Title: Meeting People Where Their Futures Already Are

Summary:

Foresight practitioner Tianna Brand argues that the single most important move a leader or organization can make is to resist arriving with pre-baked futures and instead start by uncovering the visions, assumptions, and lived experiences people already carry. Drawing on her work introducing futures thinking to the World Organisation for Animal Health and her background with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Brand shows how that principle unlocks genuine agency in contested spaces — from zoonotic disease preparedness to farmer resistance to regulation. The conversation traces a path from organisational humility and the Three Horizons Method to a provocative call for strategy documents reimagined as storybooks of multiple futures.

Show notes:

Tianna Brand is a foresight practitioner and board member of the Association of Professional Futurists whose career has spanned the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), and international bodies including the OECD and UNESCO. She joins The Future Herd to make a case that feels simple but runs counter to most institutional instinct: when navigating uncertainty — whether in a century-old scientific body or a farmers' association wrestling with regulatory distrust — you do not arrive with the future already decided. You meet people where their futures already are, surfacing what is already in their heads before you attempt to shape what comes next.

Brand traces this conviction back to her experience introducing futures thinking inside WOAH, an organisation whose culture was anchored in scientific evidence and disease modelling. Rather than framing foresight as something foreign, she connected it to risk frameworks scientists already used — horizon scanning, emergency management cycles, the recognition that outbreaks never arrive from a single direction. The lesson she drew was methodological and cultural at once: foresight gains traction not through grand gestures but through what she calls 'stealth' — using a speculative conversation about COVID in farmed animals, for instance, to quietly demonstrate how unpacking second- and third-order impacts across an entire organisation produces better decisions than tight disease modelling alone. Culture, she insists (citing futurist Suhail Inayatullah's formulation), eats strategy for breakfast; finding internal champions and working within existing methods matters as much as the quality of the foresight tool itself.

The conversation sharpens around a live tension in Canadian agriculture: the gap between epidemiologists who understand zoonotic transmission risks and producers who experience regulation as control imposed from outside. Brand's response is direct — coming in with futures already baked will be mistrusted immediately, because the underlying fear is loss of agency. Instead, she describes the Three Horizons Method developed by Bill Sharpe and Tony Hodgson as a practical scaffold: Horizon One maps the current agri-food system and its built-in limits; Horizon Three holds the visionary futures stakeholders actually want; and the messy, entrepreneurial Horizon Two is where seeds of change — already visible if you look — can be leveraged to move toward those visions. She extends this into a proposal that strategy documents become storybooks, populated by leader-characters whose competencies can be tracked against the futures being built, turning what is usually an anchor document into a living, narrative accountability tool.

For agri-food leaders in Canada and beyond, Brand's episode offers both a philosophical reframe and practical footholds. The future is not something happening to us, she argues — we are actively creating the conditions for things like avian influenza outbreaks or regulatory breakdown, which means we also hold the agency to create different conditions. Humility, participation, and a willingness to hold multiple futures simultaneously are not soft skills; they are the operational prerequisites for leadership that can actually navigate complexity. At a moment when agricultural associations are struggling with legitimacy deficits and the sector faces compounding pressures from climate, biosecurity, and trade, Brand's framework for meeting people where their futures already are may be one of the more consequential ideas the Future Herd has yet put on the table.

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVHDZUnCY=/

Topics: Futures Thinking, Three Horizons Method, Organisational Culture, Zoonotic Disease Risk, Agricultural Leadership, Systems Thinking, Policy and Regulation, Agency and Participation

Hi, I'm Jesse Hirsch.

Welcome to the Future Herd.

If the future isn't a destination, you predict what if it's something

you're already building right now, whether you realise it or not.

Although, if you're on a farm while you're listening to this,

I suspect you do realise it.

And so this question sits at the heart of this conversation that we're having today.

And my guest is Tiana Brand, a foresight practitioner who spent

her career doing something genuinely difficult, walking into rooms full

of scientists, veterinarians, policy experts, and people who trust data

and demand evidence, convincing them that imagining multiple futures isn't

a soft exercise, it's a requirement of leadership, it's essential work.

And she did that inside the world, organisation for Animal Health, one of the

oldest international bodies in existence.

And she did it as she put it by stealth.

What drew me into today's conversation is the particular

tension Tiana navigate so well.

On one side, you have sectors like ours, AgriFood, animal health, rural communities

that are facing compounding complexity and crises, climate, disease, trade,

technology, trust, all of it colliding.

And on the other side, you have organisations, leaders, and frankly entire

cultures that respond to that complexity by tightening their grip, narrowing

their vision, betting everything, uncertainty that they don't actually have.

Tiana's argument, and it's a compelling one, is that humility isn't weakness

is the face of an uncertain future.

It might be the most practical leadership tool we have.

So what does it actually look like to bring foresight into a

sector that's sceptical of it?

And what does it mean to lead when the future isn't one thing, but many?

Let's get into it.

Tiana, welcome to the Future Herd.

Thank you so much.

It was good to meet you.

Now we have a ritual that starts off every episode,

which is meant to catch most of our guests kind of flat-footed.

in your case, you've kind of got a bit of an advantage when it

comes to this question, which is what does the future mean to you?

Oh, well, even, even somebody who practises foresight and, and

thinks about future in multiples, um, there's that question can

still catch us all off a guard.

And then sometimes it does.

It depends on the situation and the person I'm talking to, um, and how I

want to, how I want to express myself.

So in general, for me, the future is, is not one thing.

Um, it's multiple.

It doesn't exist yet.

It exists in our anticipation of those multiple futures.

So in that sense, it can't be predicted.

It can be created and shaped by the things that we do today.

And I can go on about that.

You like,

Right on,

like even, even in our English language, right?

We thought we use present and, and past.

Um, and when we talk about the future, it is speculative, it's almost a hypothesis.

When we formulate our impressions of the future and we try to explain it, it

remains, um, uncertain and unknowable.

