A 15 Minute Foreplay™ Conversation with Reanna Browne

In this conversation Bronwyn Williams and Tumelo Mojapelo talk to Reanna Browne about the challenges and importance of acting on foresight insights in order to build better personal and professional futures.

Bronwyn Williams: Hi, I’m Bronwyn Williams. We’re back with the Flux 15 Minute Foreplay™ Conversations with my colleague Tumelo Mojapelo and today our guest is Reanna Browne. 

And Reanna, we have one really important topic we want to talk to you about today and that is why is it that so many foresight initiatives fail? Or why is it that it seems to be so hard for people to take foresight in theory into foresight in practice? In other words to actually change the world rather than just talk about changing it. 

Reanna Browne: Okay, so I think a starting point is the sense that is this about a failure to act on insights. So for me in this work, I’ve always been really interested in the before and the after of things. So we might do the scanning work and the research and the scenario work, but I’ve been very curious about what happens before that. So how do we set up the conversation and then what happens after? When I first got into the future space, I used to find it really interesting but not important enough to do anything come Monday. So what happens between the end of that future’s conversation, whatever that input is and the actual actions, what might we do come Monday? 

One thing that I think is really important to share is after 12 or 13 years in this space, I very quickly learned that data and insights alone don’t change minds. For me, if you’re thinking about the insights and data that you have but you’re thinking about it with the same assumptions about the future, then you’ll ignore the changes. 

So a really candid example,10 years ago I was working with an organisation and the CEO said to me after a scanning piece, I hope you’re ready for attention between two executives and I said why and he said, well, the head of finance is going to say don’t do anything different, keep the lights on and the head of strategy and change is going to say if we don’t do anything different, we won’t have lights to keep on. So part of what I realised was it doesn’t matter what, how profound the insights were or the trends were, if I didn’t go upstream and challenge how they thought about the future in the first place. 

So one of the acupuncture points for me is to say but first we need to challenge how we think about the future. It’s not out there and then it never arrives, we’re always in the present, it’s shaped by action and inaction. When people get a shift in that thinking, then they tend to listen differently about the changes that are occurring or the trends that you’re sharing or the scenarios, then the other part is to say how do we help them tie threads between those insights and actions come Monday. I think that before and after bit is really crucial and what’s missing in a lot of our foresight work. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: That’s very interesting. So how then would you, because how would you then tie that, so tie the foresight part about talking into the practice part? So how do you tie those two bits together? What would you do if you’re working with an organisation? What would you be, like what would you actually focus on? Because like you said, most companies come and they do the scanning exercises, they do the scenario building, they do all the methodologies and stuff, right? And then come Monday, nothing’s happening, birds are chirping, it’s business as usual. So, like, what would you advise any leader on, like, what they need to do to ensure that at least someone takes the first step in shifting the mindset? Because maybe that’s the only action that needs to happen or actually actively or proactively start engaging in behaviour that actually slowly brings about change of transformation. 

Reanna Browne: I think you’ve touched on a little bit of it there. So for me, with all of my work, even if I’m brought on explicitly for a piece of research, I say, yes, but first we’re going to start with this unlearning primer, which is a terrible term because it’s really just learning, but it’s a useful one in the sense that people recognise that they’ll be shifting their thinking. And I fold that into any work I do at the start, it’s almost like an essential thing to start with. So thereafter, when we’re talking about the change, we’re listening and we’re seeing it with very different eyes and ears. We’re not dismissing it and saying it’s out there and then and that we’re too busy because we’ve learnt that saying we’re too busy means we’re not doing a lot of things, which usually means a future of constraint. 

Then the other end, I think from an action perspective, it’s really crucial and I’m quite obsessed with granularity in actions. How do we take these great insights and how do we have a conversation to say, so what, what are the implications and opportunities, not just defence here and now what actions? So I really frame things through the lens of small bets in a longer game, micro actions, how do we get much more granular if you’re trying to make big changes? It doesn’t matter, big changes still start from where we are today and they start in the near term. 

So it’s kind of watching leaders’ shoulders drop because it’s like, oh, if that’s all I need to do, this next adjacent thing from where I am. The best, best metaphor is think about a plane changing trajectory by like two degrees, 10 degrees, it ends up somewhere very different. And I feel like it comes back to two of the most essential things that I think good foresight work is about, which is agency and pathways. How do people walk away with a sense of having some capacity to influence and a pathway from where they are today? Not like being overwhelmed of, like, I don’t know how to get where I am today to, you know, this kind of broader space that we want to be moving towards. So it’s really bringing action down, concrete small practical ways come Monday. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Okay, so you brought the actions down to small concrete pieces, right? But why do you feel like people sometimes either freeze or fight? I don’t know if I’m making sense. So why do they have this greater resistance to change or pivot? What have you noticed? What are the observations that you’ve made? What are the reasons why when you’ve now helped them to literally break this up into small little granular actions, right? They still are either fleeing, I’m gonna throw in fleeing as well. So they running away from the problem and hiding away from it or the action or they freeze or sometimes they fight. So they push back on maybe actually doing those little changes or the minor tweaks like that 2% degree change so that they can actually be on a different path than their on. 

