Dr. Katindi Sivi - Complexities surrounding youth involvement in violence

Freedom in foresight – the reason why children make the best futurists!

I am in the business of futuring, and I am glad that in my part of the world, it is catching on and with a lot of excitement. One of the greatest difficulties I have encountered as I facilitate these processes is what it entails for people or organizations to fully utilize the available intelligence - especially the non-mainstream, seemingly obscure gut feeling or ostensibly disparate information – to effectively increase insights. 

The inability to do so is orchestrated by the fact that all human beings have a particular worldview they use to filter things, including information. The tendency is to reject whatever is not congruent with those filters. These relatively narrow mental constructs are based on past and the conventional lenses they use to view the world. However, one other crucial reason is that they come to these processes with self-serving biases that incline them to gather and process information to advance their perceived self-interest or support their pre-existing views. To be politically correct, they seldom voice all their standpoints, cynicisms, fears, or assumptions, without which the process short-circuits the creation of robust futures that enable strategic decision making.

To guard against these blind spots, it is imperative to consider:

1. Joining these processes from a place of complete honesty, awareness, reflection, and the openness to learn just like children view the world with wide-open eyes and a sense of wonder and curiosity
2. More honest analyses of the data we collect, including the emerging weak signals we often dismiss to re-conceptualize our ideas and get multiple views, just like children are open to having more than 'the right answer' to a question 
3. The effective use of human intelligence tacked away in gut feelings just like children bluntly say what they think, however illogical
4. Inviting those people we rarely interact with, the ones who are not like us – the authentic dissenters or devils advocates - with the intention to value those outside views just like children are un-inhibited and open to playing with everyone
5. Highly abstracting sensitive situations and role-playing them to literary 'put oneself in another's shoes' and increasing empathy while creating a much more open interaction, just as children often experiment with anything in their context to imagine different fantasies, aka possibilities!

 

Mentorship matters

I will never forget how terrified I was when I was about to graduate from campus. I wondered what it was that I could offer the world and get paid, never mind that I had picked out my undergrad course on a picky ponky basis because there was no career guidance. The fright of having to face the uncertainty of my future without help was so bad that I had to get treated for ulcers. 

 

After graduation, I was fortunate to get a three-month internship position in one of Kenya's leading thinktanks, and where I eventually got to work for the next eleven years. The whole office had insanely intelligent people. Half the time, I wondered what they were going on about, primarily because they dealt with a subject that was entirely out of my depth - Economics. I had also come from a seriously flawed education system – one where I could ace it in class but one that rendered me dysfunctional when I stepped out to apply that knowledge in the workplace. I was inadequate in many ways, but my work environment provided the space to grow. The tonnes of literature I had to read through, the debates I listened to, the many places I visited, the people I interacted with, but most importantly, my colleagues who graciously handheld me out of my 'not knowing' without judgment – all gave me an opportunity to learn, unlearn and re-learn. Because of that, which was extended to me, I am a firm believer in providing that space for others.

 

As fate would have it, I came into contact with what would eventually become my life's calling – foresight. The organization had just completed a project on Kenya's possible futures in the coming decade, and I was in charge of the countrywide dissemination process in 300+ workshops. Traversing the country and facilitating community dialogues helped me understand my history and get in touch with my heritage. It also knocked out a lot of assumptions I had previously made during my sheltered school life. I got to experience the strategic power of foresight firsthand when three of the four extrapolations panned out in seven years - even if the project's intention was not to predict the future. The fact that we had an opportunity to proactively design policy decisions beforehand was revolutionary. From this experience, foresight became that thing that had to be transmitted to others – especially in a continent that needs to get its act together on many levels, operates largely from two-dimensional time perspectives, and has the fewest number of futurists. 

 

Through LongView Futures Foundation, we are now running Africa foresight Lab, which fosters foresight literacy among young Africans. The 10-week action learning training program is offered three times a year. It is designed to accommodate a maximum of 30 young people from 30 countries, learning for three hours every week for three months to understand the basics of futures thinking. This first cohort is very special because we have designed foresight projects together in the past. They came on board to deepen their knowledge on the subject and help test the tools and methodologies, and ensure that they are fit for purpose in the African context. The team comprises 17 individuals from 12 countries – who are now on week 7 of learning. They are in the process of designing futures perspectives on the areas that are of most concern to them. We hope to share the outcome of that process at a later stage. We hope that they will use the knowledge gathered to transform their spheres of influence because collectively, we will influence Africa's futures one cohort at a time.

