by Molly Penn
Lately, I’ve been doing a deep dive into futurism – the practice of envisioning the future and planning for the future you would like to see. There are many ways this intersects with our work on strategic planning with organizations, and is a blend of strategic and scenario planning. One of the things Trista Harris, a well-known futurist in our sector likes to talk about is reframing “problems” so they are instead what is possible of we completely succeed.
The Datafication of Everything
One question we are sitting with is what is the creative tension between the “datafication” of everything (!), (according to Daniel Burrus) and community-driven innovations? As an illustration, one common way to think about this is as the global world continues to move at lightening speed towards data and AI and assistive technologies, how do low-income communities “keep up” when they are struggling to meet basic needs? But what if we turned that question on its side – as the global world continues to move at lightening speed towards data and AI and assistive technologies, what role can communities play in nurturing the human connection that is so necessary for our wellbeing? Ah, now we are looking at a completely different angle – instead of getting “stuck on the problem,” as Harris likes to say, we are reframing it as what could be possible if we truly succeeded in our work?
Reframe the Problems We Are Trying to Solve
In many ways, this all comes down to resources. If nonprofits were fully funded, and did not have to expend significant resources (time, people, money, attention) on trying to raise funds, what would be possible for them to address some of our world’s most complex needs? It’s about reframing the problem as what would be possible if…? The datafication of everything assumes our problem is speed and efficiency – but what if our problem is instead disconnection, and the erosion of our moral compass?
Another Example
What if we mobilized the energy behind the quiet quitting revolution to work on things like leaving X for BlueSky, and sharing solutions on LinkedIn instead of trying to sell ourselves? What if we focused on what hyper local communities can do to take care of each other at time when we are so worried about Big Brother and the secret drones flying over our homes and communities? What if the answer to the world moving on without us is for us to band together at a hyper-local level and construct the societies we want to live in?
I don’t mean to sound Pollyanna about this – rather to illustrate the power of a simple reframe to unlock energy towards meaningful ideas. We all know the world is more complicated than I make it sound with these examples of reframing, but rather than losing all of our energy towards worrying about this future we feel we cannot control, what if we reallocated some of our energy to developing ideas we have some influence over?
How This Applies to Our Work
To guide our strategic planning work, we often frame a set of strategic questions – open-ended questions about the future of the organization. We look forward to practicing the opportunity to reframe these questions towards new definitions of what is possible for the organizations we serve. By reframing the “problems” our organizations exist to solve, into what would be possible if they were entirely successful and planning for that future we want to create, we are excited about the ability to make more significant progress towards societal innovations that hold great potential.
