00:00:00.000 –> 00:00:03.240

I wonder how much of the facilitator has to like

00:00:03.240 –> 00:00:06.820

bring in this cult of personality. Because Matt,

00:00:06.960 –> 00:00:10.740

it’s not just ending the workshop, right? It’s

00:00:10.740 –> 00:00:13.019

saying, okay, now we got to think in a different

00:00:13.019 –> 00:00:14.800

way. And now we’re going to take what you did

00:00:14.800 –> 00:00:16.699

and think in a different way now, you know, because

00:00:16.699 –> 00:00:18.800

we have like creativity at the start and then

00:00:18.800 –> 00:00:22.620

causality and puzzle solving in the middle, you

00:00:22.620 –> 00:00:24.940

know, and then we get all the way to others.

00:00:25.000 –> 00:00:28.660

So I wonder how much of that. is really facilitated

00:00:28.660 –> 00:00:32.939

by, yeah, embracing a very specific profile of

00:00:32.939 –> 00:00:34.460

emotional. I don’t want to say manipulation,

00:00:34.479 –> 00:00:36.640

but sometimes it almost feels like that because

00:00:36.640 –> 00:00:44.560

we have to get through it. Back to you. PASS. I don’t

00:00:44.560 –> 00:00:46.920

know. I don’t know what to do with that, Megan.

00:00:47.179 –> 00:00:51.280

No, that’s great. It’s a great observation. I

00:00:51.280 –> 00:00:53.219

don’t know. Just cut this out. I don’t know.

00:00:53.259 –> 00:00:57.450

I don’t know. I’m sorry. A cult of personality?

00:00:57.670 –> 00:00:59.490

You got me stuck on that. That’s where you got

00:00:59.490 –> 00:01:02.310

me stuck. Welcome to Scenarios for Tomorrow,

00:01:02.509 –> 00:01:04.629

a podcast where we turn tomorrow’s headlines

00:01:04.629 –> 00:01:07.530

into today’s thought experiments. This first

00:01:07.530 –> 00:01:09.930

series includes conversations with the authors

00:01:09.930 –> 00:01:13.230

of our latest book, Improving and Enhancing Scenario

00:01:13.230 –> 00:01:16.379

Planning, Futures Thinking Volume. from Edward

00:01:16.379 –> 00:01:20.099

Elgar Publishing. I’m your host, Dr. Megan Crawford.

00:01:20.239 –> 00:01:22.340

And throughout this first series, you’ll hear

00:01:22.340 –> 00:01:25.099

from my guests, the numerous global techniques

00:01:25.099 –> 00:01:27.799

for practicing and advancing scenario planning.

00:01:27.980 –> 00:01:40.659

Enjoy. Today, we are lucky to have two guest

00:01:40.659 –> 00:01:44.319

authors with us. First is Nicholas Rowland, who

00:01:44.319 –> 00:01:47.140

is a distinguished professor of sociology at

00:01:47.140 –> 00:01:50.540

Penn State University in the U .S. He is also

00:01:50.540 –> 00:01:53.359

the academic trustee on Penn State’s Board of

00:01:53.359 –> 00:01:56.280

Trustees. Nicholas studies governance, the future,

00:01:56.480 –> 00:02:00.840

and the conduct of science. Matthew Spaniel is

00:02:00.840 –> 00:02:04.159

a senior researcher of strategic foresight in

00:02:04.159 –> 00:02:07.420

the Department of People and Technology at Roskilde

00:02:07.420 –> 00:02:11.039

University in Denmark. Matt has curated a YouTube

00:02:11.039 –> 00:02:14.060

channel called the Futurist and Foresight Papers

00:02:14.060 –> 00:02:17.080

Explained, where he has about a dozen or so scholars

00:02:17.080 –> 00:02:19.860

talking about their papers, of which both Nick

00:02:19.860 –> 00:02:22.419

and I have both been guests. So I highly recommend

00:02:22.419 –> 00:02:25.280

checking that out. Links will be provided in

00:02:25.280 –> 00:02:28.849

the show notes. So welcome both. It’s great to

00:02:28.849 –> 00:02:32.629

have you here. Thank you. It’s a pleasure to

00:02:32.629 –> 00:02:37.009

be here. We have had the opportunity, more than

00:02:37.009 –> 00:02:40.509

many, to catch up at our various international

00:02:40.509 –> 00:02:43.710

conferences and events that have gone around.