Well, and again, to your credit, you're the first person to

introduce a plurality, uh, uh, as an answer to that in acknowledging

that there are multiple, if not infinite futures, uh, that are

part of our understanding of that.

Jen, why don't I, uh, bring you in here to kind of, I think in your own

words, bring us to the past before we continue moving towards the future.

Yeah, so Tiana, I, I met you years and years ago, and I wanna just,

I'd love for you to talk about, for us, what it was like to bring forecasting

into the world of the World Animal Health Organisation, which is a, what

is a hundred year old organisation like, how does one bring the concept of

Foresighting into such an aged being?

Um, well with the, a bit of, um, guts, I guess, especially

in an organisation which is has a lot of scientists, um,

veterinarians, you know, very looking for the evidence, if you will.

Um, the solid answer, you know, heavily reliant on science itself.

And one thing that I had to go back to with a lot of my colleagues who

are very open-minded people was to go back to how they think about risk,

um, and how they think about science.

I mean, science was all speculation at one point until we, until we

started experimenting and doing repetition within those experiments.

And even today, we are learning things that we thought we knew,

that we thought we knew and that we don't know through experimentation.

Um, so, and also thinking about it from a risk perspective, you know,

working in an environment where they are already scanning the horizon for

what is emerging in terms of diseases.

And looking at it from an emergency management perspective, when you

think about the cycle of emergency management, you are anticipating

as well and you're preparing.

So using that type of language, it made it kind of interesting

for them to go, oh, okay.

Right.

We seem to be quite siloed in our way of thinking about what risk looks

like, how risks emerge, et cetera.

But we also know just, you know, based on our own experiences, that it's never

just, it's never gonna come at us.

It one direction.

It's gonna come at us from multiple directions.

So thinking about how politics might play out or economics might play out

in an emergency situation, how weather will play out in an emergency situation.

It's not going to be just this nice little disease modelling type of situation where

we've put a lot of parameters around.

And the reason we wanted to do that was to keep our decision making tight.

And every, every disease outbreak tells you something new and probably

something that you knew about and probably should have reacted to.

And so, you know, these ideas that the lessons learned, um, maybe we should

be more mindful of what else is going on in the world, you know, prior to,

uh, rushing out with responses or coming up with a solution or, or what

have you, because sometimes those solutions can cause other problems.

So yes, it was a bit of, um, like, why do we need this?

Um, we already do horizon scanning as it is.

You know, we're looking at PubMed and we're looking at rumours and everything

else to find out what is happening in the world in terms of disease outbreaks

and potential disease outbreaks.

Why do we need to do this?

And it was really about, well, there are more, there are more outcomes

than what we think we'd like to see.

So that was a way to kind of, um, bring people along with that idea of doing, not

forecasting, not just disease modelling.

Those are the four foreseen stuff, but bringing in the unforeseen and what can

you, um, what can you work with with that?

Well, and to what extent is humility kind of central

to the process of foresight?

And, and I say that in a cultural context in which arrogance and certainty

seems to drive a lot of products that would be in the kind of, in

intelligence or the dashboard space.

'cause what you're describing, again, couched in the context of risk management,

does seem to run counter to the culture, at least the business culture that,

that a lot of organisations look to when, when dealing with the future.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that's a good point.

Um, well, a lot of people don't like to be wrong.

I think that's where maybe you're coming from as well.

Like there's that idea of holding tightly to prediction and, um, look,

if you get it right, it's, it's a bit of luck, I think, rather than actually

solid, you know, prediction here.

So yes, there is that sense of the humility needs to be brought

along with this, and where is nice to centre around that is nobody's

been to the future and back.

Show me somebody who has and, and have we listened to that person as

well, if they had, you know, I mean, there's, there's so many Cassandras

around us, I think, but at the same time, how nobody's been there and back.

So there is a sense of humility.

None of us, doesn't matter how intelligent you are, how, um, you know, well read,

um, thinking in systems, multiple, multiple ways of, of knowing, et cetera.

Can you put that all into one and be able to come up with a,

like, it's gonna be like this.

What you can do is like, I've got the information that I need now.

This is what I know now, um, and I'm gonna act on, on that.

Or maybe I'm not gonna act on that.

I'm going to bring in some other, some other opportunities and other ways of

knowing and, and other perspectives.

The more perspectives you have, the more you realise how

plural the future futures are.

It's, um, it's just, uh, as you said, it's almost like it's a, a

bit mathematical that way, right?

There's, there's a, there's a multiplicity of them.

Um, so yeah, sometimes it's just about, okay, well we'll try to narrow

it down for some people, but keep in mind we can't, and these are

speculations that we're dealing with.

Um, and how are we going to move with this uncertainty, not hold too tightly

onto it, not to hold too tightly onto our assumptions, uh, et cetera, to

just move our way through it and ask ourselves, who are we doing this for?

What is our purpose?

Do, can we think about the next generation when we're making these decisions?

I think that is something that brings in a lot of humility as well, is because

there's a sense of responsibility in the present for creating the multiple

outcomes, um, from the decisions that we take or don't take today.

Well, and to go back to Jen's question around the, the broader notion

of organisational adoption or the way in which organisations can, can wrap their

head around the, the value of foresight.

How much of that is, is methods?

And I don't just mean the methods of the foresight practitioner,

which is an invitation for you to elaborate on that, also the methods

of the organisation itself, right?

The way that they think, the way that they deal with risk, the way that, to your

point, they think of the next generation.

How much of that is a dance between you presenting your methods, and at the same

time trying to get the organisation to think about their own methods it comes

Hmm.

of the future or just making decisions in the present?

Yeah, well, I think Woa, the World Organisation for Animal

Health did give it the old college try, and I think I did as well.

Um, so part of it is it's a bit foresight by stealth.

Um, you can do things on an every day, like use foresight

every day, be foresightful.

And it could be something very simple as, oh look, you know, we

have a, we're concerned about at the time, I'll give you an example.

