15 Minute Foreplay™ Conversation with Nikolas Badminton 

In this conversation Bronwyn Williams and Tumelo Mojapelo talk to Nikolas Badminton about how scenarios can become stories that spur people to participate in futures creation.

Bronwyn Williams: Hi, I’m Bronwyn Williams. We’re back with our Foreplay™ Conversations with Flux Trends with me and my colleague, Tumelo Mojapelo. Today, we’ve got with us, Nik Badminton, to unpack how we go from scenarios to stories, to really instigate change if we want to change the future, which we should be doing if we are playing in the futures and foresight space. 

Over to you, Nik. Can you tell us a bit about how stories can change the world and how scenarios can help us get to those stories? 

Nikolas Badminton: Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Bron. Well, there’s four things that I cover with clients. I speak to them on stage or we work on it  together. It’s obviously scanning for signals and then we identify trends that go forward and they can be positive, they can be challenging, they can be everything in between. We get that holistic view of potential pathways forward. 

The third part is around scenarios. What if in the year 2042, we see these peoples, these systems, these things, they interact, cause these dynamics, positive/negative effects, speculative products, a whole bunch of different things? And it’s interesting, those dynamics kind of place us in a future state where we still feel like a stranger. I mean, psychology tells us that when we imagine ourselves 20, 30 plus years ahead in the future, it’s like, imagine that place. We don’t even recognise ourselves in that place because it’s a complete departure from who we are as an individual. And this is where storytelling starts to kick in, right? Because when we step from scenarios into stories, actually writing stories, you know, Act One, Act Two, Act Three, you know, the hero’s journey and all the other flavours of storytelling that we can actually undertake, we can start to, what I say is, like, feel what that future is like. So the idea that you can write yourself or you can write characters that you can deeply connect with and empathise with, really helps us feel what it’s like. So it sort of evolves the idea of scenario dynamics into, you know, scenario dynamics with the level of humanity and interaction and depth of, sort of, event and outcome. And what’s really great is that helps us deepen a sense of empathy for the overall state of that future. But then that really ignites a deeper sense of empathy for where we are and what it will take for us to get there in a number of steps over the decades. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: So you’re saying the stories basically help us form connections, emotional connections with these future scenarios, basically? So we can imagine ourselves existing in them, right? So if you’re a leader, you need to, like, mobilise someone in a situation with this uncertainty. What kind of story would you [use], I mean, what kind of format [would you use]? Because obviously every story has, like, a format, you know, structured in a certain way, right? So how do you get people, especially when you are not even sure yourself, how you feel about that future, right? How would you format that kind of story? How would you mobilise your team around whatever the story is about uncertainty? I mean, we’ve got so many things that answer to your political… things, issues about climate change, whatever it is, how would you be, like, how would you say, okay, we’re carving out the story so we can move everyone together? So we are all not emotional at the same wavelength, but connected to this future scenario that we want you to get to.

Nikolas Badminton: Yeah, I mean, the connection is one thing. The emotional response to it is individual, right? We’re gonna remember that collectively that’s an overall sense of feeling, but like, you know, the individual is really important in there as well. So everyone needs to discuss how a story is made available. So there’s lots of different story forms and there’s lots of different ways to expand ourselves. The guy called Karl Schroeder writes very, very long forms, like novel based stories of futures, Crisis in Zephyr. He worked with the Canadian military, went into a number of different areas of technology and dynamics and whatever. I sort of really love the 250 word stories. I’m currently writing a set of science fiction stories for a client or design fiction stories, and they’re gonna be paired with imagery, design fiction imagery and artefacts that gets people asking big questions about, oh, what does that mean in the context of the story? You know, what are the questions I have about that so that the story’s got a life beyond it? I also feel that it’s really interesting to have a sort of… a choose- your own adventure kind of story as well. So, you know, if we make this decision, if we make that decision, suddenly there are different branches of progress forward and that really lends ourself to be able to understand, you know, that there isn’t just one future that we can branch off. It’s much more difficult to write. It takes a long, long time to do that. 

