagination can serve as a strategic resource for new possibilities towards considering how we engage in the heavy lift of transformation. Both are necessary and needed moving forward, especially as we consider the shifts and possible disruptions that lay on the horizon and beyond. There is a lot of work to be done, and a lot of possibilities to be considered.
But, as Otto Scharmer shares, first, “How do we become aware?”
“In the face of significant uncertainty, imagination is a tool of risk mitigation. Foresight provides a framework to operationalize the asset of our collective creativity.” –FEMA Strategic Foresight Initiative
“A new, design-led approach is needed to address the complex, wicked problems confronting societies in the 21st century and to seed and catalyze societal transitions toward more sustainable and desirable long-term futures.” -Terry Irwin via The Emerging Transition Design Approach
As our organizations, systems and the world face unprecedented environmental, social, and technological challenges and change, we find the need for systems thinking and transformative change becoming more and more necessary, and even urgent. A framework and/or approach that has gained significant traction, but remains obscure and often resides under the radar, is known as Transition Design. This framework or approach developed by designers Terry Irwin and Cameron Tonkinwise focuses on guiding society towards long-term, sustainable futures by addressing the root causes of complex or “wicked” problems and facilitating systemic transformations.
To expand upon that, Irwin shares in the paper The Emerging Transition Design Approach, “Complex, wicked problems are “systems” problems, meaning they are ill-defined, exist at multiple scales, and are interconnected and interdependent. Wicked problems are continually evolving and cannot be solved by a single solution from a single expert, discipline, or profession. Most significantly, these types of problems took a long time to become “wicked” and will therefore take a long time to resolve.” In this design approach, the focus lies on creating pathways for deep, systemic change in complex societal systems. Meaning that it can play a crucial role in addressing system challenges in education, especially in a world where those traditional educational models are being increasingly challenged by the dynamic and growing levels and intensity of technological, societal, and environmental shifts.
As Irwin shares, being central to the Transition Design approach, is a focus on addressing complex, systemic challenges by encouraging long-term, transformative change that emphasizes “four “key” areas of co-evolving knowledge and skillsets” that work within or are often applied in an iterative, cyclical manner. Each of these areas plays a critical role in guiding practitioners through the multifaceted, non-linear processes of transition, while promoting deep systemic change…
Here is an overview of those four key areas of co-evolving knowledge and skillsets:
Visions for Transitions: are often forward-looking and aspirational representations of the future. Offering guiding images of a desired world where we focus on imagining and articulating desirable futures. It involves creating long-term, transformative visions that guide the direction of change. These visions help stakeholders align on shared goals for sustainable and equitable futures. These visions serve as the foundation for all transformation efforts, helping to align stakeholders and inspire collective action.
Purpose: the vision provides direction and focus, enabling individuals, teams, organizations and communities to understand the broad, long-term goals they are striving for. It serves as a compass, aligning individual and collective actions towards a common purpose.
Characteristics: a robust vision is one that is holistic, systemic, and inclusive. These visions are narrative-driven, emphasizing stories that resonate emotionally and meaningfully with diverse audiences, moving us toward that holistic, systemic, and inclusive approach to visions.
Evolving Nature: visions are not fixed, but dynamic and adaptable. As new insights emerge and societal conditions evolve, the vision must be revisited and refined, as an ongoing process. The future, in this sense, is always in motion, and the vision must allow for flexibility and learning, which will evoke change.
Challenges: The process of creating a shared vision requires overcoming and/or working with ideological, political, and cultural barriers or challenges, particularly when those involved have divergent views. Facilitating a consensus and navigating these differences is a key skill in visioning work.
Theories of Change: describes how change is expected to happen and then offers a roadmap to move from the current state to the desired state. In Transition Design, these theories are neither linear or simplistic; instead, they are often complex, flexible frameworks that help guide action(s) by identifying interventions, leverage points, and systems dynamics. This involves and requires understanding and developing pathways for how change can occur. It includes mapping out the steps, processes, and interventions necessary to achieve the vision. Therefore, theories of change help in identifying leverage points and strategies aimed at creating lasting impact.
Purpose: theories of change help us to map the relationship between our actions and outcomes, by answering such questions as: “What needs to change?”“How do we get there?” and “What strategies will be most effective?” Questions that can guide decision-making and help us assess progress over time.
Systems Thinking: a key component of transition theories is that they are systems-oriented nature. Change is understood to occur within dynamic, interconnected systems, where small interventions in one area can ripple out to have larger systemic effects. As a result, these theories are focused on understanding feedback loops, unintended consequences, and emergent properties that occur within the system.
Iterative Process: much like “visions” from above, theories of change are never static. They require ongoing evaluation and refinement as real-world context and conditions, as well as new insights emerge. The theory must be flexible enough to accommodate new data and feedback from the interventions.
Multiple Pathways to Change: transition theories, unlike traditional linear models, recognize that complex organizational and societal transformations require a diversity of approaches and actors working across multiple scales (local, regional, global) and sectors. Which is not always a familiar or engaged stance in the educational sector.
Challenges: a key challenge in developing a theory of change is identifying the most effective points of intervention in a complex system, as well as determining how to leverage limited resources most effectively. The unpredictable nature of large-scale systemic change means that outcomes may not always be immediately measurable or observable. Which can be another challenge, especially when leadership chooses or focuses on short-term wins over long-term sustainable change and transformation.
Posture and Mindset: the posture and mindset required for transition design refer to the attitudes, values, and ways of thinking (as well as behaviors) that must be cultivated in order to engage more effectively in long-term transformative processes. Approaching this work with an emphasis on the importance of adopting a reflective, open, and adaptive mindset. As well as cultivating an attitude of humility, curiosity, and collaboration. It is in. understanding that change is complex and requires flexibility in our approach, as well as staying engaged and committed to the long-term process of transformation.
Reflective Practice: requires engaging in continuous reflection, not just upon actions, but also on our assumptions, values, and systems within which we are working. This self-awareness allows us to recognize biases, adjust strategies, and stay attuned to evolving contexts and conditions as they emerge.
Humility and Openness: to be effective, we have to acknowledge the limits of our knowledge and expertise. When we recognize that transitions are collaborative processes involving diverse stakeholders, each with their own perspectives and expertise, we understand that this work will require a willingness to listen, learn from others, and co-create solutions, rather than imposing top-down solutions.
Adaptive Mindset: transition design, as is most transformative work, a messy, and non-linear process. We must be prepared for unexpected challenges and outcomes, and to be comfortable with ambiguity (even though our minds crave certainty). An adaptive mindset is key to navigating setbacks and adjusting strategies as conditions change.
Collaboration: a fundamental shift in mindset involves seeing design as a collective endeavor. In transition design there is a focus to approach the work with a collaborative, interdisciplinary spirit, engaging stakeholders across the organization, as well as sectors, disciplines, and communities to create more inclusive, diverse, and sustainable futures.