At the time we're concerned about COVID, um, 19 appearing in farmed animals.

Like, okay, we need to have a conversation about that.

As an organisation, you don't need to go through grand gestures, uh, in terms

you're already working within their methods of like, okay, anticipation here.

Um, it hasn't happened yet.

It might not happen, but like, how can we unpack this a little bit

so that the whole organisation, different parts of the organisation

can come together and say, right.

Um, if this happened, you know, the first order of impact there would be

absolute panic at the, at the supermarket.

Um, borders would be closing.

You know, trade would stop.

And we just unpacked all this information, including what would come out of it

from a technological perspective in terms of diagnostics, um, in terms of

how we might run the general session, um, how we might need to come up with

a new standard, uh, for how to treat this situation, speculative situation.

And at those points we decided, okay, here's how we're

going to communicate this.

Here's who we need to bring in, um, to discuss this because within this

vast network we have surely somebody's already asked this question and we just

haven't put it out there yet, so let's, let's tap into these different places.

So that's what I mean by stealth and working within, you know,

an organisational, um, context and within their own methods.

The other part of this for like foresight to be really, I guess, um, accepted, you

know, brought more into the organisation, sustained within an organisation.

Um, there's a, a very famous futures researcher who said that

culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Meaning that it, sometimes you can have all the strategy, you can work out all the

strategy you want in the world, you want the organisation to look a certain way.

However, um, the, the futurist is suhail Inda, by the way.

Um, but at the same time, if the culture is not.

A creating an environment in which, you know, that strategy that you've

come up with, with, you know, with all this foresight, insightful, um,

methods and, and whatever comes out of those, of those methods, then, you

know, you're just back to where you are.

Um, again, so there, there's a bit of that.

There's a real sense of, um, socialising it as somebody who practises foresight,

um, looking for the champions within the organisation, um, who will say, yep, I see

this as something that's really useful.

And then just doing it by stealth, you know, just little bits here and there.

Working with people in an organisation of, you know, what, what's, what's

keeping them awake at night?

You know, what, you know, they see signals in the air and they want to,

they feel that there's changes coming.

How can we unpack that?

Well, and I'd love for you to elaborate further on that

cultural element and, and to give you a,

Okay.

of hook to wrap it around.

Complexity seems to be something that is both part of the, the, the

role that foresight is meant to address, also part of our culture.

Like, it, it seems part of the consequence of increased technology, of increased

measurement of a quantified society is we are entertaining increasing levels of

complexity like factoring in climate with health, with soil data, with animal data,

just within the agricultural context.

How much does culture play in facilitating or shutting down in the

face of that complexity your larger rather brilliant strategy of, of finding

the, the, the allies, finding the people you can work with, finding the

champions who can help move this along?

I'm, I'm kind of babbling in, in lack of a coherent question, but I'm, I'm

trying to, on the one hand, reconcile the growing complexity that I think a

lot of organisations face opportunity for foresight to help give tangibility,

to give narrative, to give a vision to that complexity, while also recognising

that it's only so far as the culture will allow that if you don't have a culture

that will allow for those connections, allow for that brainstorming, allow

for imagining multiple futures, it, it kind of seems dead on arrival.

So how do you navigate that?

Where do you see the opportunities or the challenges there in terms of that

larger cult uh, uh, cultural context?

That's, um, that's an excellent question, and I think there's a, there's

a couple ways of looking at this.

There's the co complex aspect of it.

The, the beautiful thing that we're recognising about complexity

is how there's all these feedback loops and how we are, we see people

thinking more in systems and more connections rather than silos.

And, you know, maybe that's part of just recognising, wow, we're in

this real mess and, and actually you are too, and you are too.

You are too.

Or we're in this real opportunity space.

It doesn't have to be a mess, but we're in this real, in-between space

and, you know, there are things that we are sharing, um, whether it's it's

values or visions or, or what have you.

So we recognise that what is happening in the world, what's

happening with climate change?

What's happening with soil health, what's happening with animal health?

You know, everything all connected.

And we're, we're, we're having these discussions about

planetary boundaries, et cetera.

So we're recognising systems thinking and we're recognising the

interconnections between everything.

You know, everything is, is connected.

Um, and maybe I'm, there's no doubt about it, I'm biassed in how these,

how I view these conversations going on and looking at them as hopeful, um, you

know, pockets of opportunity and, uh, you know, places where we can really use that

complexity, if you will, or, or leverage that complexity in a way that makes us

kind of break the current system, um, and the current systemic thinking about

how things are not, or the opposite of that, or some kind of version of that.

Um, so yes, a culture of an organisation does play a big role in that, is in terms

of its operating or, or allowing the environment to, um, unfold like this.

They, by ignoring the complexity, um, I don't think anybody's

doing themselves any favours.

Not an organisation, not individuals, um, what have you.

And even listening to some of the, the episodes on, on your podcast, um, you'd

start to, I think that was the whole point behind it, is to recognise how complex

things are, but really how systemic and how interconnected all these aspects are.

And it's bringing in this nice picture, um, a nice way of, of looking

at complexity and, and appreciating complexity and being, as you had

pointed out, hu having a little bit of humility in the face of that, uh,

because there's a sense of control and there's also a sense of emergence.

And the, the, the thing that I'm hearing mostly within this podcast

is the emergence piece of it.

And then just on that, thinking about the title of this podcast, when I hear,

when I heard Future Heard, I didn't think of HRED, I thought of you're

hearing it, that it has been heard or it's being, you know, it's being valued.

Um, so in a sense, organisations are not boxes, um, with

walls and things like that.

Organisations can be the communities that you are developing here and connecting

with across Canada and across different elements within the food system.

So that itself can be an organisation and we create these things.

Organisations are people and they need to be connected with and heard

and herded maybe in some ways to.

Hey, Tiana, can I just build on that for a minute?

We're talking about like systems thinking and how complex everything is in terms

of soil health and animal health.

And we're taking all of that into account, how do we manage mistrust

or misinformation, where does that fit into the discussion?