Dr. Katindi Sivi

Time for organizations to hit the reset button: Using scenarios to stress test your strategic plans

A lot of organizations have been trying to pick up from where they left off before the COVID-19 lockdown. This means most of them want to continue with business as usual with the hope that the effects of COVID-19 are a passing cloud and that somehow, things will get better. Most do not fully acknowledge that something has fundamentally shifted. Whatever is going on has lasting future implications on how organizations are structured, how they deliver goods and services, as well as their relationships with their employees, customers, and other organizations or sectors in general. The reason why it is vital to revisit your strategic plan is that it is based on certain assumptions about the future, and these assumptions need to be reconsidered with the hindsight of the new realities. 

 

The banking and the insurance sectors have been forerunners in coming up with a process of creating buffers that prevent their systems from collapsing if there are extreme shocks that adversely affect their operations like financial crushes. Through robust risk analyses, they can plan for uncertainties brought about by complex conditions. From the point of view of long-term resilience and sustainability, organizations also need to guard against the adversities of unforeseen circumstances in the future. Stress testing is deployed by futurists to explore the impacts organizations would face or the stresses the systems in the organizations would go through if certain scenarios were to occur. The idea is to test the fortitude of the strategic plan and, if necessary, to develop organizational work plans or amend the strategic plan so that it becomes more robust and/or flexible to future uncertainties and more inclusive of the emerging concerns.

 

In a stress testing process, we choose relevant and viable sets of scenarios and conduct a SWOT analysis of the strategic plan's performance in each scenario. This process brings out how various components of the plan (like the strategic goals or program strategies) would perform under various circumstances or eventualities while surfacing the trends with the highest future impact on the organization. These issues are then mapped out in what we call a heat map – which is a color-coded matrix that indicates the performance of the different components of the plan against the various stress factors identified in each scenario. The color code also shows the impact of the stress on the organization or on the organizational system. Abysmal performance means a very high impact of the stress and that the particular components of the plan are not viable or feasible in the future hence a red color code; marginal performance means the medium impact of the stress and that the components of the plan are somehow viable or feasible, but they need strategic enhancement hence an orange color code; while good performance means that there is no negative impact of the stress and that the components of the plan are feasible or viable hence a green color code. Apart from the color-coding aspect in the heat map, the reason why an impact and the performance of the plan's component warrants a particular color code should be indicated as it helps surface the assumptions made and enhances participants' clarity on the issues.

 

At the analysis stage, organizational members have an opportunity to zoom in on the problem areas with the highest potential impact on the organization and identify strategic interventions that would help them to be more prepared and agile in their responses. The heat map also shows certain patterns e.g., strengths in the program side of things and weaknesses in the institutional side of things – and such patterns clearly show the areas that need more work. Ultimately, a stress test should generate both internal interventions that strengthen the institutions' response to external eventualities but also it can help identify external strategies such as lobbying for certain laws or collaborating with certain partners to proactively work towards creating futures that help avert the scenarios that would cause the highest levels of impact on their organizations.

 

 

 

 

LongView Consult was privileged in October 2020 to work with a global organization - Publish What You Pay - on such a project, and this is what the client said about the process. 

 

"You have taken us on our first journey of futures thinking at PWYP, and I hope this is the beginning of a new approach in our work. I also wanted to say that I have received really good feedback….."

Elisa Peter, Executive director 

Publish What You Pay

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Katindi Sivi

Afri-Futurist, founder and Lead consultant @ LongView Consult

www.longviewconsult.com

How foresight can help persistent public policy failures

I was invited last week to speak about effective inclusion – a subject that many have worked on for long with mixed results - and I felt it is essential to write a short article on why futures is imperative in fostering participation and inclusion in the public policymaking process. Policymaking is the mechanism through which the government identifies a public problem and puts a framework to address it. It is assumed that once the policy is implemented, the quality of life of the citizen will improve – mainly through laws and regulations that facilitate addressing the issue or through funding towards the achievement of the goals intended by the policy. Traditional policymaking is linear and includes identifying the problem & framing it, policy formulation, policy adoption, policy implementation, and policy evaluation. The process, in my view, is counterproductive at many levels, hence the need to infuse futures thinking. This is why.

