The Future of Democracy [A Strategic Foresight Report]

Date: 2020

Summary: This project won the stude nt award of the year at the Association of Professional Futurists. It was a Strategic Foresight project for the client DemocracyXChange, a Canadian non-profit looking to boost democracy and civic engagement. The project involved a trends analysis, future scenario exploration, “time machine” storytelling, and a strategy playbook.

Full report can be downloaded here

My Role: I was in a team of five graduate students. Professors Suzanne Stein, Zan Chandler, and Lorraine Randell were our advisors.

What Happened

DemocracyXChange was invited as a client for our classes in Foresight Studios and Strategy Design (?). They wish to expand on their mission to improve democracy and civic engagement in Canada. The students in the class analyzed variety of trends that can have impact on the future of democracy in Canada. Then the students were grouped into different team, each of which is assigned a theme for further strategic foresight analysis. My team was assigned the theme Civic Engagement.

We identified two critical uncertainties, the drivers that would have the most impact on civic engagement in the future: 1. Trust in Government, 2. Social Cohesion or Fragmentation. Then the two critical uncertainties were used as the two axis for a two by two scenario matrix, from which we developed four scenarios.

We developed macro narratives for each scenario, and told stories about each scenario using play dolls as future objects from each scenario.

Strategic options were developed for DemocracyXChange. Then the “windtunnel” method is used to evaluate the strategic options in all scenarios, to future-proof them. Signposts were also identified that can be early indicators to when the world is pivoting towards one of the scenarios.

All the strategic options, evaluation of organizational capabilities, recommendations, and pivots were combined into a final strategy playbook.

Outcome

The project won the award of the year at Association of Professional Futurists.

For the client, it was not clear how much impact it had on them. They were a small organization. This was a mostly academic exercise where we can experiment with deploying a lot of tools. Not much real world feedback from the client.

Challenges Encountered

• The client was not very responsive and organized. We had to do a lot of research on their organization on our own.
• A lot of different tools were deployed. But how many would they be used in real life? This was a mostly academic exercise. Not much real world feedback from the client.

Lessons Learned

This was one of the key projects within the Strategic Foresight and Innovation program. It taught me how to combine systems thinking, foresight, strategy design into an end-to-end project for a specific client and theme.

It taught me how to work a multi-disciplinary team on an ambiguous and complex problem. Like other projects of this nature, I find that it helps to trust the process. The answer and insight will emerge as the group bring our different perspectives at the problem. It takes patience and trust, and humility that I don’t have the answer. I only hold one piece of the puzzle. Something new and novel will emerge from the group’s whole contribution.

Tools used: CLA (Causal Layer Analysis), 2x2 Scenario Matrix, Trends Analysis, Backcasting, Signposts / early indicators, Time Machine, Windtunneling