Yeah, like who's, whose signals are we, are these signals,

the things that we're seeing that are, that are driving changes?

Are they really, you know, to be trusted?

Um, also organisations themselves.

Miss.

Yeah, that's a good one.

That is a good one.

I, I don't have a real answer for it from a foresight perspective.

Um, from a, I guess a scientific, um, you know, person in the world looking

at things from, yeah, it's a tough one.

I, I don't have an answer for this.

Let me just try to think about it a little bit more.

Well, and, and l let me accelerate it and, and give

you a kind of case example maybe to, to flesh out your thoughts.

'cause I've been dealing with that I've been trying to, uh, uh,

emerge or elevate in the podcast.

And, and I think this is really the first opportunity where I can kind of close the

loop, is the connection between the threat of zoonotic transmission, the, the threat

of the kind of pandemics that people who are literate about this stuff are really

concerned about to the kind of technology or policy of traceability that we need

to be able to monitor and recognise how illness spreads amongst domesticated

animals and the resistance amongst farmers who are swimming in a cultural environment

of conspiracy and disinformation in which they may not be literate or aware

of the kind of zoonotic transmission threats that the scientists are, instead

see regulation and regulatory overreach as something that they need to fight.

So to go to your earlier evocation of something I'm fond of, systems

are breaking while systems are emerging, they're not always

the systems we want or need.

do you, as a foresight practitioner, wade into these contentious spaces?

How do you help facilitate people imagining futures are grounded in

science or are grounded in real risk issues that we ought to be talking

about, are maybe blocked or culturally not accessible because of the nature

of our current political climate?

Well, thanks for clarifying that a little bit more, because I

was expecting, I was thinking, oh my goodness, I have to answer something

so huge that's so complicated.

And, and having a case, a case in point is a, is a good place to start with.

Um, I'm gonna say you meet people where they're at.

You don't need to come with, you shouldn't.

As a foresight practitioner, have futures already baked and presented to people.

They, they have their own futures.

There's, there's, um, one of my colleagues, friends, mentors, Josh

Poer, who works in the foresight space as well said, it's not so much about

what's ahead, but what's in your head.

That is the, the, the sort of essence of, of, of talking to people

about foresight and futures, or not even talking to them about it.

Just get in there and be stealthy about it.

What is in their heads?

Where is this coming from?

And meeting people where they're at is, is super important.

It because it, it establishes their, they already have an established worldview

of what things should look like.

They're holding onto a lot of assumptions about the regulatory environment.

They're hanging on to a lot of conspiracies.

Everything else, I think they need to recognise, or you need to recognise with

them what their lived experiences are in the present and the past, and what their

decisions are for creating the futures.

So a lot of the things that we see, you know, just think about COVID or

even avian influenza, something that's probably a lot, a lot more, you know,

tangible to us, you know, every day.

It's, it's not that these things happen to us, we're creating the

conditions for these things to arise.

So there is a sense of agency you need to go, I believe you need to go back

to people's sense of agency about their worldviews, how they see the future,

and have the, have the discussions with them around what their perspectives are.

Don't come in with something that's already baked.

It's going to be mistrusted right away, because the, the underlying worry for

them is that you are trying to control me.

And that is the opposite effect.

And especially when you've been regulated, um, you know, you've had a

lot of regulations, you've probably been a part of some of the discussions to

develop those policies and regulations.

A lot of the sort of us and them mentality comes out.

Um, and there's a way of just opening up the dialogue and letting what's

in their head come out about how they see the future, how they see the

present, and how they see the past.

So again, meeting people where they're at.

Although you, you just said something incredibly radical that, that

I would love for you to circle back and connect into this larger concept of public

discourse or public perception, which is that we are creating the conditions

for something like Bird flu or COVID or you know, whatever threat may come next.

I think there is still a popular perception to use your word agency, we

have very little, that there is a kind of determinism, an inevitability to the

world instead, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, you were arguing that we are

facing the consequences of our systems and there's a certain responsibility

in acknowledging and addressing that that is a contentious present.

do we allow for that to be part of the larger conversation?

'cause it feels some levels, not forecasting, but futurism is used as a

way to ignore the problems of the present and focus on, say, a mission to Mars.

than acknowledging the challenges our current systems are created.

Yep.

I'll just say yes on that one.

Um, that is, I think a lot of, I think that's how a lot of people feel

that there is a lot of stuff that's already baked in, if you will, and they

don't really have any choice over it.

Um, yes, yes and no.

I, I look for, I look for the seeds of change that are already happening that

are, might be counter waves or Yeah.

Ripple effects.

Not only ripple effects of things like, okay, well we, you know,

we're getting off planet Earth, we're gonna go discover Mars.

And meanwhile, you know, what people really want is a future with healthcare

and schools and, you know, and, and education and everything else.

And why is all this money being spent on off planet exploration, et cetera.

And I don't have a say in any of that.

Yes.

That's how our current, um, system is currently looking right now.

Go ahead.

You wanna say something?

well, I was going to, because you very graciously, uh, uh,

sort of acknowledged the existence of this podcast and the kind of,

uh, uh, aspirations of this podcast.

I think what we can do now is kind of assume that we're addressing sectoral

leadership, assume that we are addressing the people who, at least in Canada,

and, and by my stats, some people in Europe, some people in Latin America

listening to us and are thinking about the future of food and are thinking

about the future of, of our food systems.

so far what I've found inspiring and empowering to the point of agency in

terms of your perspective and, and, and your kind of method of engaging these

subjects, is it does suggest that we are in a position to imagine new systems.

We are in a position to work with organisations to anticipate risk,

even prepare for risk in, in really radical and revolutionary ways.

So how would you, again, to focus it on the case example we're talking

about in terms of animal, uh, disease transmission, human animal

health, and the systems we have.

What would you say to that agricultural AgriFood, sectorial leadership, either

on the role that foresight can play in empowering the sector or more specifically

how it can deal with these challenges?