Challenges: the mindset of flexibility and adaptation can be difficult to maintain, especially when faced with bureaucracy, entrenched power structures, limited or limiting visions, or urgent crisis. Additionally, you may encounter frustration when progress seems slow or when stakeholders are resistant to change. Maintaining a balance between optimism and realism is crucial to the process, as well as for keeping a long-term, sustainable focus.
New Ways of Designing: transition design is not just about creating a product, support, or service; it is also in creating systems, policies, cultural shifts, and infrastructures that support long-term change and transformation. Which includes focusing on innovative design methodologies that integrate systems thinking, collaborative processes, and participatory approaches. To engage in innovative design practices that go beyond traditional approaches, to ones that encourage systemic, holistic thinking that takes in consideration of the broader context, including social, environmental, and economic factors. To incorporating new ways of designing that then prioritize collaborative, participatory, and iterative methods to co-create solutions.
Systems-Oriented Design: new ways of designing in the context of transitions requires a deep understanding of systems dynamics. This means considering the broader context in which a design intervention will take place, understanding how different elements of the system interact, and designing with an awareness of long-term, far-reaching impacts. Solutions are less about isolated fixes and more about creating conditions for broad-scale, systemic change.
Co-Design and Participatory Practices: transition design emphasizes the importance of co-design – designing with people, rather than for them (which is reminiscent of the mantra of doing education with them, rather than to them). This approach engages stakeholders at all levels, from local communities to policymakers, to ensure that solutions are contextually relevant, culturally sensitive, and collectively owned. These participatory design processes also help foster greater agency and empowerment among communities.
Tools and Methods: the “new ways of designing” encompass a wide range of tools and methods, including scenario planning, visioning, prototyping, and system mapping. These tools enable the testing of ideas, visualizing alternative futures, and prototyping interventions in real-world settings.
Challenges: transition design, as we are discovering, challenges traditional notions of design. The complexity of systemic problems means that design interventions are not always easy to plan or implement. Often requiring us to grapple with competing interests, diverse stakeholder perspectives, and the unpredictable nature of large-scale change.
These four areas of co-evolving knowledge and skillsets are deeply interconnected in the Transition Design approach. Together, they can provide the foundation for a transformative approach to addressing complex challenges and/or “wicked” problems. The Transition Design framework encourages a holistic, systemic, and inclusive approach to creating sustainable futures, but it requires us to think and act differently, to embrace complexity and ambiguity, and to remain committed to long-term, collaborative, and adaptive processes towards achieving sustainable change and transformation.
Together, these four areas support the development of the knowledge and skills needed to support large-scale, transformative change toward sustainability and social equity.
Along with the “four key areas of co-evolving knowledge and skillsets,” there are also three phases: 1) Reframing Present and Future; 2) Designing Interventions; 3) Waiting and Observing; that, focus on the iterative and adaptive nature of transformation processes in complex systems, and align closely with real-world practices in systems change, allowing for flexibility, learning, and continuous refinement over time. These phases are crucial, in that they offer a dynamic and iterative process for addressing complex systemic challenges. These phases emphasize the importance of deep reflection, ongoing adaptation, and learning through real-world feedback. As well, they support the “four key areas of co-evolving knowledge and skillsets” by fostering a holistic, flexible, and inclusive approach to transformative change. Each of the phases ensures that solutions are contextually relevant, responsive to feedback, and capable of evolving over time to meet emerging challenges.
Reframing Present and Future: this phase involves looking at the current system to identify its challenges, underlying assumptions, and patterns. It also requires envisioning multiple potential futures, challenging traditional perspectives, and framing problems in new, broader ways to open up possibilities. The reframing involves stepping back and reconsidering how we perceive the current system and possible futures, which also helps us identify root causes to systemic issues, which might be hidden beneath the surface. Reframing is key because it enables us to move beyond traditional problem-solving approaches and engage with the complexity of the system. This deeper understanding can reveal new possibilities for intervention and can lead to innovative, non-linear approaches to transformation. This phase invites a shift in mindset – from simply addressing symptoms to transforming the underlying structures, assumptions, and worldviews that govern the system. It provides clarity on what the “desired future” looks like and how it contrasts with the current state.
Designing Interventions: Once the problem is framed, this is the phase where specific actions, strategies, and innovations are created to move the system from its current state to the desired future. This phase takes the insights gained from the reframing phase and turns them into tangible, actionable interventions that can begin the transformation process. The goal of these design solutions or interventions is that they are not only impactful, but also flexible and scalable over time. These solutions and interventions are not just quick fixes but are designed to be part of a longer-term, transformative shift. These interventions are essential because they translate the vision of transformation into concrete steps that can be tested, refined, and expanded. This is the phase that bridges the gap between theory and practice, allowing for experimentation and learning.
Waiting and Observing: After interventions are implemented, this phase is in stepping back, observing how the system responds, and gathering insights. This phase emphasizes the importance of patience and reflection in the transformation process. It acknowledges that systems change takes time and that interventions need to be observed to understand their impact(s) fully. This phase is about learning from initial actions, observing and monitoring how the system responds to interventions, and reflect on what’s working and what’s not. This reflection then leads to the next round or process of refinement and iteration, or that a new course of action is needed. It also challenges the typical “do more” mentality and encourages participants to allow space for insights, emergence, and learning to unfold, which helps to avoid linear-thinking and expected immediacy of results from short-term thinking and considerations. Which will nurture a deeper understanding of how complex systems evolve and how change often happens in nonlinear, and unpredictable ways.
In the context of the K-12 educational system, the ideas and methodologies espoused through Transition Design can offer valuable insights for educational leaders striving to prepare students for a rapidly changing world. Transition Design has the ability to align with and support the work of educational leaders, through an emphasis on systems thinking, interdisciplinary approaches, and determining a longer-term vision for educational transformation. Transition Design’s focus on transitions to more sustainable and equitable futures, especially designed to address and navigate complex, long-term societal change from a holistic perspective, makes it an advantageous approach for education and educational leaders, especially in the current conditions and context.
However, it begins with understanding the complexity of our educational system(s). Education is a complex and interconnected system, supported not just by multiple, but a vast myriad of stakeholders that include students, families, teachers, community members, and policymakers, just to name a few. As well as being influenced by the ongoing and changing impact of cultural, economic, technological, and environmental factors. Transition Design helps to frame these systems factors and complexities from a holistic view, recognizing how changes in one area can have simple and/or significant effect upon other areas of the system. For example, how a curriculum change can have effect on the current infrastructure of teacher training and development, assessment methods, etc. The principles of Transition Design allow educators and educational leaders to better understand the systemic interconnections and create more sustainable and adaptive models to better serve their educational ecosystem.