00:02:44.030 –> 00:02:46.650

But as it happens, I understand that the two

00:02:46.650 –> 00:02:49.490

of you have known one another for some time,

00:02:49.590 –> 00:02:54.199

right? Indeed, that’s the case. In fact, scholars

00:02:54.199 –> 00:02:57.699

that have seen our work probably don’t know that

00:02:57.699 –> 00:02:59.259

Matt and I actually went to college together

00:02:59.259 –> 00:03:01.759

so many years ago. And in fact, during our freshman

00:03:01.759 –> 00:03:03.960

year, we coincidentally lived right across the

00:03:03.960 –> 00:03:07.319

hall from one another. And so once we graduated,

00:03:07.479 –> 00:03:09.259

our paths went a slightly different direction.

00:03:09.259 –> 00:03:12.960

I went directly into a sociology graduate program.

00:03:13.740 –> 00:03:16.439

But then later on, we kind of got connected.

00:03:16.680 –> 00:03:18.539

Matt, do you want to take over what you did?

00:03:18.960 –> 00:03:21.560

So I went into finance and banking for a while

00:03:21.560 –> 00:03:24.379

and then did a master’s in international development

00:03:24.379 –> 00:03:26.939

in South America and came back and ended up at

00:03:26.939 –> 00:03:28.759

the Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies.

00:03:30.240 –> 00:03:34.860

All right. That’s basically when we sort of rejoined

00:03:34.860 –> 00:03:37.719

forces, let’s say. And so we’ve been writing

00:03:37.719 –> 00:03:39.379

ever since. And that was about 10 years ago.

00:03:39.819 –> 00:03:42.620

Do you all have any idea about how many papers

00:03:42.620 –> 00:03:46.659

you have together or books? Papers total? Oh,

00:03:46.680 –> 00:03:49.550

gosh, I don’t know. At least a dozen. Yeah. Probably

00:03:49.550 –> 00:03:54.550

pushing 20. It could be. Nice. Nice and enviable

00:03:54.550 –> 00:03:57.449

professional relationship there. We’re all looking

00:03:57.449 –> 00:03:59.430

for that. In fact, our university, our department

00:03:59.430 –> 00:04:03.689

rather, just had one called Finding Your Research

00:04:03.689 –> 00:04:07.810

Life Partner. Something like that. I thought

00:04:07.810 –> 00:04:10.650

about it with that one. I was like, no, but that’s

00:04:10.650 –> 00:04:15.629

cute. So I’m grateful that we could find this

00:04:15.629 –> 00:04:17.569

time to chat because I know it was really difficult

00:04:17.569 –> 00:04:20.389

for all of us to get our schedules aligned, especially

00:04:20.389 –> 00:04:23.610

since we’re all teaching. We’re at exam times,

00:04:23.709 –> 00:04:28.110

all this kind of stuff. But I really, I wanted

00:04:28.110 –> 00:04:30.819

1. talk specifically with y ‘all, not just because

00:04:30.819 –> 00:04:32.779

you’re authors on the book, but because of what

00:04:32.779 –> 00:04:36.360

you brought to the book. And it has to do with

00:04:36.360 –> 00:04:39.360

this latest shift in the focus in our field of

00:04:39.360 –> 00:04:42.819

scenario planning. So as mentioned in the introduction,

00:04:43.240 –> 00:04:45.620

we’ve just published this book together about

00:04:45.620 –> 00:04:48.660

scenario planning in the 21st century. We’re

00:04:48.660 –> 00:04:51.279

right here at the quarter century mark in 2025.