A a around zoonotic transmission, around the necessary regulatory balance

between the values of independent producers and the knowledge of

epidemiologists who are like, we gotta prepare for these major outbreaks.

Uh, again, uh, what's your thoughts on, on how to help prepare a sector around

some of these very difficult tensions, which, which you are, are, are brilliantly

articulating the context around, let's extend this case example further and

assume that there are people listening to us who had the ability to engage

this level of organisational change.

Okay, well maybe that will take me into sharing something with you.

Um, that I thought of when I started listening to the podcast.

Right.

And, and just said, oh, wait a second.

There's something going on here that, that is quite interesting.

You're bringing in all these voices to the organisation or the organisation.

What I mean is what, what you're doing here in the future, in the future herd.

And they have certain visions of the future.

So let me just, if I can, I'll try to do this in a way that's, um, efficient.

There's something that, a, a foresight method.

I've thought I'm gonna listen to all these podcasts and try to map this

out, but in the meantime, I'll share it with you and you'll see if you, this

is of any interest to you whatsoever.

So what we have is three lines on a page.

This is called the Three Horizons Method.

It was created by Bill Sharp and, um, Tony Hodgkins.

The first horizon is where we are today.

We know that there's something, it's our sort of business as usual.

This could be the AgriFood system.

There's something about it, how we got there, how it was created, and

we know things are changing today.

So that over time, what we currently have is actually going to be

limiting itself in a lot of ways.

The third horizon is what we imagine what the future is, um, how we

want to see the future, what are the futures we want to create.

That could be the visions that we want to create in this case.

You can do it in multiple visions, if you will, if you want to use

these boards in, in that way.

There are, there's stuff happening today.

So if you imagine xxi being time and what's happening today, and the Y axis

being all the patterns that we are seeing, uh, predominantly in the, in today.

So today, the, the business as usual with AgriFood system.

The third horizon is this visionary mindset.

We see that there are signals and seeds that tell us that these

visions of the future are possible.

And so what are they, how do we collect them?

Where do we co, uh, curate them, et cetera.

What is there that tells us that these things are, that these

visions of the future are possible?

And the second is where things get broken, if you will, or it's the messy middle.

We're being a bit entrepreneurial.

You know, we've identified challenges and risks and opportunities, et cetera.

Sorry, there's a lot of questions on here, but I wanted to send this to

you afterwards so that you can, you know, think, think your way through it.

Um, there are things that are directly impacting the system, but

we, we want to move to H three.

We want H two to help us move to H three, the vision of the

future and what are those things.

And the messy middle here is if you're going to be an agent of change, who

are you going to be working with?

Like, what guidance are you going to give yourself to influence these

changes, this sense of agency, this where we can go as a, as, um, as a

new or different, uh, AgriFood system.

Maybe it's not even gonna be called AgriFood anymore.

In between H one and h uh three, there could be competing visions of

what we want, but who are we going to work with and how are we going to

work with, and, you know, where do we use this opportunity, um, leverage

this opportunity to get to the visions, uh, that we, that we want.

That's a very simplified, um, high level overview of what you can do with this

information that you're collecting.

'cause I see what you're doing is you're collecting a lot of insights and how

can they be analysed, um, if you will.

Sorry, going back to my sort of scientific way of, of imagining

things, but how can they be analysed?

What can you do about it?

What are these conversations that are have that you're having that you can use

actually as almost like communications products with farmers, with scientists,

with the regulators, you know, with the university professors, um, all within

this context and community, um, that you're creating in, in future herd.

So that's one way of doing it.

And it just triggered that, it triggered me to think about that when I started

listening to the different podcasts is people are, are talking about change

and they're looking at change in various ways and there is a counter wave or

there's the seeds being planted to tell us that tomorrow could and can

look different than it does today.

Well, and, and what I love about this is it, it,

it, it, it validates agency.

It, it really foregrounds agency, particularly into your point about the

seeds that can be placed, uh, planted today, which obviously resonates with,

uh, agricultural types, also evokes an, an, an interesting thought that I'd, I'd

love to kind of get your reaction to.

You know, I, I appreciate your point about the messy middle, that inevitably

in any grand vision, there's all sorts of compromises and to use entrepreneurial

languages, the necessary pivots that one has to make to, you know, build a

successful initiative or organisation.

But the kind of vision that I'm getting from this interface is it, is it possible

to measure, like, could you engage in a process like this with an organisation

where let's say the stakeholders or the members say, yeah, this is a

vision of the future we really want, and then every a GM you could measure

as to whether the administration, as to whether the leadership is actually

making progress towards that vision.

it, it kind of evokes the, the, the legitimacy crisis that a lot of

agricultural associations face where they, they don't trust that their

leaders are enacting their vision.

And much like Britain is experiencing, they keep throwing out their leaders

so they don't actually make any progress towards the visions that

they have, because they don't have the patience organizationally to allow

any of those seeds to be cultivated.

I, I guess to re-articulate this in the form of a question, I, I love that.

I'm eager to see that, and I'll include it in the show notes for

listeners to also go through.

How is that then used as a tool or a handrail or even just a, a

document to kind of facilitate not just that moment on the X axis,

but the movement forward, right?

As those three graphs kind of dance and interchange with each other.

You know, what I think would be really fun to do is if strategies

were scenarios, if strategies were, were, were future visions.

I know we say a lot, we, we talk a lot about visions within strategies and things

like that, but if we opened up a strategy and it told us a story of multiple

futures, and so to come back to that idea of how could we monitor that scenarios

themselves, you're supposed to use them.

Strategies don't get used that often.

I mean, they do, they, they do from a sense of, okay, it's an anchor to us.

Um, you know, we can go back to it and figure out, figure out what we meant

to do and all that type of stuff.

But imagine if we were picking up a book and it was a, a series of stories about

agriculture, and we could even talk those stories about the, the leaders

within those stories and do the sort of, I guess, typical thing and do a

bit of a dashboard on how that leader is living in those, in those futures.

