A 15 Minute Foreplay™ Conversation with Craig Wing (PhD)

In this conversation Bronwyn Williams and Tumelo Mojapelo talk to Dr Craig Wing about what backcasting is and why it’s important.

Bronwyn Williams: Hello, I’m Bronwyn Williams. We’re back with the Flux 15 Minute Foreplay™ Conversation where we are talking to really interesting thinkers in the futures and foresight field and asking them to unpack some of the key concepts and critical ideas that can help individuals and leaders make better decisions about their own futures and the futures, of course, of the people that they are leading. And today we are here with Dr. Craig Wing. 

And I wanted to ask you, Craig, can you tell us about the art of backcasting? What is it and why should leaders care about it? 

Dr Craig Wing: Yeah, thanks, Bronwyn. Great to be joining you today on Foreplay™. It certainly is fun to be here. So backcasting by and large is really about saying, how do you think about the future from a future point in time? Now, this is untraditional. Most organisations, most people, in fact, how we are as human beings… is you tend to say, what happened in the past and how do we extrapolate that into the future? That’s normal. That’s intricately linked to who we are as human beings. That’s how we do things in general. Whether it’s storytelling, whether it’s histories, it all comes from a place of the past and saying, what does that look like into the future? 

The problem with all of that is we often fall prey  to confirmation bias. So this is what happens now. And as a result of which, we say that confirms our beliefs. So there’s a great book by a lady called Annie Duke, who’s actually a professional poker player. You may know her. In her book, she says basically that the smarter you are, the more likely you are to find and force a worldview that conforms to your previous biases. So if you’re smart, you’re more likely to have these very strong confirmation biases. As a result of which, specifically in the realm of planning and strategy, what tends to happen then is leaders tend to say, well, you know, this is what came in the past and that’s what’s gonna be coming in the future. As a result of that, we miss many of the things that emerge out of the ether. The unthought, as they say in academia, so stuff on the horizon. Prime example, the easiest one that everyone speaks about in the world of futures is Covid-19. So the normal kind of story, what were you doing back in the end of 2019 and did you anticipate this thing coming across? Well, we might have heard about this crazy disease coming from China, but it’s not gonna affect us ’cause it never has in the past. And lo and behold, this thing emerges and absolutely messes us up. Personally, professionally, country, internationally and so on and so forth, right? 

So if a forecasting approach of extrapolating of data from the past and the future doesn’t work, what’s the alternative? Well, the alternative is this thing called backcasting, which is really, as I said before, changing the initial conditions. So the initial conditions are not ones around the past, but the initial conditions are ones from the future, saying what might that look like, free of the biases of what we might have, and then how do you construct a narrative from that future backwards, hence backcasting, not forecasting? 

Why this is important for leaders and listeners of this specifically, is it actively forces us to confront our biases, because now we don’t necessarily have data to say, this is what happened in the past and as a result of which is what’s gonna happen in the future. Not only that, it’s about saying, how do we then think about it from a systems point of view? So how do we anchor in the future and how do we say, how do we create this moving forward, and then how do we update this periodically? So it’s a methodology and it’s more than just an approach, but it’s embedded in systems thinking within creativity. And more importantly, it’s a philosophical debate to say, can it free our cognitive biases to think about the world differently? – 

Tumelo Mojapelo: I like what you said. That’s very interesting about our cognitive biases. So you’re basically saying, please correct me if I’m wrong, foresight sometimes has a tendency to reinforce what we already know about the present and that’s why sometimes we repeat the same mistakes, right? Is that right?

Dr Craig Wing: Absolutely. Yeah, so forecasting is embedded within foresight. Foresight is embedded within forecasting. It’s about saying, let’s have a look at trends, not usually, not always, even though the nomenclature gets messed up, we look at trends, not necessarily signals, specifically weak signals, right? And the results of which it is about saying, hey, look at what’s coming down the line that we can see already. And this may be evidenced either in our current reality, so our immediate future or parallel futures experienced by other companies, other industries, other countries. 

So prime example, we’re saying, what’s the trend that’s going on in Asia right now for argument’s sake? And we tend to believe, and I think it’s mostly true, depending on what metric you look at, that they are, you know, let’s say, three to four years ahead of us. So what’s a trend that’s coming from that side and how do you then say, well, if that’s a trend, how do you apply that trend here based on what’s come from the past? And that’s a full costing approach versus a back costing, saying, forget about that, forget about what’s going on in Asia or the Americas or Europe. Let’s just envision what the world of tomorrow might be five years, 10 years hence. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: This seems very counterintuitive, ’cause I’m listening to you, I’m like, you know, I get what you say, but like, how does a leader faced with uncertainty? Who needs certainty? Who has relied on the past or the way they’ve done things in this way? So forecasting or using the past to inform decisions of how they move forward or face uncertainty, you know, this is, like, way out of the comfort zone. Like how do you, ’cause it is working from the future backwards, correct? So how do they get to that space mentally? 