Reanna Browne: Probably two layers of thinking about this. It’s almost like a running hypothesis in my work. And the top layer is to say maybe if we get people to think differently about the future and we get people to think differently about action where it feels easy and we have agency and there are pathways and it helps us give a sense that we can enact a sense of change. Does that then result in actual different behaviour? Hopefully yes. 

The other thing and this is almost like a personal practice question is honestly to think about the fact in my own life. I think well, why in spite of so much evidence haven’t I done something different? Why haven’t I changed? And it might be evidence from a doctor. It might be evidence from a, you know, a hairdresser. It doesn’t matter. The same kind of questions applies to my practice and this is almost a dual track that I’m playing…  is testing the different ways of helping create conditions for people to act, do a different thing come Monday. But then the back end as a personal professional practice is to really consider the nervous system in the context of change. 

And so for me there’s a difference between knowing about the need to change and actually doing something differently. We often assume that people will rationally choose a response but in reality it’s actually our nervous system’s autonomic response that plays a huge role especially when the change is confronting. If it’s aligned with our beliefs it’s fine, it’s easy, we’ll probably go and do it. If the change is challenging, if you think about a lot of the complex challenges and even existential challenges that even organisations are starting to talk about some of that…  is very challenging and you immediately get a nervous system response. So for me the question is what does that mean from a practice perspective but our ability to be curious and explore what’s changing is directly related to our ability to feel safe and settled in a process. 

So we can’t be imaginative and think about change if we’re sitting there and we’re in like a freeze response. So part of the work I think is for change to happen, it’s what are the processes, even stealth that we start using that allow us to engage from the bottom of the brand up. So how do we address those feelings of safety and regulation so we can actually start to have those conversations about change. Putting content or data or insights in front of people that creates huge amounts of dysregulation, even if it’s essential and we’re trying to deal with big problems and that needs serious responses…  shuts us into a state of kind of panic and we know we make very narrow decisions. So for me it’s…  I’ve started to almost by stealth explore things like somatic practices in my work, like how do I create conditions where people can just exhale a bit when we’re talking about some of the harder challenges around this work, all the more confronting changes, almost… it’s almost a bit of a neurosequential foresight but and tiny things come back to I guess achievable next steps, agency and pathways, dosing you know, you don’t want to drop massive existential things on thing, on people and expect radical change come Monday. 

So it’s a really elegant question of the practice to be honest and I think the indicators for me always come back to you but what have I done or when have I changed as a person in response to a big challenge, what can I learn about my own processes of change? 

Tumelo Mojapelo: I just want to highlight something that you said about how basically, it’s how I understand it, you have to create that space where people feel like they are, like you say, what they can take a deep breath, right, they feel safe enough to literally start dipping their feet into the data or maybe just the practice of slowly getting into the pathway of a different path through a different way of thinking. What would you… what do you do, like I mean, because I mean I’m a leader now watching this I’m, like, this is so fascinating because I never even thought about that it’s not just about being presented with data but it is also down to our neurology, our physiology and how we respond to certain situations. How can I then create the conditions around me to be able to be open to, like…  I like even like what you said micro dosing bits of data so, like, dosing them with bits of data, so how can I create that environment because I think the dosing part is easy because you can segment information, everything, but it’s creating that environment that when you actually slowly start drip feeding this information and this data, this new way of thinking, people absorb it…  so what would you say for that, a simple way, just how do you create that atmosphere of calm or maybe like a deep release and sigh, like whew, now I can take this on because I’m not holding myself and my body’s not tight and I’m not like feeling agitated. 

Reanna Browne: A friend once said to me and I found it initially quite confronting but it was a great way of describing good futures work, she said you’re my most and least favourite dinner guest in the same evening and for me what it made me realise is, I think that good futures is being able to have hard conversations about very big serious things that are going on at the moment and also hopeful conversations. Part of what I do naturally is to look for the former, like, what are the hard things, what are the things we’re not talking about? But part of my own practice is to look more intentionally at hopeful signals of change as well. So I think that’s one element good futures practice allows us… to do both. It’s not just pop and hopeful conversations and ignoring the shadow that’s actually really foundational and structurally challenging. It also allows us to talk about the stuff that we might not want to be talking about but are experiencing and knowing.