It is in moving from short-term fixes to considering long-term transformation (and being able to stay the long-term course, however, not without a deep sense of agility, flexibility, adaptability, and learnability that will be needed). Education and education systems are often reactive, with policies and interventions aimed at and designed to address immediate issues and challenges, finding the urgent overwhelming the important, which can keep the system from focusing on deeper, longer-term change and transformation. Transition Designprovides a long-term, forward-facing approach that focuses on sustainable transformation rather than quick fixes (think root causes). This emphasis on long-term visioning offers a framework for educational leaders to engage in future-focused thinking (which can be achieved through activities such as scenario planning, exploring alternative futures, and engaging in discussions about the possibilities for tomorrow).
Rather than simply reacting to current challenges, educational leaders can encourage students to think critically about how they might contribute to solutions for local, regional, and global issues and challenges, both now and in the future. This long-term visioning approach empowers students to see themselves as agents of change, capable of shaping the world they will eventually inherit. In many ways, this will require education to shift away from industrial-age educational models and processes that prioritize rote memorization and standardized testing to more dynamic models that prioritize critical thinking, creativity, and adaptive learning skills necessary and needed for a non-obvious and often uncertain future. Allowing educational leaders opportunities to create environments that encourage students to explore possible futures, anticipate challenges, and identify opportunities for innovation and social good.
Transition Design also aligns well with the promotion of participatory and inclusive design in the educational systems, which has scaled up in recent times (in California, think of LCAP processes and Community Schools Intiative), as well as the shift towards student-centered education. Thereby, allowing educational leaders to recognize the importance of involving students in decision-making and design processes (educating with rather than educating at). By engaging students as active participants in shaping their learning experiences, schools can foster a sense of agency and ownership, which is crucial for preparing students for future where they will need to navigate complex systems and make meaningful contributions to society.
In Transition Design, there is an overall emphasis on collaboration and co-creation with all stakeholders, ensuring that those who are impacted by educational reforms (e.g., students, parents, families, local communities, etc.) all have a voice in the design process. In traditional approaches, top-down policymaking can alienate those at the grassroots level, leading to ineffective or poorly implemented reforms or changes. Through participatory methods, stakeholders are empowered to collectively envision educational futures that are more inclusive, relevant, and culturally sensitive. This participatory approach could lead to education systems that are more equitable, personalized, and responsive to diverse needs. As Irwin shares in The Emerging Transition Design Approach,“Transition Design argues that stakeholder relations can be seen as the “connective tissue” within a wicked problem, and failure to address these concerns and understand their complex relations are barriers to problem resolution. Conversely, because stakeholder relations permeate the problem (system), they also have the potential to be leveraged in designing interventions aimed at its resolution.”
As it has become more and more noticeable, the rapid pace of technological and social change means that education systems must become more adaptive and resilient (and some would also say, more agile). Transition Design encourages the development of education systems that are flexible enough to respond to new challenges, whether it’s the rise of Ai, the need for climate change education, or the growing demand for lifelong learning, as well as incorporating new skillsets and mindsets for the future. By focusing on transitions rather than static solutions, Transition Design can support education systems towards continuously improving and evolving to meet the needs of current and future generations. Which could involve the rethinking of curricula, embracing new forms of assessment, or integrating new technologies in ways that enhance learning rather than replace human interaction, as examples.
Especially, in a time when education and education systems must now prepare individuals to live and work in a non-obvious and uncertain future. The transition to a more sustainable, equitable, and technology-augmented world requires new ways of thinking, learning, and interacting with knowledge. Transition Design offers an approach that can support education systems in anticipating and preparing for these challenges. Which might also involve integrating futures literacy into the educational curricula – enabling students and teachers to imagine and navigate a variety of possible futures. By focusing on long-term systemic shifts, educators and students can develop the mindsets and skills needed to thrive in an ever-changing world.
Transition Design encourages system thinking, which is crucial for understanding the interconnectedness of various elements within the education system. By fostering systems literacy in both students and educators, we can help develop a deeper understanding of how education fits within the larger societal context, including economics, culture, and the environment. Systems thinking can lead to more innovative solutions in education, where solutions to challenges are seen not in isolation, but as part of a larger ecosystem. By focusing on sustainability transitions, education systems can be designed not only to promote environmental consciousness but also to provide students with the skills needed to solve local and global challenges in their careers and personal lives.
Educators, educational leaders, and educational systems will need all of the support they can garner to navigate the complex and dynamic challenges facing modern education and education systems, as well as broader societal challenges and changes. By adopting principles of systems thinking, interdisciplinary collaboration, long-term visioning, and participatory processes, educational leaders can create more resilient, sustainable, and forward-thinking learning environments. Especially in a time that requires us to move beyond surface-level changes and to embrace long-term, systemic transformation that involves multiple stakeholders, integrates sustainability, and prepares future generations for an increasingly complex and unpredictable world. Transition Design is an example of a framework, an approach, for addressing not just the immediate challenges within education, but also the broader societal changes that will shape the future of work, society, and the environment. Embracing these principles allow educators and educational leaders to better prepare students for a future that is uncertain, but filled with opportunities for innovation, leadership, and positive social change. By focusing on systemic design, collaborative processes, and long-term futures, Transition Design provides a possible approach for determining a roadmap for creating education systems that are equitable, adaptive, and resilient to future challenges.
It is and will remain difficult to become an authentic “learning” organization…If you spend the majority of your time and effort acting like a “knowing” organization.
In today’s dynamic, volatile, and ever-evolving world, our organizations face an onslaught of continuous change that demands high levels of agility, adaptability, innovation, and resilience. As Garvin, Edmondson, and Gino put forth in, Is Yours a Learning Organization?“Organizations need to learn more than ever as they confront these mounting forces. Each company must become a learning organization.” However, “A learning organization is not cultivated effortlessly.”
This new landscape, which can be tumultuous and volatile, in many ways offers two distinct paradigms of organizational behavior: acting as a learning organization, characterized by what can be considered a beginner’s mindset, versus functioning as a knowing organization, dominated by what we have seen as an expert mindset. A learning organization cultivates a supportive and positive learning environment where curiosity, adaptability, safety, diversity, and growth prevail (often more open to experience(s), creativity and innovation); whereas a knowing organization often relies on and entrenches itself in established knowledge and expertise, fixed structures and mindsets, avoidance of challenges that may induce moments of not knowing or require new learning (often closed off to information and data that does not coalesce with their thinking and understandings that might require a pivot from what determines their expertise).
Consider some of the characteristics of Learning vs. Knowing Organizations
Learning Organization
Knowing Organization
Foster continuous improvement and innovation
Prioritize stability and rely on established expertise
Encourage open dialogue, experimentation, and risk-taking
Resist change, often clinging to traditional methods and past successes
Embrace uncertainty as an opportunity to grow and evolve
Emphasize hierarchical structures and top-down decision-making
View mistakes and failures as integral to the learning process
Focus on maintaining efficiency over adaptability
Encourage individuals to develop new skills and perspectives
May inadvertently stifle creativity and new ideas by overvaluing expertise
In getting back to the idea of the beginner and expert mindsets, it harkens us back to this quote from Zen Master, Shunryu Suzuki, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.” Whereas the beginner’s mind is open, curious, and willing to learn without preconceived notions or assumptions (approaching learning as a journey); the expert’s mind has established boundaries around their knowledge that often limits or closes off new possibilities and learning from assuming a posture of certainty and a stance of knowing (approaching learning as a destination).