I really encourage my clients to, you know, consume books and consume film, to talk, and it’s not necessarily an easy thing to write stories. But what we generally try to do is, yes, we’ve got heroes, but there’s anti-heroes. There’s a number of different things that are happening within there. The idea that we got an overwhelming sense of hope and optimism, which is kind of interesting, considering I wrote a book about exploring dystopic futures, but ultimately out the back of a foundation of, you know, positive, potentially dystopic sort of scenarios, we can actually bounce back because I say that hope is a renewable energy, you know, the hope to look forward to an optimistic future where things change away from our sort of, our crushing industrial complex. And all the way through to the hope and the energy to make a change today. So bringing people in, having people connected, you know, using video, using imagery, using words, doing it in a way that’s very succinct is really, really important. And it’s very powerful when we do that with consumers as well. 

I once wrote five science fiction stories about Vancouver International Airport back in 2017, and they wanted to do public engagement. And we went from, I think it was about six public consultation sessions, wildly over-subscribed, ended up having about 16 or 17 in three different cities. It was the most successful engagement. Why? Because we outlined dynamics in stories where people could feel themselves in that future with, you know, business travel, personal travel, dynamics within the airport, and the relationships that they would build. And they actually built part of the story in the past couple of years in the international terminal in Vancouver International Airport. And that actually built the rotunda that I’d originally thought was the vertical farm. But it’s just a glassed-in an island forest. And it’s got like screens of orcas and all sorts of auditory visual stimuli that was, I’d say about 80% of what we’d sort of outlined in the story and put in the video as well. So that’s when the stories come to life. And what’s nice about that is that stories come from stories. come from stories, right? So that’s what we want. And that brings up a really important point. We need to invite people in, that once we’ve written a story, we know that it’s not final, it’s not finished, that there are gaps in their interpretations. And we need to invite people to add their dimension and their particular identity within that story as well. And I think that’s a fundamental in futures work.

Tumelo Mojapelo: You just mentioned, ’cause I know leadership normally has like an idea that they wanna achieve at the end. And they’d like to keep their hands on the reins and not invite too many cooks into the kitchen and have a hundred different stories, right? How do you tell a leader who feels like they can’t leave, to hand over the reins? ‘Cause they feel like this could become a train smash, right? To actually open up and allow for that space for co-creation because I think that’s where the friction is most of the time. And that’s why you always have, like, this one narrative of what the future is. Or it seems like the future is just this linear pathway. It’s only gonna end in one specific way. How do we make people comfortable with that discomfort, especially in leadership, where they have to explain to shareholders or stakeholders or customers, right? That this is the process they’re gonna take, building stories to ensure that they actually create a future or experience/company/product, whatever it is, right? That is actually for the benefit of not just the company, but for the consumers or clients. 

Nikolas Badminton: You know, it’s really interesting. I talk about going from, like, ‘what is’ to ‘what if’, and what is the business of doing work today? Strategic planning, execution against those strategies and objectives, measurement, the whole gamut. The ‘what if’ part of that, so shifting from what is to what if, is the idea of opening it up to really wonder what comes next. So when we actually say that we’re storytelling and if shareholders and important people are paying attention, we really contextualise it by saying we’re exploring areas for our business and we’re doing that in a risk-free way because these are fictional. But these are ideas that are interesting to us. And companies that do this kind of exploration have got a high level of vigilance and they can actually supercharge the strategic planning today. Don’t read these as an absolute that we’re gonna deliver X, Y and Z. See it as like an organisation that’s living and breathing and starting to explore a future that’s got potentiality for everyone. It’s not saying that we’re gonna do it today. And that’s really, really important. 