 

At the identification of the problem & framing stage, the challenges are often identified from incidences that have occurred. There is usually little analysis of the root causes of the problems or their function within the whole system. Interestingly is also the fact that policy development is made to address the current problem in the future, but seldom is there any thinking that goes into how the issue will evolve in the future. The lack of analysis at this systemic and futures level makes people have single-sided definitions of the problem instead of the holistic view in which issues could be looked at – making it essential to ask, whose definition is adopted when a policy is crafted? On many occasions, the official policy then ends up being biased and mainstreaming stereotypes that keep policymakers locked inside obsolete assumptions that continue to surface long after the policy is done. 

 

The policy formulation stage entails designing an approach to solving the problem. While lobbyists might be successful in getting progressive suggestions to politicians, the threat of political interpretation and the vicious fight by conservative forces to maintain the status quo gets in the way of what should be objectively done about the issue or how to address changing circumstances. It is also important to note that politicians are trying to resolve a problem they may not personally experience while living in their ivory towers – so in essence, they are not the wearers of the shoe. That is why policy proposals are sometimes so abstract and thus impractical. At the adoption level, it is usually the same politicians, with many vested interests and selfish ends, deciding the legitimacy of the policy. It is a no brainer that the public good is most times sacrificed for short-term expediency. There are incidences where good policies make it to the implementation stage, but the bureaucratic nature of government institutions makes execution slow or obstructed by lack of funds, misappropriation of resources, ethnicization, elite & other captures, among many other challenges. Monitoring and evaluation to check if the policy was successful in resolving the issue is rarely done. Even when we manage to tick the boxes, it is the executor of the service that checks themselves, which makes it hard to be objective. 

 

So how might foresight help?

Policy challenges are much more complex and must be treated as such. Comprehensive research (without political manipulation of data) into the state of affairs, which considers past and present systemic evolutions, can establish the facts impartially. Honest multi-stakeholder views with very diverse groups (not those stage-managed political gimmicks) to ensure honest feedback on the issue, correct biases, and to understand intersectional impacts are crucial to foster empathy, inclusion, buy-in, collaboration, as well as to generate trust. Both the quantitative and qualitative data are necessary to complement each other and, in a sense, complete the analysis loop.

 

Due to the volatile, uncertain, rapidly changing, and ambiguous context within which the policy issues to be addressed occur, it is imperative to understand the possible future evolutions. This is where a combination of futures methods like trends analysis, scenarios building, horizon scanning, etc. all play a part in simulating long term probable outcomes. This kind of analysis helps design strategic responses and anticipate behavioral incentives and tradeoffs required for successful intervention and creating the necessary changes. Policymakers even get the advantage of genuinely co-creating solutions with the affected populations and in realistic ways – which demolishes the traditional top-down approach to policymaking and appreciates the context-based location of those impacted by the issue. 

 

Based on the two previous processes, policy adoption and legitimization is therefore predicated on the basis of genuinely making the most strategic decision in terms of cost-benefit analysis, public good, and authentic change or results. The collaborative nature of the process can enable the loosening of self-preserving tendencies among institutions because of the trust created with stakeholders. The government can be free to create an enabling environment where other actors step in to take their space. They can efficiently work together because of the elaborate process that fosters the creation of policy ownership and still keep each other accountable because of very clearly stipulated expectations. It is also possible to collect feedback to the most granular levels and from multiple angles because of the multiplicity of actors enabled to participate in the policy implementation process. 

 

Of course, issues of time to do such a laborious process, the political will or mandate, as well as the culture clash between politicians, bureaucrats, and organizations or ordinary citizens, are often cited as reasons why this process is impossible. However, the benefits far outweigh the constant tragedy of the effects of bad policies, and an ineffective policymaking process. 