The Positives of a Beginner’s Mindset and the Negatives of an Expert Mindset
Beginner Mindset (+)
Expert Mindset (-)
Adaptability: enables quicker adjustments to new circumstances and technological advancements
Complacency: Over reliance on existing knowledge may lead to stagnation
Creativity: fosters innovation by questioning assumptions and exploring unconventional solutions
Resistance to Change: inflexibility can hinder progress in volatile and uncertain contexts and systems
Collaboration: encourages inclusivity, and being open to diverse perspectives, thinking, and ideas
Narrow Focus: overemphasis on the “expertness” which may overlook broader opportunities and new learning and possibilities
Resilience: reduces fear of failure and of being wrong, to frame setbacks as opportunities to learn and grow
Status Quo: often unwilling to pivot thinking even when new data presents the need or requirement for change
In moving forward, it is important to keep both the individual and the organization in mind, and why it is good to couple the beginner’s mindset with the learning organization. For when the individual is learning, then the organization is also learning, and when the organization is learning, so is the individual. It is not and EITHER OR, but an AND proposition. And there are definite benefits to both…
Adopting a beginner’s mindset brings numerous personal and professional benefits. It promotes continuous skill development, enabling individuals to stay relevant with their learning, as well as being able to better navigate new challenges. This mindset also helps reduce burnout by cultivating a sense of openness and curiosity, which counteracts the stress and perfectionism that often accompanies and leads to exhaustion, especially as it is drawn to emanates from the expert mindset. Furthermore, embracing a beginner’sperspective or mindset fosters stronger interpersonal relationships, as it encourages individuals to value and learn from others’ viewpoints, leading to more collaborative connections and networks. As well as the act and process of learning and exploring new ideas provides a deep sense of personal fulfillment, contributing to greater overall well-being and a deeper sense of purpose.
Whereas, being a learning organization also offers a range of significant benefits that drive both innovation and long-term success. By fostering an environment where employees feel safe to experiment and share ideas. Such organizations enhance innovation and maintain competitiveness in an ever-evolving ecosystem and society. A culture of continuous learning also boosts employee engagement and satisfaction, as individuals thrive when given opportunities to grow, leading to increased morale, loyalty, productivity, and ability to continuously improve at their work and job. Moreover, learning organizations are better equipped to navigate change, viewing it as a natural part of their growth rather than a disruption, which strengthens their resilience in the face of societal shifts and unforeseen challenges. Collective learning also enhances decision-making, as it draws on diverse perspectives and supports informed, flexible strategies. Ultimately, the commitment to ongoing development and upskilling enables a learning organization to achieve sustainable growth and effectively adapt to emerging trends.
Shifting from a traditional “knowing” organization to a “learning” organization presents several challenges, but the effort is both necessary and rewarding, for both individuals and the organization. One of the primary obstacles is resistance to change, as both leaders and employees may be reluctant to abandon or give up familiar practices and mindsets. Additionally, the fear of failure can be a significant barrier, especially in organizations where mistakes are stigmatized, discouraging risk-taking and innovation. Another challenge is the pressure for short-term thinking and results, which often undermines the long-term commitment and perspective needed to foster a culture of continuous learning. However, these challenges can be overcome through deliberate and intentional strategies. Leaders must model a learning mindset, openly admitting their own limitations and encouraging a culture of collaboration and problem-solving. Creating psychological safety is also crucial – employees need to feel that they can experiment, fail, and learn without fear of retribution or judgment. Recognizing and rewarding efforts to learn, even when they don’t lead to immediate success, helps reinforce this culture of growth. Investing in training and professional development opportunities ensures that employees have the resources to expand their skills, while promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration breaks down silos and encourages diverse perspectives. While the transition may require significant effort, becoming a learning organization is ultimately worth it. It not only enhances innovation and adaptability but also boosts employee engagement and resilience, ensuring long-term success in an often volatile and ever-changing world.
The journey from a “knowing” organization to a “learning” organization must begin with a shift in mindset, particularly at the leadership level. Leaders play a crucial role in setting the tone for this transformation by modeling the behaviors they wish to see across the organization. This means embracing a beginner’s mindset – acknowledging that they don’t have all the answers and demonstrating an openness to new ideas and perspectives. From there, as mentioned previously, is that the focus should shift to creating a culture of psychological safety, where employees feel empowered to take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them without fear of retribution and judgment. Encouraging open communication and fostering collaboration across teams is essential, as it breaks down silos and promotes a more integrated, cross-disciplinary approach to problem-solving. Additionally, investing in training and development should be prioritized, ensuring that employees have access to continuous learning opportunities that keep their skills relevant and adaptable to changing circumstances. By starting with leadership, cultivating psychological safety, and emphasizing collaboration and professional development, an organization lays a solid foundation for becoming a true “learning” organization – one that thrives on growth, innovation, and resilience in the face of change.
The shift from a knowing organization to a learning organization is not just a strategic advantage in a time where ongoing learning and change is a necessity, it is also a cultural transformation. Organizations that embrace the beginner’s mindset unlock creativity, adaptability, and resilience, enabling them to thrive in an ever-changing environment. For individuals, the benefits extend beyond professional success to personal fulfillment and lifelong growth. By cultivating a culture of curiosity and learning, organizations and their members can achieve greater innovation, engagement, and sustainable success and improved outcomes, ensuring they remain relevant and competitive in the face of an uncertain and non-obvious future.
In a world being heavily marked by rapid and unrelenting change, as well as unprecedented levels of complexity, the notion of a singular, predetermined future has given way to a multiplicity of potential futures. Realizing that there is a myriad of other futures we may or may not have considered, helps us realize that there is not a “one” future that we are marching towards, but a plethora of possible futures that may emerge, reminds us of the vast diversity of thinking and considerations that surround us, and the impact that can be awakened and ignited when we engage that array of cognitive diversity.
Which reminds us, that the future may be one of our greatest design challenges…
Whether our influence and actions will shape the emergence of specific futures is a lingering question that continues to drive those engaged in the field of foresight and futures thinking—a discipline focused not on prediction, but on exploring possibilities and helping us make sense of an evolving landscape, and the impact that those possibilities will have on us individually, and organizationally.
Understanding Foresightand Futures Thinking
The VUCAness (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) of our current context and times has made, for a burgeoning group of educational leaders, foresight and futures thinking a necessary set of skillsets in preparing our organizations for a non-obvious future.
