I've always been rude to my undergraduate lecturers by saying I got an education in spite of being at university. But that's not quite true with my postgraduate studies. There are, however, a whole host of things they never mentioned that are critical to the success of any foresight practitioner.
Of all the fundamental skills for a futurist, one that hasn't gotten the attention it deserves IMO (well, at least in my case;) is the art of facilitation. So often foresight processes involve in-depth interviews, small group processes and large group facilitation. Now, facilitation doesn't always mean b*oody butches paper and f**ing post-it notes. Although they are really handy. Facilitation can also mean what Dr Richard Hames calls knowledge design (to get a taste, see his blog here). Here, the emphasis is on the knowledge generation process of both individuals and groups.
Knowledge design processes are about creating a set of experiences that segway in and out of the client's day-to-day operations and result in a group and its members arriving at a certain quality of destination: meaning/s that are novel, relevant and shared. The content isn't prescribed per-se (as if it ever could and still be new!) so the emphasis is on quality and then explicit utility (although it can be easily argued that a key criterion of quality knowledge generation is its relevance to practical strategy formulation/assessment etc…but that's another discussion).
So where does one learn how to be a knowledge designer? Frankly, there is no school I'm aware of – not yet. There are many disciplines, progressive think-tanks and pioneering individuals that add something to the competence bag, but none address it specifically IMO. Okay Dr Hames, where's your book on that?! Oh, you want me to write it? Bugger… But hang on, isn't the futures tool-kit of methods, futures grammar and other 'neat tricks' meant to provide ready made or Lego-like assembly of knowledge design? Well, sure, to a certain degree. But almost every single futures project I have been involved with since my first formal one in 1998 has required:
1. A significant customisation to context of the methods employed;
2. The invention, not just innovation (see point 1 for that), of new methods/tools/approaches/frameworks; and,
3. A unique multi-level facilitation strategy for stakeholder engagement – that no one teaches you about in any school (and sorry PR approaches doesn't stack up - I got a degree in that, and it ain't in there either!)
So, in an effort to rectify this situation, I've embarked recently upon a knowledge acquisition process. I started by reflecting on theater sports and associated skills (believe me, the ability to cope with psychodrama and respond from various perspectives is a critical capability of a foresight practitioner – especially when consulting into a bureaucracy!). I then mentally cataloged my embodied experience of PR and stakeholder relations skills, as well as my understanding of Otto Scharmer's U-Process. Armed with these insights I've been reflecting on my futures projects and related methods – the facilitation paths inherent in the methods and tools that I'm partial to using (including asking myself why I find them useful).
To try to end this post some time soon, I'll skip the details of those reflections and simply point to where I'm looking now. First, I've connected with consultants who regard themselves as expert facilitators (from outside the futures domain) and then asked them about the best resources they know of. I've now got a bunch of books to read as I fly to and from the States in the next couple of weeks. The books include Crucial Conversations and The World Café among others. The next step upon my return will be to dig back into the issues management approaches associated with PR and politics. Who knows, I might also take up Alex's recommendation to look into Strategic Studies and the like as well. From there, the end game, my daydream, is to see if a grand scale public knowledge facilitation process might not provide a significant proving ground. How many steps between research to mass market experimentation is, however, anyone's guess. Perhaps the more the better;)
Post-script - to be fair to my postgrad lecturers they likely mentioned the need for facilitation skills in passing, but nothing more than a sign post leaves me thinking they don't really have a grasp on this competency either. Do you? What resources do you recommend?