Dr Craig Wing: Well, what it is absolutely, it’s absolutely uncomfortable, it’s unnatural because of the fact that humans are built from a past forward, right? So at our age, whatever you might be, you might be a listener here that’s 20, 30, 40, 50, maybe 60 or even more, right? And all of your experiences inform where you are right now. Oh, because of the job that I took 10 years ago, because of that relationship was in, because of whatever the case will be, that’s the context that we’re in right now. So it’s normal for us as human beings to do that. The paradox is when you go to a youngster and you say, hey, tell me, what do you want to be when you’re grown up? They don’t have that history necessarily, right? Oh, I want to be a spaceman, I want to be a friggin’, I don’t know, I want to be a firefighter, I don’t know what it might be, right? There’s no burden on the past. So it is completely unnatural because now I have a body of evidence, shall we say, of where we are in our adult lives to say, okay, based off this confirmation bias, maybe even worse, success bias, i.e. what got us here is gonna be getting us to where we need to be tomorrow, right? So it’s incredibly unnatural. 

How do we do it? Well, it is by deliberate action. It’s by deliberately saying, we gotta be intentional about this, but more than this deliberate effect, it’s about also saying, how do we bring in diverse voices into the room, right? So Flux does an incredible job at some of the sessions that you run by bringing multi-stakeholder relations, and this is very important because it’s the adversity that you bring in the room which informs the future. We know this, we can see the studies across the board, whether it’s from diversity in boards, and when I say diversity, I don’t just mean demographic diversity, I also mean a level diversity, right? But the more diversity you have, the more likely you are to confront your own bias to say this is the world of tomorrow. Why is it important? Because as much as we hope that the case may be that the world and the future’s matter for people who are like us, it’s not. We can see it’s more divergent from different players in that space. 

So the greater diversity, the more likely th e link that you have by saying how do we then create a world of tomorrow? So one is diversity, the other one is, as I said before, is changing the initial conditions. So from the past into the future, how do you understand that? Yes, we have to mix in the elements of trends, yes, we have to mix in elements of signals, but it’s more important to free our minds to say, how do we think beyond what we have right now. So one is diversity, one is the cognitive bias, but the other one that’s really, really important also is about saying what’s the time horizon? The further we go out into the future, the more disruptive, the more chaotic it becomes. We know this over time, right? So part of this trick is also like Goldilocks, not too short, not too far. So five to ten years is good for most organisations, for countries sometimes we can wave further, China does 100 years, and then you get to speculative futures design, which is really crazy stuff, right? And then for that, we can use tools like science fictioning. What do they say in Hollywood?  How do we think about that? How do we do speculative world design and so on and so forth? 

Tumelo Mojapelo: How do you consider the Black Swans thing? Like unintended consequences of maybe considering various future pathways and then trying to backcast from that to the present? Like how do you avoid falling into the pit holes or account for any negative? Let’s say positive as well, because sometimes positive things might not be an opportunity you can actually use. So how do we account for that in backcasting? Besides being a bit creepy, not creepy but like a bit weird, but it’s still, it’s very weird, like it’s very counterintuitive to work from the future backwards.  

Dr Craig Wing: Yeah, so Black Swans, as you correctly said, are low probability high impact events, but there also are no indicators of this Black Swan appearing. And as you’ve correctly said, it could be good or bad, right? So it’s all the way from stuff like the, the, the terror attacks 9/11, right? All the way through to other stuff, like things like the internet and mobile phones. So they can be good or bad. The challenge though, if you go by the classical definition of a Black Swan, is by definition of Black Swan, is something that you don’t necessarily anticipate. Therefore by building these things into a futures approach, whether it’s backcasting, whether it’s into scenario planning, whatever it may be, you are essentially trying to, and you to some degree, you’ve removed it from a Black Swan to a White Swan, where it’s no longer a low probability. It’s mean probability. Now, sure, the probability here can be defined as whether you think about it or whether it actually happens, right? But let’s go with the definition that Taleb goes with the Black Swan, which is a true low probability, which is likely off your radar. If that is truly the case, and I mentioned this earlier, it’s also called an unthought. And therein lies the trick. By definition, you can’t think about it. You don’t know what it is. So the process of backcasting is actually not about saying, “Hey, let’s think about all these Black Swans.” The very process of surfacing a Black Swan brings it to the front of your mind. Therefore it’s no longer a Black Swan. So I’ve gone a long way around of saying, Tumi, “You can’t use backcasting to identify Black Swans, but what you can do is this, which is really interesting. 

If you follow backcasting as a methodology, irrespective of the actual tool, right? So scenario, expert review, delf, you patent that. It’s not really key what the actual tool it is. What we’re trying to do fundamentally is we’re trying to say, how do you think about the future from the future? Work backwards from there. But through this process, how do we ensure our strategy is robust for multiple scenarios, multiple outcomes? In that process, what we’re trying to say is, we’re trying to say, how do you build flexibility and robustness and agility into our way of thinking, our way of doing, our very way of existence? If we build this thing with more robustness and more flexibility, when a Black Swan starts to break, when we start seeing the move of even a weak signal becoming a strong signal, or even a weak signal becoming something called a Black Jellyfish, which you can chat about also, right? Then we have the agility to say, how do we move in light of new evidence? How do we now shift our initial conditions? Because now we’ve got a new permutation within us to think about it. 