But what exactly is foresight, you may be asking?
It is a set of methods designed to help us discern patterns in the world around us. It is a tool to support decision-making, helping us navigate a fast-evolving context by providing a framework to understand emerging trends, such as being attuned to “strong” and “weak” signals on the horizon alerting us to “possible” changes that may or already be coming at us in the present and the future. Unlike traditional forecasting and other practices for determining the future, foresight does not seek to foretell or lay out a single outcome or future. Instead, foresight, often through scenarios and scenario planning practices of determining plausible, probable, and preferable futures, to allow us to open our minds to a range of possibilities, encouraging us to perceive the future as a web of interconnected possibilities.
These futures (signals) first appear barely noticeable, like the imperceptible silk threads of a spiderweb blown by the wind, lacking any form of connection or stable structure—but for the spider, signaling the need for attention. Much like the spiders notice (spidey senses), especially when something rattles, shakes, or attaches to the web, our notice of these often “weak” and barely perceptible futures signals on the horizon will require our notice, our examination, and our interpretation, as well as a determination of next steps. Much like the spider, that remains aware of all contact, from the core to the farthest reaches of its web, we too must be aware of not only what is around us in our current context, but what is emerging on the horizon and how that might have impact and influence on our considerations and decisions that we are making in the present.
As it has been said, the practice of foresight for a leader requires scanning (horizon), awareness and notice, some level of scrutiny and analysis, building or creating understanding and interpretation (sense and meaning making), and at some point, measures or action(s) taken. With the last point being incredibly important for leaders, as many are overwhelmed by the uncertainty and ambiguity of their current situation and/or context, often feeling as if they are unable to make a decision, leaving them and their team or organization entrenched and paralyzed towards next steps. So, while it feels as if the future is hurtling at us in an accelerated, volatile, and often unanticipated manner, it still remains a daily journey. And the decisions that we make today, will influence and impact tomorrow, which is why foresight is such a necessary and vital leadership tool for today’s challenging and complex world. As it provides us insight into today, for what might be coming at or upon us tomorrow.
The future is a lifelong journey without a predetermined destination, a journey that is constantly evolving and emerging in a myriad of different ways, a future that is influenced and impacted by the decisions we make in the present.
As the World Economic Forum shares in The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be, “Foresight is a set of approaches that help explore, imagine, and anticipate the future in an open but structured way. It can help identify and explore challenges and opportunities emerging from multiple signals and drivers of change shaping the future.” And to add, “Some of the fundamental underpinnings of foresight include the recognition and acceptance that the future is a space of possibilities that cannot be predicted; the need to focus on the long-term, and embrace peripheral and systemic views, looking above and beyond; and also the inclusion of a multiplicity of perspectives to overcome potential individual and group biases.”
The World Economic Forum provides foresight as a support to organizations in building future preparedness, and share five areas for “Foresight Use Cases:”
Innovation: to identify and explore ideas that can propel and ignite innovation and new avenues for growth and impact
Strategy: to inform and stress-test your strategic options and broader strategy
Visioning: to support the creation of a strategic vision that considers and distinguish what is desirable, what can happen and what can be done in an open and uncertain context
Orientation: to create a stimulating, future-oriented and open environment for people to think and explore the future in a divergent but concrete way
Exploration: to support exploration and preparation to uncertain, complex, turbulent and fast changing futures
In a time period that many have termed the “Great Acceleration” for the rapid rises in population growth, energy use, technological advancement, and cultural interconnection – we have seen complexity and even randomness continue to rise and spread across all parts and sectors of society, making it increasingly difficult to even begin to predict a future that is inherently unpredictable – and why the use of foresight as a strategy, framework, and tool provides greater opportunity to build a deeper awareness, understanding, and action-orientation from and towards what we see emerging on the horizon. Allowing us to create and structure new scenarios, new stories, and new narratives that better prepare and allow us to consider our influence towards more preferable and possible futures.
What we have come to realize, in the midst of accelerating change and growing complexity and uncertainty, is that traditional models of strategic planning have become increasingly inadequate and antiquated for what we are and will be facing in the future. Engaging foresight as a structured approach and strategic resource allows leaders and organizations to identify and interpret both strong and weak signals – early indicators of change that may not yet be fully visible but have the potential to shape the future. By understanding these signals, leaders can anticipate emerging trends, assess potential risks, identify new opportunities, and provide the space for an action-orientation for next steps in and towards the future. Having a proactive stance allows leaders to be more resilient, agile and adapt in response to various driving forces and our evolving organizational and societal landscapes, rather than reacting to challenges and crisis as they emerge and occur.
The future is inherently uncertain and often feels abstract, distant, and these days, often approached with a sense of apprehension, trepidation and foreboding. Storytelling, sense-making, scenario planning, and narrative crafting are ways to help individuals and the organization to imagine what the future could look like, what it could be, how we can begin to vision it forward, thereby, making it easier to understand and relational to the possible challenges and changes we may be facing. Through storytelling, as we know we are a storytelling species in how we cognitively and emotionally connect, we can convey complex ideas, illustrate the consequences of certain trends, and explore the implications of different choices in a way that resonates emotionally and intellectually (which we can’t relay as deeply through analysis and data). It is where imagination, creative thinking, and innovation can be seen from a new lens, and can enter into the conversation as a strategic resource for both individuals and the organization moving forward. Which allows us to transcend the constraints of current thinking in order to explore a vast array of possibilities for the future.
To navigate the challenges and complexities of the 21st century, engaging and embracing an exponential, or future-oriented mindset is vital for today’s leaders and the teams and organizations that they lead. Foresight equips each of those with the tools to anticipate change, explore alternative futures, and make better decisions in the present (for tomorrow). By embracing foresight and futures thinking as a strategic resource, leaders can begin to guide their organizations through uncertainty and ambiguity. It allows leaders to build a deeper level of individual and organizational resilience, and thereby harness and engage opportunities for greater creativity, innovation, and imagination.
Remembering that the future is not predetermined – but often influenced and defined by the choices that we make in the present…
Allows leaders with a foresight orientation to better position individuals, teams, and the organization to create a future that is aligned with an organization’s vision, values, and aspirations. Allowing leaders to serve as architects and catalysts that provide the courage and capacity to not only navigate the unknown, but set us on our way as explorers towards discovering not just the possible, but more preferable futures.