What that leader is doing.

And every time we, we think we, we have a, almost like a charter, if you

will, of how that leader is reacting within these, um, within these futures.

Um, who are they bringing in, what, what characters are involved.

And then in the present day we go back and say,

are those competent?

Do we have those competencies?

Are they meeting those competencies in order to be.

Emergent in this future as an like a leader that is adapting,

that is, you know, in some cases might just need to survive.

But the, the character that we've built around this leader

are, is it matching up with us?

How can we support those leaders?

And it won't just be one, it'll be multiple leaders.

How can we support them so that they are thriving in those futures?

So as opposed to just, you know, a strategy document that's like,

you know, 2025 to, or 2026, I guess everywhere now 2026 to, um, 2031.

What if we're saying this is, you know, futures of AgriFood and you're

telling the story based on those seeds, based on those signals that have

changed that you're seeing and you've imagining those futures coming forward.

And you're saying that these are the competencies that these

leaders are bringing forward.

These are the things that we're doing.

And then maybe pinpoint back to, did those leaders do those things?

What do we need to do to support so that we keep moving towards H three?

Um, and we keep leveraging what's happening in horizon two to

bring those, uh, futures forward.

Now again, everybody's gonna want a different future, but there is a

way of, of, of, um, acknowledging that that does acknowledge the

multiple futures that we hold.

Um, and it doesn't just go, okay, we're gonna do X, Y, and Z as an action plan.

Um, but we're treating the, the futures as, um, something that we

are living and that they are lived and they are being carried forward.

The, the future is, the future in the past are present.

In the present is what we need to move forward with those,

with those, um, elements.

And that might be even moving forward in a zigzag fashion.

It might be moving forward in a sideways fashion, but it's something,

um, so that's, that's one way.

I think it would just be fun to do something like that.

A strategy document that's a storybook about multiple futures

Right

how those characters would write in character reports.

Right on all.

Although maybe one of the, go ahead Jen, please.

I was just gonna kick out on that because as you're talking about,

you know, the competencies that are needed and the discussions we've been

having around leadership, it's how do we like even to get to that storybook.

There's a whole lot of homework the industry has to do in terms of making sure

our leaders are ready for that kind of leadership, um, and investments into the

skills that are needed to be good leaders.

I'm not disparaging the leaders that are out there, but Jesse's laughing

'cause we've had a couple of podcasts specifically about the leadership

part around the future of agriculture.

Anyway, just me geeking out a little bit.

No, but you can.

You can build What does leadership look like?

Well, I was gonna say, Jen, why, why don't you dig that

a little further into a question?

Only because I, I, I'm about to ask a question that's gonna be a radical

departure from where we are, although still building on the conversation.

And, and I think, Jen, your, your point there about organisational capacity on the

level of individual leaders is important.

Do, do, do you want to either elaborate on that or given that we are starting

to run outta time, take this as an opportunity to throw in another

question that you want to get in.

Um, I'm going to, I'm not gonna pose it as a question.

I'm gonna let you take it where you want to go, only because I'm going to, we are

running out of time and I think what we're really saying is we need Tiana back on.

But anyway.

Happy to come back on.

a

This has

it,

fun.

we, we, we are, uh, just scratching the surface.

And, and, and maybe this isn't a radical departure, but kind of evoked something

a few times that I want to tease out.

And it's the concept of the feedback loop.

And I mean the

Hmm.

loop, both in terms of the foresight process, but it also came up

when we were talking about the dashboard.

And granted the dashboard is kind of the user interface of the moment.

It's kind of the zeitgeist.

And I keep trying to go past it by thinking about what is it that the

dashboard is, is trying to, to address.

And there is something important about the feedback loop, which we could articulate

in the concept of leadership, right?

That the leader goes out, communicates with the membership, gets a whole bunch

of response and feedback goes back, works on the initiative, comes back.

Historically that might have been only once a year at an A GM, uh,

then it became email blasts where it was maybe once a month, once a week.

Social media initially made it instant, but I'm finding most

leaders are retreating from that.

They can't handle a, a high level of a feedback loop.

So again, on an abstract level, where does the feedback loop rest in either

the storytelling or the foresight process or just in trying to make sense of, of

the world that we find ourselves in?

I, I kind of feel it was something that kept coming up in our conversation

and I wanna surface it only to maybe set up the next kind of question that

I'm, I'm leading to with this inquiry.

Okay, so the question is really how do we use the feedback?

Or

I suppose that's coming at us.

yeah.

Where do you see the role of the feedback loop in, in, in describing, I suppose, the

aspirational qualities of the leader we've been talking about in terms of employing

strategy, of, of having the humility to look at the future and to be curious

about the plurality of multiple futures.

I, I, I think Jen Wa was kind of suggest these are rare characteristics

in our existing leadership,

A r.

we, we want to cultivate it.

Yes, I agree.

I agree.

I think that's why, um, it's, it's a good, it's good to challenge our assumptions

about what leadership is and what it should look like, because we have a

certain frame, um, around leaders and we all have our own individual frame of

what it means to be a leader, et cetera.

So there, I think that there's a real, um, in the context that you are working in, in

the AgriFood, it's, it's multi relational.

And I think that's where I was trying to also come back to.

There's, there's parts of the current system that you probably want to keep.

You don't want to break it entirely, right?

So there is this idea of, um, uh, that's a bit of a feedback

from the current, um, situation.

Where are the things that we want to preserve?

So in terms of leadership, there's probably things in there about

collaboration that is very, very normal for people to say.

Um, and, and I think, uh, a thing that we always fall back on because

we do it well sometimes and we don't do it so well in other times.

And when you're looking at the feedback of when you're not doing

it so well, what do you learn?

What are the lessons that I have learned here, um, that I don't keep bringing,

trying to maintain the same system or the same idea of, of leadership.

Just really need to break down those assumptions about what we think that they

are and what we think that they should be.

And that needs to go hand in hand.