 

Why we should consume forecasts with caution

The uncertainty of not knowing what lies ahead is disarming in many ways because it renders us powerless. One way to navigate that ambiguity is to use historical data to forecast the future. The predictions help create some certainty about where the future is headed and, in some way, make things less obscure. Various modelers, for example, had anticipated future COVID-19 infection cases, death, and recovery rates. BMC public health projected that Kenya would reach 1,000 confirmed cases by 14th April 2020 (33 days after the first confirmed case) and 4,000 cases by 21st April 2020 (40 days after the first confirmed case). The Ministry of Health numbers were similar, projecting “1000, 5,000 and 10,000 cases of Coronavirus by early, mid, and late April 2020, respectively ceteris paribus[1]”[2]. In hindsight and according to WHO data, on 14th April, we were at 218 confirmed cases, and by 21st April, we were at 291 confirmed cases.[3]

Other interesting examples of data forecasts include those made at the beginning of the year. GDP was expected to grow to 6% following consistent growth in the last five years, which placed Kenya among one of the fastest-growing economies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The expected growth was attributed to continued government spending of 25% of GDP on infrastructural ‘development’ projects, high remittances of 2.9% of GDP, a solid consumer base which accounts for about 80% of GDP, and increased foreign direct investments due to ease of doing business and high macro-economic stability. The continued extraction of oil from Turkana County and other exports, trade, and anticipated higher investments in the big four sectors - health, housing, manufacturing, and agriculture were also expected to boost the economy significantly. The investments would result in savings on health care, increased access to housing, and enhanced food supply (also propelled by expected favorable weather), which would then bring down the cost of food and reduce the cost of living hence lower inflation rates of about 5%.

Unfortunately, the forecasts have had the opposite results, primarily due to the unforeseen effects of locusts and COVID-19 (events that were completely out of anyone’s know or control). Between April and July 2020, the economy was projected to decline to 1% as government investments “slowed down significantly, and civil works were delayed by global supply disruptions and the limited supply of labor associated with COVID-19”[4]. Remittances declined by 20% between January to April 2020[5]. FDI was projected to contract by 25 to 40 percent in 2020, and the adjusted inflation was projected to increase to 6.5%. Labour force participation declined from 75% to 57% due to job losses meaning that the consumer base had considerably shrunk. Export revenue was expected to reduce by a minimum of 25% (USD 1.5bn), while trade with China was expected to decline by about 40%. The COVID -19 pandemic coincided with the start of the maize planting season, the primary staple food. Following a sharp decline in maize production in 2019 due to early-season drought, the unresolved locust pandemic as well as floods in 2020, food stocks are likely to decline, and food prices considerably increase thus a high cost of living.

The point this article makes is not that forecasts are bad but how they are presented and in turn consumed is a big problem. Modelers present forecasts as future facts instead of indicative possible future trajectories that could happen. When the future does not pan out as predicted, people mistrust data or downplay its importance and, therefore, do not use it to plan or prepare for various eventualities. Forecasts are also inadequate by themselves because they emanate from the fact that data projections are linear. They map historical and current data to show future patterns – which is not necessarily how life works. Past trends can indeed continue in the future but not always. Data analysts try to incorporate assumptions into forecasts to bring out other variations of the trends - hence terminologies like the base case, low case, or high case scenarios. However, these data patterns usually consist of stand-alone parameters which, when interpreted by themselves to discuss multifaceted societal issues, will obviously give a false picture of the whole. This means that the interconnectedness of stand-alone parameters has to be explored together because that is how life works hence an analysis of multi-sectoral patterns, their relationship to each other, and the ensuing implications of those multiple relationships.

There is also a dire need to unpack the reasons why a trend moves a certain way and uncover other factors that would affect the course of that trend in a different way from the current norm.  Understanding these push and pull factors altering patterns enables people to get a more accurate picture of how the future might unfold, which is seldom incorporated in predictive data. Tracking the evolution of these underlying aspects altering data patterns, some of which are not quantifiable but qualitative in nature, is particularly painstaking but important because it points to where the change is likely to happen in a more precise fashion. This way of processing data removes the blind spots that keep people locked inside some obsolete assumptions of what the future looks like and which blocks them from seeing emerging realities that eventually become the main cause of their strategic failures.

Ultimately, data and trends are only meaningful when they are innovatively processed, and important insights are extracted to enrich people’s understanding of the issue. However, the value of data, trends, and patterns is in the analyzed and leveraged information to enable evidence-based strategic decision-making, organizational agility to manage risks, and positioning for resilience. 