“The different outcomes of ‘should’ and ‘could’ thinking apply beyond our reactions to extreme emergencies. In all aspects of our lives, whenever we face an important decision, we naturally ask ourselves “What should I do?” But this framing constricts the answers we will come up with. When we instead ask ourselves “What could I do?” we broaden perspectives.” -Francesca Gino via Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and In Life
One thing we’ve learned from the Futures and Foresight movements is that, when we are looking at next steps, that we don’t, especially in the face of uncertainty, consider and constrain our way forward by referring to it as “the” future. Rather, moving “future” to “futures” reminds us that there are a multitude of possible outcomes and that there is no “one” future that we are all marching towards, but many possible futures that are, could, and may be unfolding and emerging at any time, depending on a wide variety of influences and factors. As Insight & Foresight share in Five Reasons to Say “Futures” Instead of “The Future,”“When we use the term “the future,” it can be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that there is only one possible outcome. This can limit our thinking and prevent us from considering alternate possibilities. By using “futures,” we open up our minds to a wider range of potential outcomes, which allows us to be more creative and expansive in our decision-making.
In making future plural, from one future to many futures, it shifts and expands our mindset in how we consider and approach the future, helping us to see multiple possible outcomes, as well as opening up our imagination to variety of scenarios that run the gamut from plausible, to possible, and preferable futures. This openness to futures, in many ways, not only helps us to be more creative and innovative, it reinvigorates our imagination as a strategic resource in considering the many ways the future may unfold and what may possibly emerge. Which is vitally important, because, as we all know, the future cannot be predetermined, it can only be imagined.
These subtle shifts, especially in our language, can reframe and change our perspective(s), opening us up to a greater sense of cognitive flexibility, and to reinvigorating our imaginations, considerations, thinking, and ideas. Engaging us to be more creative and innovative, as well as helping to override negative and constraining assumptions, which encourages and engenders a much more positive, growth-minded, and empowering mindset. As a leader, especially in the context of our current times which is fraught with disruptive, accelerated, and often volatile rates of change, it is imperative to catalyzing positive and often transformational action(s) with individuals, in our teams and across our organizations.
Which provides us a reason leaders can consider, as we consider the importance of our language as part of our organizational culture and climate, to moving our leadership language from “shoulds” to exploring “coulds” as another subtle, and yet possibly transformational shift…
Words hold power, internally and externally, in how we communicate, how we consider our actions and decisions, the environments we create in our organizations, and the shaping of our individual and organizational mindsets. And like a fish that fails to recognize that it is swimming in water, we often fail to recognize the power of words and how transformational subtle shifts in our language can be.
Consider a decision that you may be facing as a team…
So, you ask the team, what should we do?
What we don’t realize is that there is a constraining heaviness that “should” produces. It expresses expectations that naturally lead us into more convergent considerations, narrowing our thinking, our ideas, and how those are framed. In many ways, “should” is accompanied with a sense of rigidness and obligation that rides alongside how we determine to approach the problem at hand.
On Leadership’s article, The Power of Should and Could adds to the overall importance of the words that leaders use. As the article shares, “When leaders use “should” with their teams it fosters a sense of fear or pressure among team members, and will limit creativity. Employees might feel compelled to conform to a predetermined set of rules or standards, leading to a lack of empowerment and diminished job satisfaction. The emotional impact of “should” in leadership can result in disengagement, resistance, or a culture of blame.”
Whereas, what if you asked the team, what could we do?
In this subtle shift from should to could, we find an overall feeling of lightness to “could” that that lifts us away from the heaviness that permeates the feeling of a “should.” Taking us into and towards more divergent thinking, encouraging new considerations, new ideas, and a wider variety of options. As well as the freedom to explore these options.
As one author shares, “Emotionally, “could” fosters a sense of inspiration and optimism. It allows us to consider different paths, take risks, and learn from experiences. By embracing the notion of “could,” we open ourselves to new opportunities and reduce the self-imposed pressures of perfectionism and rigid expectations. Leaders who embrace “could,” create a more empowering and inclusive work environment encouraging creativity. “Could” communicates a sense of possibility, openness, and collaboration. It fosters an atmosphere of trust and psychological safety, enabling employees to voice their opinions, experiment, and learn from failures.”
What is also interesting, especially in a time when we are realizing the deeper importance of wellness in our organizations, is that, in the Difference Between Should and Could, “shoulds” are often seen as something that is “shaped by external factors” and “how we think others see us” are usually come from thinking we’re not enough.” Whereas, “coulds” provide a sense and feeling of empowerment and can leave us “possibly inspired and motivated to be open to trying more things,” and take the “overwhelm (and judgment) out of the situation.”
Here are a few examples to consider for using “should” and “could”:
I should go on a diet
I could take an online class on eating healthier to see if I like it
I should train for a marathon
I could start taking short runs in the morning to see how it feels
I should write a book
I could utilize quiet time in the morning to try and begin journaling
Language is the water that we swim in within our organizations. It often determines how we feel as individuals, the optimism, motivation and inspiration we feel (or not), as well as the overall culture, climate and environment of our teams and organizations. Awareness of that language, how it is used, and how it permeates the organization, is paramount to creating more creative, innovative spaces and environments, where imagination allows us to explore, experiment, and discover new possibilities and opens us to new experiences and ways of thinking, collaborating, connecting, and interacting.
Meaning, that being mindful and aware of how language permeates the organizational “waters” that we all swim around in together, is impactful to the level of ideas, solutions, and outcomes that arrive at, both individually and organizationally.
As Francesca Gino shares in Rebel Talent: Why It Pays to Break the Rules At Work and In Life, “When we think about what we could do, out thinking becomes much broader: We imagine and explore a much larger set of possibilities before making a final decision. Considering what we could do shifts us from analyzing and weighing options that we assume to be fixed to generating more creative options.”
So, the next time you are considering what you should do?
Maybe take a minute or two to reframe the question in order to consider what you could do?
It might be well worth the outcome, for you as a leader, and your teams and your organization.
“If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.” -Orville Wright
A monumental part of preparing for the future, is our ability to not only question our assumptions and “this is always how we’ve done things,” but in updating our mental models so we are not overlaying outdated thinking, ideas, processes, and strategies on top of the future, often limiting thinking and new possibilities. Which, in general terms, refers to the choices and behaviors of previous generations or experiences that can and still shape our current actions and perspectives, even if the original situation no longer exists. Think of it as the “ripple effect” of past events on the present day.
We could refer to this as the “legacy effect” which is the lasting impact that previous conditions or past actions, decisions, or events have on current processes or properties, and/or continue to influence how we do things today.
For example, the impacts that one generation leaves on the environment for future generations to inherit.
One of the things that is going to be difficult for many organizations and institutions, especially in this time of accelerated and often volatile change forces, is being able to break free from the assumptions and behaviors that lock them into “legacy” organizations, that are often caught up in the “legacy effect” that leaves them in a stable and unable to break free from the status quo situation(s) when considering when considering new possibilities for the future.
Just like individuals, organizations and institutions are also in need of updating their mental models…
A good analogy for this, especially in education, comes from Jeremy Gutsche in his book, Create the Future: Tactics for Disruptive Thinking, and how the idea of “4 feet 8.5 inches” keeps us entrenched and dependent on thinking from the past, to the point of not even realizing why we are doing what we are doing. Much like that saying, “this is how we’ve always done things” which makes consider the cost of our inherited systems and the toll they take on the future.