And this is where the, the system thinking goes in.

It's like not one thing before the other.

When you're having, you're creating these visions, uh, of the future, the

leaders are emerging and you need to step out of the, what your current

perspective on leadership is to what is emerging out of these multiple futures.

And there are leaders within there, and they won't be, and they hopefully won't

be, if you want to go into a particular space, won't be the same frame that you

had from before, but there might be some things that have been preserved from your

current way of thinking about leaders.

Um, so that's, I think it's just to be, your radar is on all the

time, which can be exhausting.

How, however, once you start seeing how things emerge and the interconnectedness

of things, you cannot unsee it.

And there's just sort of a sense of being suspended a little

bit in the jello of it all.

It, you know, it, it, it wiggles about, but there's some kind of matrix to it.

There's, you know, some understanding of it.

Um, and you are suspended.

And it's a, a, a sense of just, it's not floating, but there's a suspension.

There's a suspension of, of, of what you, what you have thought in the past, what is

seeing, what you're seeing right now and what the possibilities are for the future.

Um, so it's the only way I can sort of think about it, of just like

you're, you're kind of in like in this like little bit of a jelly, but

not, that doesn't have much of a mould that changes its shape quite a bit.

Um, there's one thing that we keep thinking about actually at the, the,

in the association of Professional Futures, and I'll just put it

out there now, is that what are the shapes that the futures need?

What are the shapes we need to be today for the futures?

And we're thinking of it in terms of our competencies of looking at the future, um,

thinking about the future, being with the future in a 10 gramme type of, you know,

these puzzles that it starts out looking like a square when you break it all down.

There's all these different parts and you can move them in multiple

directions and you end up with, you know, thousands of different shapes.

Um, and so yeah, it is very difficult because we have this frame that things

have to be the way that they have to be.

You know, there's, there's, there's just this and there's nothing else.

But the truth is, you know, our lived experiences tell us

something a little bit different.

We need to shape shift.

Well, and, and that is a, a very political statement,

a revolutionary statement.

And, and I think now that we are sort of nearing the end, it's kind of important

to foreground a bias that the three of us share that has kind of underpinned our,

our conversation today, which has been inclusivity, And it, it started with the

concept that there are multiple futures.

And then you also evoked it again when you rightly said that each of us has our

own future and imagines our own future and will experience our own future.

And that inherent inclusivity, it not only frames the brilliant concept you just

described in terms of trying to imagine the shapes that we require for the future,

which on an abstract level is, is, is very, uh, entertaining and intoxicating.

But I, I think our assumption, our value of inclusivity, unfortunately,

is not as widely shared as it should be, uh, either in North American

society or in the AgriFood sector.

You, you are connecting to us today from Europe where, uh, Europe has

its own issues around inclusivity, but certainly on an intellectual

level has a different configuration than North America currently does.

How, much is both inclusivity a prerequisite for success in the

world that you just described?

'cause that's my argument, that you have to have a certain open-mindedness to

make sense of a complicated world to make sense of the systems that we navigate in.

And yet I do observe a lot of people reacting to that information

overload by closing their mind, by employing prejudicial heuristics.

That might again, counter with our, uh, uh, a concept of inclusivity.

I'm rambling again, how do we make that argument on an

It's a.

scale?

Go ahead.

Yeah, it's a, it, well, I think that's, um, it's a,

it's a protection mechanism.

There's a lot of information coming at us, and we feel like the

future is happening to us and we feel like it's being done to us.

And, you know, what, where do we have our agency and things like this and, and the

idea of it's, um, the way we look at it or the way I've looked at it, and I agree

that bias is a really important thing to acknowledge wherever you're coming from

and, um, and recognise it in yourself.

Recognise other people's bias, but don't call them out.

You need to label your, your own bias, uh, as you're going into these things.

Inclu, it's participatory.

That's another way of looking at this, is how to make it

as participatory as possible.

Inclusive inclusivity.

You know, there's, definitions are cages I find in a lot of ways.

So I'm trying to, to, um, balance all this, balance all this

out by using a different word.

But when you try to get as much participation as possible, um, you are

opening up so much more opportunity, and that opportunity for depending

on what worldviews you have, can be quite frightening for, for others.

And so there's all kinds of things that we see happening.

We kind of, it feels like we're repeating ourselves in terms of our, of our history.

We're probably rhyming with the past rather than, than repeating it, uh,

because it's in different contexts and different, uh, periods of time.

But we are, are doing things to kind of shut down, recognise that

that is happening, and do it, do the participatory thing anyways.

Just do it anyways.

Um, yes, that is happening over there.

Does that need to stop you?

I don't think so.

I, I mean, I would be, I would challenge you to keep, keep

going, whatever that looks like.

Um, again, because the beauty of the fact that the future is not

stationary, it is not a pinpoint.

And you can, in some ways move the, the, that needle in, in different places.

It's not set in stone.

It's being created, it's being written.

and, and, and let me follow that up by kind of offering a

case example or offering a challenge.

You know, one of the prejudices that exists within certainly the Canadian,

if not the North American AgriFood sector, is a prejudice against policy,

a prejudice against regulation without realising that there's good policy

and there's bad policy, there's good regulation, there's bad regulation.

How would you, what would be your frame for why participation in policy?

Participation in regulatory conversations is essential to getting past that

kind of cultural prejudice into the realm of agency where people realise

that policy can work for them, that regulation can work for them.

Yeah.

Well, it's an excellent question, and I think policy is in the eye.

I just, policy is in the eye of the beholder, right?

Like how it looks is in the eye of the beholder.

I think that what I, you know, just thinking back to my days in the, in the

Canadian government, um, at the CFIA, where it was really appreciated was there

was the dialogue, um, I'm not sure if it's still happening today, but there was a

dialogue and things weren't prescriptive.

There was an aspiration.

You kind of figure had to figure out how you were gonna get

there, did that work or not?

Maybe that's a, a lesson that we can start, start learning.