So it’s not about predictive. It’s not about predicting the Black Swans. It’s about saying, thinking about the framing, philosophically and methodology otherwise, to then building more robustness. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: You mentioned jellyfishes. I’m not gonna let you go until you explain what the jellyfishes are. Just for our viewers/ listeners…

Dr Craig Wing: The concept of Black Jellyfish. Yeah, so Black Jellyfish is really interesting, right? So the Black Jellyfish is a new, as I say, a new animal in the animal and menagerie, right? And this is where it comes from. With global warming, we know that the ocean’s getting warmer. All the data’s there. I was doing some research yesterday, but we can see the data and the effects of ocean warming. Because the oceans are getting warmer, right? Jellyfish swarms schools, whatever the plural is of this, there’s more of them. So there’s more jellyfish in the oceans. As a result of which nuclear power plants, which generally cool their cores with seawater, are sucking up these jellyfish and these nuclear power plants are now breaking down, right? 

So it’s a Black Jellyfish, which basically says this. So when you think about this context, it’s something that’s been there. We’ve known about it for many a year, probably decades, right? But we’ve just ignored it. As a result of which, this phenomenon through the process of positive feedback and here positive is not good or bad. It’s more of, has reached a tipping point where it’s no longer something we can ignore. So it is literally the shift from weak signal towards something that’s becoming more commonplace and now it’s broken and it’s become a real thing. For listeners in South Africa, crime Black Jellyfish is our, we laugh about this, but load shedding. We’ve known about this for years and years and years and years. We just didn’t do anything about it until about 10 years ago where we started to actually have to cut electricity. Climate change is another one. We’ve known about this. We’ve seen the data. Another one is mental health and the disorders and the challenges that we have in a workplace, right? So it’s stuff that’s there, the seeds of which are their weak signals. We’ve just ignored it over time. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Okay, so you’ve said a lot. Thank you so much for explaining what the Jellyfish are. So if I’m a leader, I’m faced with uncertainty, I’m really struggling to wrap my mind around this. Where do I start? Like, how do I, in a simple way, where do I start to maybe think about planning for, not planning, ’cause it’s already been planning, but thinking about the future from the perspective of the future. Where do I start?

Dr Craig Wing: So prime example, the first place is, do you actually wanna do this? And I think that’s… it seems like a really simple question. Of course you wanna do it, right? But within that, the implied question is, are you ready to be pushed? Are you ready to say, listen, I don’t actually know what this means, right? For a leader of most organisations, specifically in the corporate world, you don’t get rewarded for making speculative guesses. You don’t get rewarded for saying, let’s do something unconventional. But you get rewarded for continuity of what we’ve currently done. Around saying, we’ve taken our share price, we’ve taken our revenue and bumped it 5%, because the expectations of the board are there and shareholders are there. So what is, do you really wanna do this? Like, just let’s be honest over here. Is it a question of saying, are we doing this for survival? Because the reality of the matter is, you also still have to pay for the lights today. So do you wanna do this? Do you not? 

Secondly, do you have the right people? Are you gonna have the people in your room that are there that are part of your company that are potentially yes men or yes women, right? Then you’re not gonna create these robust worlds. You need to have some kind of provocateur. Someone likes an expert from Flux. Somebody can come in and say, hey, listen, let’s think about this. You’ve got an incredible game to say, let’s think about Black Swans. And again, even though that’s not about prediction, it’s about saying, let’s challenge your paradigm in terms of what you think to be true. 

So first of all, do you wanna do this? Two, have you got the right people in your room? Then three, planning and resourcing. This isn’t something that’s gonna take you a day or two or even a week. This is a deliberate approach to change your cognitive biases, to say, I wanna change the way we think. In many respects, as a culture player, to say, how do we think about the organisation and make sure that we’re going in a different direction together, right? So resources, and then finally, only after you have those things, then let’s get into the mechanics of it, the methodology of which Flux is well-equipped to do. But it’s really not that difficult. The methodology is pretty much, it’s about saying, pick a point in the future. How do you think about what that world might look like outside of our business, outside of our industry? You can use many frameworks, you can use a pestle analysis to understand what that world might look like. But the kicker here is to say, what does that world look like? Not from a place of where I want my company to be. It’s not about where you want the world to be from your perspective. It’s what that world and what that future’s gonna be from the perspective of potential customer, client or just agnostic. But it’s not from your perspective. And that’s a big problem that organisations are going into, saying, we wanna make this future. 

You can’t, I hate to say this. You cannot by and large control your future. And this is what organisations don’t want here. By and large, most, if not the vast majority of organisations fall prey and are victim to the future, right? And backcasting like all other futures tools just allows you to say, how can I be more responsive to a future that might emerge as the time goes on? 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Thank you so much Craig for your insight. This was a very fascinating conversation. I think we could go on about this forever. Thank you for shedding light on backcasting and actually the importance of backcasting to leaders actually, and giving them that flexibility that they’ll need in the event that something happens that they might not have seen. For subscribers, please continue to subscribe, share, like, look at our other videos. And hope you have a lovely day. Thank you.

By Flux Trends 

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