As Gutsche shares, this “legacy effect” thinking, 4 feet 8.5 inches takes us all the way back to the days of the Roman Empire, when they controlled and patrolled their vast lands with two-horse Roman war chariot. However, these chariots often tore up and left deep ruts in the land, making it very difficult for farm wagons to travel easily and without damage. To avoid this damage and to make travel easier, the clever farmers built and designed their wagons to match the width of the Roman war chariots and the ruts they left, which was 4 feet 8.5 inches wide.
And as design has a tendency to catch on, soon all wagons were built to be 4 feet 8.5 inches wide, including, as time marched forward, the first railway mining carts that were built to be pulled by horses.
Now going forward further, when the first railways were built in England, engineers used the same spacing, which was the adopted gauge of the old carriage roads, 4 feet by 8.5 inches. Roads which were built to accommodate the width of the Roman chariots. Meaning that the dimensions of the Roman roads had become the invisible blueprint for modern transportation centuries later. It was an unintentional legacy, but one with both constraining and enduring consequences, all of the way up to the Space Shuttle.
Just imagine, building a railroad system that stretches across a vast, untamed land. You would naturally assume that every decision—from the size of the tracks to the materials used—would be made based on the needs of the moment, the landscape, and technological advancements of the time. Yet, the standard gauge of railway tracks in much of the world, which is the seemingly arbitrary 4 feet 8.5 inches, wasn’t chosen with forward-thinking precision. Rather, it was inherited, passed down from the dimensions of ancient Roman chariot tracks. This “legacy effect” shaped the entire rail industry, a decision from the distant past that was impacting present progress.
Yes, in many ways, our progress into the future was held in place by the grooves of the past…
Or as Jeremy Gutsche expounds on the past overlaying the future, “Soon, smart people replaced all the train tracks for modern trains that were bigger, better, and faster. The new tracks remained the same size. Even when high-speed trains started going over 200 miles an hour, many of them continued on tracks that were 4 feet and 8.5 inches wide.”
And moving further forward, Gutsche continues that, “when NASA began making and transporting the Solid Rocket Boosters, they took into account that they needed to fit on tracks that were – you guessed it – 4 feet and 8.5 inches wide.”
Once again, the past constraining the future, with Roman war chariots keeping their hold on space travel…
The ruts that Roman war chariots carved into the ground, ended up being the same grooves that we find ourselves stuck in all the way up from farm wagons to the Space Shuttle. We found ourselves, often unknowingly, becoming dependent on past decisions placing their hold on future commitments. Conclusions, which were sometimes pushed forward blindly, without considering if and whether these were the best decisions for moving forward, for the future, but because that was they way we had always done it.
In so many ways, when we fail to question and accept assumptions, the past can constrain and put its control on our future.
A phenomenon that we also see occurring in education.
Education, like the railways, struggles with its own form(s) of the “legacy effect.” Many of the behaviors, strategies, frameworks, systems, structures, and practices we see in schools today are very often entrenched relics, caught in the grooves of a different time, of a different era—an era when the world was vastly different, when access to information was limited, when the skills and competencies required to thrive were not what they are today.
As Gutsche shares in his work Create the Future, “If you want to create the future, you need to dodge the traps keeping you fixated on the path that you are already on. Escape the traps, and you will find new paths of opportunity.”
But those traps can often be the sirens of status quo calling us into the shores of yesterday.
Let’s consider, for example, the traditional classroom setup: rows of desks facing a teacher. A classroom format that traces back to the industrial age, where schools were designed for a different time and ultimately to train students for an era when factory work held sway on the masses. The emphasis was on discipline, uniformity, and memorization; not creativity, critical thinking, or digital literacy. Yet, despite the radical changes we are witnessing across society, this classroom model, in many ways, remains a widespread phenomenon, often replicated, difficult to surrender, even in modern times.
How about the academic calendar? Which, to this very day still revolves around and remains fixated on the agrarian schedule, with long summer breaks originally intended to allow children to help with farming and the harvest. Another relic of a bygone era, as we no longer live in an agricultural society. However, the rhythm and rhyme of education has yet to willing determine how to completely dispose of this antiquated approach to the school year schedule.
These examples highlight how education can find itself caught in the ruts that keep it tethered to path’s from the past, making it both difficult and challenging to adapt to the context and demands of current times and the emerging possibilities of an uncertain future.
Much like the rail industry’s reliance on 4 feet 8.5 inches as a sustaining marker, education’s adherence to outdated and often irrelevant systems can include a tendency to stifle creativity and innovation, making it difficult for the “new” to emerge and flourish. Today’s students are preparing for a very different world and non-obvious future driven by technology, artificial intelligence, and global interconnectedness. Yet, they often find themselves caught up in a model designed to prepare them for the work and systems found in a 19th-century factory, rather than for an exponentially shifting world of work we see emerging across all of society.
The legacy effect leads to curriculum structures that can feel rigid, testing methods that prioritize rote memorization over real-world problem-solving, and one-size-fits-all approaches to learning that ignore the diversity of students’ needs, talents, and even expectations. While these systems may have made sense at one time in the past, it is difficult to say that 4 feet 8.5 inches effectively serves their needs for the future.
Just think: If the railroad industry had the luxury of starting from scratch, would it still choose 4 feet 8.5 inches? Most likely not. Similarly, if education were to reinvent itself for the 21st century, would it likely look very different from the system we’ve inherited? Most likely.
To overcome the legacy effect in education, we must critically examine our long-held traditions and be willing to let go of what no longer works, to retire the irrelevant, and explore the unknown with a greater sense of imagination, curiosity, creativity, and openness to experience.
This doesn’t mean discarding everything but rather being intentional about what we keep, what we bring forward, as well as what we discard, what we put away, to discover what changes, and why.
We need flexible learning environments, curricula that reflect modern challenges, capacity and skill building that closes widening gaps, as well as assessments that value creativity, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking over rote thinking and memorization.
The story of 4 feet 8.5 inches offers a powerful reminder: just because something has always been done a certain way doesn’t mean it’s the best way. Or the only way. Very often, it reminds us how powerful the past can be in placing its finger on the future, especially when we aren’t aware of our mental models, our assumptions, and why we do the things we do.
When we fail to ask questions.
As we look to the future of education, we must challenge the legacy systems that no longer serve us and reimagine a learning experience that prepares students for the world as it is—and as it will be. Just as trains aren’t confined to ancient chariot roads, education should no longer be bound by the assumptions of the past and a 19th century factory model.
It’s time to set a new gauge for learning.