From a practice perspective I think a lot of it comes down to…  I mean there’s the emerging part around the neurosequential kind of safety in the dosing but at a really basic level for me it comes down to agency and pathways and a sense that this work isn’t about trying to get the future precisely right. It’s almost like once you let go of that there’s, there’s, there’s almost like a relief in that. The work is about what is changing, what’s in, what’s the adjacent possible from where we are, what’s changing at the edge of today and what can I do at the edge of where I’m at right now with what I have . So I think I use agency and pathways as a really powerful way to talk about the hard stuff and the hopeful stuff and to leave people with a sense of, you know, I guess slightly more hopeful and agentic ideas about the future. I’ll give you a really tiny example of that, running a process with graduates and a lot of people know, particularly in Australia, slight generalisation, but there’s a lot of data that says young people are increasingly…  they’re losing a lot of agency, they feel like they can’t influence things, they’re becoming more pessimistic. I ran a session with graduates and part of it was to teach them to think different about the future, then to explore change, the adjacent possible changes at the edge of today, not what might happen 20 or 30 years’ time, like what is happening now and how could that play out and then what is your adjacent possible, what’s at the edge of what you can do today so that sense of agency, kind of, come Monday and one of them text me after and said I’ve been feeling really depressed about work in general and I had a real shift today.

So for me it’s kind of that stuff that I think is the most impactful and there’s a change energy that comes from a shift in agency. It’s like, okay, I feel like I can do a thing, I feel like I’ve got a little bit more influence over my own life and my own career, and my own theory of change is, is that that changing and creating that shift and change energy and agency and pathways for individuals has, is consequential at a macro level. I can’t change enormous systems, I don’t even pretend to try to, I really work with individuals in a collective setting and think how can I shift a sense of agency and pathways in them. Thereafter some change, you know some energy for change from where they are today.

Tumelo Mojapelo: Do you find,  especially based on this case study that you shared about the student, do you find that one, someone…  so that an individual um takes action and decides if they’re going to be I…  like you said, the change at the edge of what they are able to do, right, do…  you find that that’s contagious? Does it create ripples, do you find that other people also pick up that, I don’t want to call it vibe because it seems a bit fluffy, but do they pick up that same energy or do they also feel encouraged that they can also do something within their sphere of influence or is this just that one person running out into the distant future feeling enabled to do anything that they can and no one else is like picking up on that? Is it contagious? 

Reanna Browne: Uh, look, I think it is. I mean there are…  we don’t come together as much as we’re used to so it’s hard to tell because we’re all doing this individually but I…  my theory of change and impact is that it is consequential at a collective level um and again I just, you know, small rudders change big ships so really reducing the bigness and don’t get me wrong if you’re in crisis and chaos it is a very different kind of orientation for decision-making, that’s not what we’re talking about here, we’re talking about a space where we do have some capacity to kind of shape things even if there’s big constraints but my view is that that type of individual change is very consequential because we are relational beings and it is also self-reinforcing you know it’s the butterfly effect I guess in a way that it can have bigger impacts.

Tumelo Mojapelo: And you just mentioned that, okay, this is for a setting where you like… you have a bit of control, right, and you just mentioned that in crisis sometimes you’d have to have a different approach. I’m hoping, like, you’re not getting over me with these questions but I just wanted to find out in crisis, right, then how would you then um act come Monday? I don’t know if I’m making sense? So, like you’ve stopped, I don’t know, the ship burns, you’re trying to decant water, the bucket I mean, you’re leader and it’s really bad and come Monday, like, how do you then, like, what would change in your perspective, how would you then act in a way um in that kind of situation?

Reanna Browne: I think you kind of touched on it. I think you just have to act, you can’t know, you can’t literally say, well we’re just going to step back and see what’s changing and then make a call. You just have to act and then kind of see, you’re not really sensing and then deciding it’s just like we have to do the thing because not doing a thing is equally as consequential so I think it’s… it is much more about uh do and then quickly learn. But inaction is consequential in, in a state of crisis. We kind of think if we do nothing that, that will be a safer bet. I mean even in general to be honest not even in crisis. The default for organisations to think that inaction is a safer bet I tend to say is increasingly less so. So the more I call it the tyranny of the urgent, the more that we think we’re too busy to think about the future, the more likely we’ve ignored a whole changing context around us, not only we miss opportunities for innovation and changing what we’re doing in the present but the more likely a future of constraint where things have shifted and we have to make radical kind of redirections and for me the whole point is how can we use insights about what’s changing the adjacent possible to what’s changing at the edge of today to make more informed decisions, more resilient decisions, more innovative decisions more kind of preferred decisions in the present?

Tumelo Mojapelo: Thank you so much Reanna for your time and your insight. This is very interesting. The conversation could go on and on and on. I had more questions to ask but unfortunately it’s a 15 minute conversation. For those who are viewing, please continue to follow other conversations, share this conversation,  subscribe, like and join us for more 15 minute conversations. Thank you so much Reanna.

Reanna Browne: My pleasure, thanks for inviting me on.

By Flux Trends 

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