00:04:51.839 –> 00:04:54.420

We’d like to talk a little bit more about that.

00:04:54.829 –> 00:04:58.370

we understand that not all of our listeners may

00:04:58.370 –> 00:05:01.970

be familiar with even the concept or the terms

00:05:01.970 –> 00:05:06.029

scenario planning, though some may have heard

00:05:06.029 –> 00:05:09.550

more about us since the pandemic when our field

00:05:09.550 –> 00:05:14.060

got… extremely popular but one of the motivations

00:05:14.060 –> 00:05:16.860

to this podcast as well as was to the book was

00:05:16.860 –> 00:05:19.639

to bring our world of futures and foresight science

00:05:19.639 –> 00:05:24.439

outside the walls of academia where within understandably

00:05:24.439 –> 00:05:27.879

the language is closely controlled but knowledge

00:05:27.879 –> 00:05:30.579

ends up being not as easily to access as we generally

00:05:30.579 –> 00:05:33.540

wish it to be which just means we’re here to

00:05:33.540 –> 00:05:37.019

have a chat with the public yeah sounds great

00:05:38.060 –> 00:05:41.180

All right. Well, your chapter then is titled

00:05:41.180 –> 00:05:45.259

Examining Emotion in the Facilitation of Scenario

00:05:45.259 –> 00:05:48.980

Planning. Now with that, let’s start with a little

00:05:48.980 –> 00:05:51.899

softball question, right? So what is, in your

00:05:51.899 –> 00:05:54.779

professional experiences, what is scenario planning?

00:05:57.000 –> 00:06:01.680

I’m happy to start that one. So historically

00:06:01.680 –> 00:06:03.579

speaking, there’s been a little bit of confusion

00:06:03.579 –> 00:06:08.379

around the sort of absolute or the absolute definition

00:06:08.379 –> 00:06:11.120

of scenario planning. And that’s because, at

00:06:11.120 –> 00:06:14.959

least since the 1990s, there wasn’t academic

00:06:14.959 –> 00:06:17.939

consensus on what the term scenario itself meant.

00:06:18.100 –> 00:06:19.800

And that’s something that Matt and I actually

00:06:19.800 –> 00:06:21.579

picked up as one of the first papers that we

00:06:21.579 –> 00:06:24.120

wrote together was. trying to understand this

00:06:24.120 –> 00:06:26.759

problem about the confusion over the definition

00:06:26.759 –> 00:06:29.560

of scenarios in the scenario planning literature.

00:06:29.879 –> 00:06:31.939

And so what we did is we basically scoured the

00:06:31.939 –> 00:06:35.459

literature for every single example where scenario

00:06:35.459 –> 00:06:38.019

was defined. So these would be statements like

00:06:38.019 –> 00:06:42.519

scenarios are blank or a scenario is. And we

00:06:42.519 –> 00:06:45.399

basically amalgamated them all together and found

00:06:45.399 –> 00:06:48.860

that scenarios have six characteristics. The

00:06:48.860 –> 00:06:52.329

first one. of course, is that they’re temporally

00:06:52.329 –> 00:06:55.829

rooted in the future. And then secondarily, they

00:06:55.829 –> 00:06:58.810

almost always involve reference to some kind

00:06:58.810 –> 00:07:02.529

of external force in that context, maybe a political

00:07:02.529 –> 00:07:04.930

force or an economic force. There’s a bunch of

00:07:04.930 –> 00:07:07.889

variability there, of course. From there, we

00:07:07.889 –> 00:07:10.290

found that scholars make the argument that any

00:07:10.290 –> 00:07:13.550

scenario should be obviously possible, but to

00:07:13.550 –> 00:07:16.629

some extent also very plausible. and that the

00:07:16.629 –> 00:07:20.629

appropriate form for them to take is a narrative,

00:07:20.709 –> 00:07:24.089

or to put it more plainly, a story, only it’s

00:07:24.089 –> 00:07:26.029

set in the future, obviously not in the past.

