15 Minute Foreplay™ Conversation with Tanja Hichert

In this conversation Bronwyn Williams and Tumelo Mojapelo talk to Tanja Hichert about signals and explore their significance to people in a world filled with uncertainty.

Bronwyn Williams: I’m Bronwyn Williams. This is Tumelo Mojapelo. We work with Flux Trends and thank you for joining us today, Tanya, on our 15 Minute Flux Foreplay™ Conversations, where we invite future thinkers from all around the world to unpack some of the key ideas in futures thinking that can be useful for anyone, but particularly for future leaders. 

So Tanya, what we wanted to ask you about, because I know that you spend a lot of time doing this and we’ve worked together in the past doing it too. I wanted to ask you what is a signal and why is it important to anyone to start paying attention to these things that we call signals? 

Tanja Hichert: Okay, thank you for the opportunity. The signals, and often referred to as weak signals, and we have a specific methodology which I’ll talk about a little bit more, where we like to call them seeds. Tiny little signs or indicators of things that haven’t happened yet. If you want to be all academic about it, in the literature, they’re often called latents. So they’re kind of their futures in waiting, but they’re not evenly dispersed. They’re often, they’re most definitely not mainstream. You know, you don’t pick up signals by reading the Sunday newspaper on a Sunday morning with your croissant. You actively have to go and search for them. So they exist and very often out of your regular context. And that’s why there’s a complexity element to it. So because what might be a weak signal and something tiny and emergent for one might be very obvious to another. 

So context is always really important. But the point is, it’s these tiny emergent signs, indicators, little different ways of thinking or doing that don’t exist in the mainstream yet, and many people aren’t aware of them. But the point is, if you go hunting for them, it gives you a huge competitive advantage, strategic advantage in whatever type of thinking you’re doing. Because by looking at these and then playing around with them, figuring out, well, could this be something? You know, could this be the beginning of a trend? Could this be something that evolves into making a future we haven’t expected at all? So there’s enormous power in doing what is called emerging issues analysis using signals. 

Bronwyn Williams: Okay, so talk to us about these as you mentioned, seeds. What is different between a signal and a seed or is it just a terminology that you use? And where can we go about finding them? Because as you say, it’s not just as simple as reading the Sunday Times with your croissant and cappuccino. 

Tanja Hichert: Well, seeds are used very specifically for some really interesting academic science-based work. It’s transdisciplinary though, so it’s not just a bunch of pointy heads sitting in the research library. And seeds are essentially weak signals. What they are specifically though, and I’ll share the link for this, we’ve called them seeds of good Anthropocene, because as you know, we’re entering the Anthropocene epoch or era, as some people call it, on planet Earth where we’re bumping into planetary boundaries. But human development is not adequate, especially for us in the global south on the African continent. We haven’t reached the levels of human development that are needed yet to have a good life or at least a decent sort of life. And this development paradigm is based on the expectation of nature, continuous production and consumption and the privatisation of common resources and bumping into planetary boundaries. We know that just can’t happen anymore. So we’ve got to look at doing development completely differently. And the question for this piece of work was, how can you have a good life in the Anthropocene? How can you have a good Anthropocene? And then a whole lot of researchers all around the world started looking for, and we did a lot of this work in South Africa. 

So we’ve got some superb examples, looking for these seeds of a good Anthropocene. How do you do things completely differently? And the methodology around that was we got people together and the trick is to get a whole lot of diverse people together. You know, you don’t just all need to be in the same filter bubble. Get people together and imagine what these little seeds would look like in their mature condition. So a tiny example of doing something completely differently that would give you a good life in the Anthropocene. Imagine that was the mainstream. And then you combine these and then through that you come up with scenarios, visions of good Anthropocene, about how it could look completely different and people could have good lives. So, yeah, there’s a database of these seeds. There’s many, many initiatives that have happened. They’ve been applied to all sorts of different topics, not just the Anthropocene. 