And executives often are like, well, why should we bother? How has that got value? I mean, Rohrbeck and Comb have actually done a study to say, you know, those companies that do have that level of vigilance, do explore signals and trends and futures, that do really have an understanding and apply that strategically, are actually more profitable, got a higher market capitalisation. They’ve got higher rates of growth than companies that don’t. And we’re starting to see companies like Ikea, there’s a lot of government or what this is like. I mean, I’ve worked with, you know, food and beverage clients. I’ve worked with transportation and engineering clients, aerospace. All of these people are starting to build new business lines, coming up with speculative sort of legislation, coming up with new ways of thinking about how the world could chop and change in a preparedness of what comes. If you’ve explored an area through storytelling, you’re at least expecting something to emerge at some point. So it’s better than just putting your head in the sand, executing strategically, and then reacting to something that might just pop up and, you know, surprise us, you know? 

So this is where I really do the hard work of explaining to people why there’s a lot of value. And to be honest, a lot of this work happens behind the closed doors of a company, right? But I’m starting to see, especially for marketing purposes, companies step up, wanting to do speculative fiction, design fiction, artefact exploration, and the such like today. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Like the fact that you mentioned risk, right? And how during this kind of work, so creating stories and narratives, right? Creates a safe space for companies to explore the risk because now it decreases the risk of them being exposed to uncertainty or being caught at a surprise or sticking their head underneath the ground, into the ground, and then sticking it up and it’s literally chaos and mayhem. So basically it offsets that risk that they’re actually scared and nervous about, right? And gives them a space where even though they feel like they’re letting go of control, they’re actually gaining more control by exploring all these alternative narratives and stories. 

Nikolas Badminton: Yeah, you know, writing a story about chaos and mayhem in a future state is completely safe and risk-free. As is writing a very positive story or a very mundane story as well. We can’t forget that the future is potentially gonna be very mundane and look very similar to today. Just might operate a little bit differently. So I mean, that’s where, you know, any of these sort of questions about why should we bother and whatever, what if this and what if that, we can literally counter that by saying, if you do it, you just get a high level of awareness. Your imagination is fired, your anticipation is really starting to kick in, in your organisation, your empathy is deepening. Why is there a pushback on those three elements that are incredibly valuable? And there’s literally no counter-argument. It’s like, I don’t want my employees to imagine harder. I don’t want my employees to anticipate what comes next. I don’t want my employees to deeply connect with what we do. And so that’s how I frame things. So that people really can’t refute the value of futures work. And it’s taken me a long time to land at this point. I’ve made lots of mistakes along the way. I’ve framed futures work. I’ve done work that sometimes people struggle to connect with ’cause sometimes in futures work, we can get so academic, we disappear, you know, into the future and never come back, right? So coming back and being practical is incredibly valuable there. And we can’t forget that we’re strategists and futurists. So we have to be practical. We need to work it out. And we can’t just, you know, flow ideas that are aspirational with no ability to execute.

Tumelo Mojapelo: Thank you so much for sharing the importance of moving from just having a scenario matrix and an academic approach to like, futuring and futures thinking and shifting the mindset to telling stories that help people connect and actually mobilises them. I love that you mentioned optimism and hope because those are emotions that move people to do stuff, which is what we talk about in the foresight space about how we always do this work. But we never see any traction or agency. And I think with storytelling, like you’ve explained to us, you get that motion, you get that movement. You get like, you’ve had results with all your anecdotes  that you’ve shared. You’ve had results where the stories that you’ve actually explored with companies or individuals have actually brought forth fruit, sometimes. Actually, you even said, you can’t believe that they use 90 something percent of a story that you, and it’s actually living and breathing in the real world, which means that we’re actual value doing that. Thank you so much for your time, Nik. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you for sharing all your insights. Also, thank you for showing us that there’s nothing to lose by moving from the scenario, the rigid structural way of doing foresight, but starting to tell stories and connecting with humans and allowing empathy in and just letting go of those reins, especially as leaders, so that we’re able to actually benefit from taking risks in a risk-free environment, basically. Thank you so much. 

Nikolas Badminton: You’re welcome. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: For those who are subscribing and watching, please share this with anyone who wants to find out more about various futures ways of thinking, and join us for our next 15 Minutes, Foreplay™ Conversations. Thank you very much. Have a lovely day.

By Flux Trends 

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