“Even if we hear something and we don’t understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions.” Don Miguel Ruiz
“Extensive research has found that happiness actually has a very important evolutionary purpose. Instead of narrowing our actions down to fight or flight as negative motions do, positive ones broaden the amount of possibilities we process, making us more thoughtful, creative, and open to new ideas.” -Shawn Achor via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work
Which means, especially in considering expectations for the future (both personally and professionally), positivity in our environments not only allows us to see a greater quantity of possibilities (problem-solving in complexity), but makes us more thoughtful (reflective and empathetic), creative, and open to new ideas (which spur greater levels of innovative thinking and doing). All of which speaks very closely to the skills and competencies that are being raised up currently across the world of work as wanted and needed skills and skillsets for the future.
As Shawn Achor puts forth in the Happiness Advantage, “When positive emotions broaden our scope of cognition and behavior in this way (through amusement or contentment instead of anxiety or anger), they not only make us more creative, they help us build more intellectual, social, and physical resources we can rely upon in the future.”
When we think of preparing for and building skills for the future, be that students or adults, we often think of the skills for the future World Economic Forum skills lists, or we consider what LinkedIn has put together as the most in-demand skills for the future, or a variety of other most valuable skills of tomorrow lists and how we begin to build capacity and competency with these skills, and what kind of learning frameworks and development days we will need to integrate and build knowledge and mastery around and towards these skills and skillsets.
But, in the midst of all of that work, the one thing that we probably never consider, is the need for positivity and happiness. In many ways, just mentioning it feels out of place (and a bit fluffy) in the midst of all of the serious work that needs to be contemplated and integrated to better prepare our people and organizations for a very non-obvious future.
And as Achor adds, “Think of the edge all of this gives us in the workplace. After all, who wouldn’t want to see out-of-the-box solutions, spot opportunities, and better see how to build upon the ideas of others?”
All of which is technically aligned to what many current employers are saying that they are asking and looking for from those applying to their organizations, institutions, companies, and businesses. Run your own search and see, the demand is growing exponentially for individuals who can think creatively and innovatively. Who can use creative thinking to solve problems and challenges in new and effective ways. Or the ability to build upon the ideas of others (plussing) necessitates the ability to be able to collaborate and engage in high level teamwork. Both of which, collaboration and teamwork effectiveness, continue to rate extremely high on just about every one of the most in-demand skills lists. Or the ability to spot opportunities, to be able to see new possibilities, requires a sense of curiosity and lifelong learning, which remains in the top five list of skills for the future for WEF. Let alone the willingness to engage such skillsets as foresight and horizon scanning, a willingness to test the validity of your assumptions, to see things anew and from other perspectives and vantage points.
But, very seldom do we see where positivity aligns itself, (as a road less traveled) to engaging and unleashing these abilities and competencies in our teams, organizations and institutions…
This is not to say that happiness and positivity can take the place of continuous learning for our individuals and organizations, or upskilling, reskilling, capacity, and competency building. Far from it. But it is saying, that if you want these mindsets and skillsets to flourish in your teams and across our organizations, you won’t be able to do it with an environment and culture that is not conducive to positivity and happiness. As Shawn Achor shares, “Smart companies cultivate these kinds of working environments because every time employees experience a small burst of happiness, they get primed for creativity and innovation. They see solutions they might otherwise have missed.”
When you think of positive work environments and cultures, you can see why they have increased productivity, improved engagement, have higher levels of motivation, stronger decision making, more creativity, better resilience, as well as enhanced problem-solving and teamwork.
For example, close your eyes and then think of the best place you have ever worked. Then try to remember how you felt when you worked there? On the other side, which is probably an easier ask, consider the worst place or environment you ever worked in. How did that make you feel? When considering both examples side by side, it really amplifies the need and importance of having a positive work environment; and how much happiness plays a part in how effective you are individually and as an organization.
While the concept of (positivity and happiness) can be difficult to define for every individual and across the organization, it is not hard to see how much weight both happiness and positivity carries towards improved effectiveness and outcomes for the organization…
Be that from the classroom to the boardroom, and in all the spaces in-between.
Achor reminds us that, “Positive emotions flood our brains with dopamine and serotonin, chemicals that not only make us feel good, but dial up the learning centers of our brains to higher levels. They help us organize new information, keep that information in the brain longer, and retrieve it faster later on. And they enable us to make and sustain more neural connections, which allows us to think more quickly and creatively, become more skilled at complex analysis and problem solving, and see and invent new ways of doing things.”
However, as you see in the previous quote, this is not about a feeling, about how positivity and happiness make us feel, rather, it is based on neuroscience of how our brains work and connect. And what happiness and positivity, especially in the work environment, does for our brains. Which means that it is difficult to look at these “positive” outcomes that come from creating environments and cultures where happiness and positivity permeate, and wave it away as being ineffectual and worthless to the “real” work. Much as we have found in determining the deep importance of what we often term “soft” skills, that in the overall scheme of things, they often matter as much or even more than the “hard” or technical skills.
We sometimes need to remind ourselves, lest we forget in the urgency of the everyday, that we live in highly disruptive times. Times that accentuate the disruptive through accelerated and an often volatile rate or pace of change. Which can accompany itself with anxiety, uncertainty, even a sense of foreboding towards the future. Our perspective and assumptions we create for the future, under this context, can be a bit negative, or even dystopian. Which heightens the importance of happiness and positivity, especially when concepts such as flexibility, agility, adaptability, and learnability, become must have mindsets and skillsets for the moving forward, both as individuals and organizations.
But with so many things, including the future veiled in uncertainty and ambiguity, how can we be positive?
So, as we begin to determine our point of view (POV) for the future, including how we decide we are going to frame it, and the perspectives we ultimately view it from, we have a choice. A choice from each of us individually, as well as from our teams and our organizations, on whether we approach the future and all that is riding in on it, as a negative, or as a positive. Now don’t get me wrong, uncertainty and ambiguity can feel negative and even scary. But that is a choice we make, a perspective that we decide to carry forward.
Because we can also choose and determine to view today’s uncertainty and ambiguity as an opportunity, a chance for exploration and discovery. A chance to change. An opportunity to learn new ways to approach the future, as well as gain new strategies that allow us to navigate complexity and the challenges we face from new perspectives and considerations. To envision and even create more preferable futures. To use this opportunity to stir up a myriad of new possibilities that we may not have even considered, or imagined, if we were entrenched in the status quo and not facing an ambiguous and uncertain future.
As Achor puts forth in the Happiness Advantage, “Focusing on the good isn’t just about overcoming our inner grump to see the glass half full. It’s about opening our minds to the ideas and opportunities that will help us be more productive, effective, and successful at work and in life.”
Finding ways to infuse bits of happiness and positivity into our personal and professional lives, and finding ways to change our mindset to engage new perspectives that allow us to overcome entrenched assumptions, will only lead to better environments and improved outcomes, for us both personally and organizationally.
“Each one of us is like that butterfly, the Butterfly Effect. And each tine move toward a more positive mindset can send ripples of positivity through our organizations, our families, and our communities.” -Shawn Achor via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work
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