It's About Learning

In Adam Kahane’s powerful address at RSA he sums up his Transformative Scenario Planning approach as simply:

“Telling stories about what might happen. Not stories about what will happen, not forecasts; not stories about what should happen; not proposals or visions or positions but stories about what MIGHT happen–relevant, challenging plausible clear stories about what might happen. And in this way building new understandings new relationships, new intentions and hence new actions.”

Kahane points out three challenges to this approach which have been transcribed directly from his talk:

“First of all in working in this way we are trying not only to implement an idea or a way forward that we already have but together to discover a way forward. One of the features of complex conflictual problematic situations is there is agreement neither on the solution nor even on the problem. This is above all an emergent process which means it’s not predictable and it’s not controllable and for many people including for me who who like knowing where we’re going and like being in control of where we’re going this feels uncomfortable and difficult and risky.

The second way in which it’s not easy is that it requires us to work not only with our friends and colleagues but also with strangers and opponents. We’re were working on affecting transformations that we are unable to affect alone or just with our people. If you work not just with friends and colleagues but the strangers and opponents you will find yourself in real conflict, deep conflict, and for people like me who like things to be rational and nice this feels deeply uncomfortable and difficult and risky.

The final way in which it’s not easy and this is the most fundamental of all is that we’re working here not simply to adapt to unpredictable world, were working in this way to transform the situation which we find to be unacceptable, unstable, unsustainable. In this way transformative scenario planning takes conventional scenario planning and turns it exactly on its head. And what’s required is exactly the discernment which Reinhold Niebuhr pointed to in this very famous invocation: lord give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. This here is where the real difference between advisers and actors that comes into the story. There’s that joke that in a in a ham omelette what is the difference in the contribution of the chicken and the pig. The chicken is involved and the pig is committed. This is the big difference if you’re trying to affect systemic transformation between being an observer, an advisor, and being an actor. Are you willing to be committed? And for for many people including people like me who are used to standing on the sidelines this is profoundly uncomfortable and difficult and risky. But these days it is exactly this stretching this uncomfortable difficult risky stretching that is needed of us. This is how we can create futures.”

In 2007 Abilene Christian University (ACU) produced and filmed a video called ACU Connected (select #3 Standard Def for the fastest download and quality balance) in which they told a story about what might happen if an entire University were to deploy mobile devices and embark on a mobile learning initiative. The video really was just a story about what might happen because when the script for the video was written the iPhone was not yet released and all of the scenarios portrayed were, at that time, just wishful thinking. The ACU Connected video simply presented what might happen, how relationships would develop, and most importantly how a new understanding of learning could be enhanced through mobility. The ACU Connected development team later referred to the video as a video vision cast because the vision that the video created was the primary catalyst for the success of the ACU mobile learning initiative. Faculty, administration and students watched the video and bought into the vision of the future that mobile learning could offer. More importantly faculty, administration and the students created that future.

I had always pointed to the ACU Connected video as the single most important catalyst for the mobile learning initiative at ACU and now with the help of Adam Kahane’s Transformative Scenario Planning approach I can substantiate my hypothesis. Change in higher education is very difficult to foster because of the complex conflictual problematic situations that are central to the academic setting. In addition there is seldom any agreement on whether there even is problem that requires a solution and as a result technological change is often avoided until it has been proven elsewhere.

The story that the ACU Connected told was big and plausible enough that an entire university to buy into. The realization of that vision took several years and is still ongoing but in only four short years there is ubiquitous mobile device usage at ACU and the learning culture of the institution has been positively changed. This does confirm that if we do dream big enough and share those dreams we can create new futures.

So if we really want to bring about change in our organizations we can use video to create and project a plausible and realistic a story of what could be. As Adam Kahane points out “telling stories about what might happen” goes a long way to actually making those stories a reality.