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[1] Latin word meaning all things remaining constant

[2] Ministry of Health website: 

[3] This fact is not meant to belittle the gravity of COVID-19 in any way

[4] World Bank. (2020). Turbulent Times for Growth in Kenya: Policy Options during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Kenya economic update, 21

[5] From 259,392.71 in January to 208,217.73 USD thousand in April 2020

Building a shock-resistant planet in a world of such great difference

I had a rare opportunity to speak with innovative people questioning whether global immune technologies seeking to find systemic solutions to global pandemics can help build a shock-resistant planet. Such technologies include those that "can detect a novel pathogen in the air, water, or soil of the Earth and rapidly sequence its DNA or RNA"[1] to neutralize the pathogen before its damaging effects begins, and in a sense entirely bypass the limitations we have seen with governments in managing diseases like COVID – 19. This conversation can be retrieved from https://bit.ly/2ZNiSqU. 

I live in a continent that shoulders one-quarter of the global disease burden, has less than 2% of the world doctors, invests less than 1% of global health expenditure, and is among the continents with the lowest access to healthcare services in the world. While these impressive innovations towards "precision medicine" seek to prioritize preparedness, prevention, and confinement of disease outbreaks, I often wonder the extent to which such innovations can genuinely be global in a world of such significant difference.

The global health sector is predicated on an exploitative model that prioritizes profits over people. As such, it has built a curative system that is mostly available to those who can pay, and which has proved to be unsustainable with occurrences of global pandemics like SARs and COVID-19, especially among the poor. For any such system to work optimally, it must avail health as a public good and a right while collectively working towards the achievement and maintenance of good health through preventive healthcare that is inherently less costly. This value-based health system would have to centralize the needs of people to produce consistently superior outcomes at the lowest cost. This means universal access to high-quality medical care, patient safety, convenience, cost containment, and ultimate satisfaction in services rendered for the collective wellbeing of all to remove the threat of global infections effectively.

Problem-solving technological innovations have been vital in making enormous strides in the health sector. However, technology has not been without its challenges. A first critical concern is the relationship between humans and machines. Weak collaborations between people and machines resulting from technological misuse - which occurs when people overly rely on automation inappropriately, or technological disuse - which occurs when people do not fully appreciate the benefits of automation, have become increasingly costly and catastrophic in as far as they compromise people's safety. WHO acknowledges that the diffusion of innovations is a major challenge because of: user perceptions - on the benefits of change, on uncertainty levels, on compatibility between values and current needs, as well as on simplicity of use. This means that the process of acceptance and diffusion has its own pace, rules of the game, and complexity level. For the successful and accelerated interface between humans and technology, trust becomes a critical factor. Just as trust aids relationships between people, it also guides and influences reliance and use of the said technology, its mastery, and the extent one feels a sense of security when using the technology, especially in complex and uncertain situations. This means that the way certain technologies are introduced is critical in building or undermining trust.

A predominant characteristic of the health model that has been pursued over time is the top-down prescriptive approach of creating solutions by the 'power holders' because they have the resources and the capacity to do so. The only problem with this approach is that it now has to create solutions for cross-border challenges that manifest differently in different cultures and communities. As such, automated systems have to genuinely understand the users' unique situations in different parts of the globe to design truly inclusive and adaptive systems. This can only be achieved through new processes that are mutually collaborative and participatory – to co-design and co-produce unique gap-filling solutions that value diversity and incorporate indigenous knowledge to build true resilience. Therefore, the system's effectiveness will only be achieved with the dismantling of hierarchical, bureaucratic, and egocentric institutions and constructing transformative ones that are responsive and agile enough to bring about the needed change. The only question here is, are the beneficiaries of the current global order able to shift to the required paradigm?

References 

Berwick, D. M. (2003). Disseminating innovations in health care. Jama, 289 (15), pp. 1969-1975.

Hoc, J. M. (2000). From human–machine interaction to human–machine cooperation. Ergonomics, 43 (7), 833-843.

Lee, J. D., & See, K. A. (2004). Trust in automation: Designing for appropriate reliance. Human factors, 46 (1), 50-80.

Porter, M. E. (2009). A strategy for health care reform—toward a value-based system. New England Journal of Medicine, 361(2), 109-112.

Porter, M. E. (2010). What is value in health care?. New England Journal of Medicine, 363(26), 2477-2481.

World Health Organization. (2006). The world health report 2006: working together for health. World Health Organization.

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[1] for more information visit the Atlantic Council website.