But for the, for that lesson to be learned, you need to understand where,

what worked and, and what didn't and, and what could have happened and what

we should have tried, and maybe now do we have, um, uh, an environment

now that, that this will work.

Uh, because you have generations of people moving through different organisations,

whether that's within agriculture, whether it's within government, et cetera.

There needs to be this sort of operating environment and a, a, an environment that

allows for this type of thing to happen.

So I, again, I think it's really important.

You can't, you can, you can put policies out there and everybody ignore them.

And then what's the point?

Or you can put policies out there where people are part of, they, you

can have disagreement and conflict.

I think that's important and healthy, um, and allow for it.

Yet, at the same time, if there is a need for this regulation,

let's put it in place.

But you need to do it with the, I was gonna say consent, but you

need to do it with the, within the rhythm of what is happening, um,

with your, with the stakeholders.

And that includes government as well.

Um, these things aren't just coming out of nowhere.

These things are probably not great problem definition.

So maybe we need to be spending a lot of more time on defining what the problem

is before coming up with the solution.

And part of that problem definition comes from your stakeholders as well.

Government, everywhere, your, your, uh, livestock associations,

everything, you know, they, you do need to take that into consideration.

Right on.

And

answer.

our, well, and so our last question, unless Jen wants to get in, uh,

uh, with one last shot before the buzzer kind of the shoutout part of the show.

And, and you've kind of done this already.

You've, uh, quite wisely cited, uh, some of your colleagues and some of the, uh,

uh, the other people who have inspired some of the methods that you've described.

But who, who are the people you look up to?

Who, who are the people that you kind of follow, that you learn

from, that you think the rest of us should be paying attention to?

A, again, it's not a test.

We're not looking for an exhausted list, just a few names to kind of, uh, uh, allow

us to follow the threads even further.

Yes, absolutely.

Well, I mean, I came into foresight, um, uh, I was gonna say

by stealth a little bit as well, but also by a bit of surprise, uh,

and just before COVID happened.

So, um, I had to do a lot of reading because I thought, okay, well this

is, I'm being tasked to create this.

I know very little I need to start calling people up.

Uh, and so that's exactly what I did.

Uh, so people within, I was already in an international organisation,

so the work that's being done at international organisations like

the OECD and and unesco, those were the first places that I called.

And then there is the everyday futurist and foresight who are

people who are thinking more from a transformational perspective.

Um, and so that is people like Suhail, Ola, and, um, and even my colleagues,

uh, at the Association for Professional Futurists, being on the board there,

they're coming from diverse backgrounds and I learned something from them

every single time because they are either working in private sector,

they're freelancing, they're working with international organisations,

governments, directly NGOs, museums.

I mean, every time somebody says something about their project, I'm just completely

blown away, including universities.

It's like, why aren't we talking about this more?

Why is this not part of our everyday, um, living and education from a young age?

And I think the other person I think of a lot is my daughter because, um, I

learn something from her every day too.

Like, you know, I have to think about how I am raising her and how she's

raising me so that, you know, in seven years from now, she's, you know, the,

uh, has a, has the ability to cope with what is, what is emerging, um,

and what will emerge in terms of, um, the multiple futures before us.

Right on.

Fantastic.

It, it's been, uh, a, a tour to force.

Uh, thank you Tiano.

A as Jen inferred, we have to get you back only, uh, if, because we've just

I'd love to.

the surface of the kind of systems and transformative change

that I think we all need to see happen.

Yes, absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

It was a real pleasure and, and always, you always come out with thought

provoking questions, Jesse, and, and challenge people, and I I really enjoy

listening to this podcast and always enjoy having to catch up with Jen as well.

So thanks again.

Right on.

. These are the kinds of conversations that I aspire to have here on the podcast.

And Tiana absolutely exceeded expectations, uh, not just because

she showed up having done the homework and listening to other episodes, uh,

let alone engaging in a foresight, uh, exercise, which I'll share the link,

uh, to the Miro board in the notes.

But the generosity, the curiosity, the, the deep thought and reflection

that guests like Tiana bring to this podcast is unprecedented.

Certainly for me, in terms of my experience as a learner in terms of, uh,

my desire to organise and share knowledge.

But most importantly, what Tiana was talking about today, in terms

of multiple futures, in terms of inclusive and pluralistic futures.

'cause if anything, that's the antidote to the depressing times that some

of us find ourselves in hope isn't about being naive or even optimistic.

It's about believing in futures that are within our grasp, that are not only

achievable, but are morally responsible things we should be working towards.

And I really came out of this conversation with Tiana thinking that there is much

more I can be doing to deal, uh, uh, in manifesting the futures I desire

in enabling a plurality of futures for me, my family, my friends, and for

you, uh, fellow members of the herd.

And of course, I, I do wanna end on the idea that the future herd

as a title has multiple meanings.

On the one hand, we're a herd of which Tiana is now a member,

uh, much to our benefit.

But it's also, we hear the future.

We are listening carefully to our guests, asking them the kind of

questions that push their thinking, that push their insights, that

anticipate the kinds of multiple inclusive futures that we all require.

So we are here actively listening to the future.

The future is heard, and if you keep listening, there'll be

much more of the future to here in the days and weeks to come.

I am happy to say we've got a bit of a backlog of episodes.

Uh, so we are gonna try to release maybe two a week for the next little while.

Uh, and so I encourage you, uh, to share these episodes with your friends.

Give us ratings on your podcast platform of choice.

We're now posting clips to YouTube.

More incentive to subscribe to our channel there.

And let us know if you have any ideas for future guests, future topics, maybe

even interest in future livestream sessions here for the future herd.

Uh, so much opportunity, so much potential, especially when we have such

fantastic people like Tiana, uh, to talk to, as well as our co-host, Jen, uh,

who, uh, of course played a big role in making today's episode possible.

So thank you, Jen.

And, uh, thanks to all of you for tuning in, watching listening, sharing,

and we'll see you again real soon.