I mentioned to Tumi a little bit earlier, I’m doing a little seeds workshop in Italy on what are seeds of how science is becoming futures oriented instead of just past oriented. And it’s great fun. It really is fun to work in this way because you unleash that innate human ability that people have to imagine different futures. And in the case of seeds specifically, which is slightly different from weak signals, the emphasis is on let’s imagine good futures, positive futures, and have narratives of good and positive futures because I think we all know this, how important stories are. You know, they’re really powerful because they create our reality as much as they explain it. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Thank you so much for that. So if you’re a leader in you are faced with uncertainty, where would you start? Because you said these seeds are not in the mainstream media. They’re not within your peripheral vision as a leader, right? So if you’re a leader and you’re sitting here like this is really interesting. I’d like to get involved. I’d like to start spotting signals or a.k.a seeds. Where would they start? Like you said, just share a link but like where and how would they start because this is even for myself,  I’m thinking like what are my blind spots? Where are the areas that I’ve overlooked and I actually noticed that there are little signals of the, a lot of the way you put it, futures in waiting, right? That can actually be potential for a better future for humanity. 

Tanja Hichert: Well, the major trick is to look outside of your usual framework or your usual lens. So again, it’s contextual, depending on why you are wanting to do it. So, you know, as I explained, we’re wanting to do it, to look at how can you live a life and a good Anthropocene. And that cuts across the board. So, you know, we would typically be interested in sustainability seeds. So we’re in terms of how can things be sustainable going forward, but also, and this is outside of the field of sustainability and eco social scientists, technology is huge. But so there’s two sides to this. 

You would look for seeds in all sorts of different topics and domains and areas. But when it comes to sources, if you’re in business, go look at the arts. Go look at the, you know, the tree huggers, the things that aren’t usually in your kind of milieu. And as I said, there’s way too little value placed on sources of information like social media, the arts. 

Bronwyn Williams: Or graffiti. 

Tanja Hichert: Sorry?

Bronwyn Williams: Or graffiti… people who are spraying on walls? 

Tanja Hichert: Thank you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, obviously you don’t throw the baby up with the bathwater. You have to be really good at knowing what’s noise and what’s a signal – that comes with that… comes with practice. 

There are a lot of futures people that are very skilled now with data analytics that… that use data analytics to separate noise from signal. But essentially the trick, in my experience, is to surround yourself with diverse, different people with different perspectives. That’s as good as data analytics any day so far. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: That’s actually a brilliant answer. So basically as a leader, you need to surround yourself with people who are not from your context, maybe some, maybe an opposing industry, like opposite what you would normally do. If you’re a linear thinker, you’d have to find someone, maybe who is a creative thinker, right? So you’re able to find those seeds and maybe they might even inform that right?

So last little question. How in, if you don’t have a data analyst, is there a way of training yourself so you have it, like, tapping into, like, intuition or your mind or something is a way of being able to sense signals or seeds?

Tanja Hichert: Yes. And, and, oh, this is going to sound fluffy, so apologies for that. But it can be learned, you can practise. It’s about… it’s about mindset, in my opinion, it’s about being really open minded about being aware of your biases, you know. Many, many people argue you can’t change your unconscious biases but as sure as hell you can be aware of them. So be open minded, actively look, go to the trouble, the time and the effort of speaking to people that are vastly different from you in vastly different contexts or businesses. 

And, and, you know, don’t just because you know the behavioural science economics thing about we tend to be fast thinkers. We don’t take the time and trouble to be a slow thinker but if you take a bit of time and trouble and you’re a slow thinker and you really listen and reach out and try and see things from a different perspective and engage around that. You start spotting seeds left, right and centre. 

And as mentioned right at the beginning, in my opinion, it’s a really powerful strategic competitive advantage, to have that ability to signal-spot and together with imagination, get early heads up on how things might be completely different on the one hand. On the other, it gives you the beginnings of making changes, doing things, making choices in the present that would more likely lead you towards a preferred future instead of just floating in that great tsunami of stuff that’s happening around us. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Thank you so much, Tanya, for your insight and just sharing what seeds and signals are for our followers. Please subscribe, share this video and with anyone you might feel, like, needs it and please join us for other 15 Minute Conversations, our Foreplay™ conversations.Thank you. 

Tanja Hichert: It’s been a great pleasure and lovely to see you both again. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Thank you.

By Flux Trends 

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