00:07:26.850 –> 00:07:29.930

From there, we know that they exist in sets,

00:07:30.009 –> 00:07:32.870

and that they’re meant inside of those sets,

00:07:32.990 –> 00:07:36.430

this is the final criteria, to be meaningfully

00:07:36.430 –> 00:07:39.230

different from one another, so that there’s not

00:07:39.230 –> 00:07:41.470

a lot of overlap in the scenarios. They’re related,

00:07:41.649 –> 00:07:46.410

but they cover different ground. We’ve worked

00:07:46.410 –> 00:07:48.990

on what the word scenario means in there, although

00:07:48.990 –> 00:07:51.329

Matt is the one with experience actually conducting

00:07:51.329 –> 00:07:55.069

scenario planning in facilitated workshops. So

00:07:55.069 –> 00:07:57.230

maybe you want to take over the planning part

00:07:57.230 –> 00:08:00.839

for this one, Matt? It’s a bit of a kind of a

00:08:00.839 –> 00:08:04.680

missed marked nomer for the actual field that

00:08:04.680 –> 00:08:07.480

we work in, right? So planning assumes that you’ve

00:08:07.480 –> 00:08:09.379

got a budget and you’ve got a project and you’re

00:08:09.379 –> 00:08:11.879

trying to implement that project where when you’ve

00:08:11.879 –> 00:08:14.339

got a set of scenarios sitting in front of you

00:08:14.339 –> 00:08:15.740

and you’re trying to figure out what they mean,

00:08:15.839 –> 00:08:18.439

we’re looking for a few different types of other

00:08:18.439 –> 00:08:21.639

types of outcomes rather than just plans for

00:08:21.639 –> 00:08:25.189

the future. So the first thing is that we’re

00:08:25.189 –> 00:08:28.170

looking to ideate options. So if you think of

00:08:28.170 –> 00:08:31.110

the scenario as the puzzle, what’s the solution

00:08:31.110 –> 00:08:33.710

to that puzzle? And the solution to these puzzles

00:08:33.710 –> 00:08:36.389

are often going to come out in this world of,

00:08:36.450 –> 00:08:39.289

say, strategic options or ideas or actionable

00:08:39.289 –> 00:08:43.610

initiatives or something like that. But when

00:08:43.610 –> 00:08:46.480

you put that together again, The scenarios come

00:08:46.480 –> 00:08:49.360

back into the discussion again when you want

00:08:49.360 –> 00:08:51.799

to start talking about their ability to simulate

00:08:51.799 –> 00:08:56.919

the outcomes of those options. So imagine that

00:08:56.919 –> 00:08:59.679

you find some solutions to these types of puzzles

00:08:59.679 –> 00:09:03.179

and as you think of them and how they would unfold

00:09:03.179 –> 00:09:06.220

under these conditions set forth by the scenarios,

00:09:06.519 –> 00:09:08.799

right? You’re in this kind of, you’re stress

00:09:08.799 –> 00:09:10.799

testing your ideas, right? You’re trying to figure

00:09:10.799 –> 00:09:13.899

out what is the… the options that we have for

00:09:13.899 –> 00:09:16.200

ways forward. So we’re not setting a plan, a

00:09:16.200 –> 00:09:18.320

particular singular plan into place, but we’re

00:09:18.320 –> 00:09:21.299

looking for a divergence of different possibilities

00:09:21.299 –> 00:09:24.120

that we can move our organization into the future.

00:09:25.320 –> 00:09:30.000

Okay. All right. So you’re honestly the first

00:09:30.000 –> 00:09:36.429

group or individuals to break up. concept of

00:09:36.429 –> 00:09:38.649

scenario planning between the artifacts right

00:09:38.649 –> 00:09:41.490

the output that comes at the end pretty much

00:09:41.490 –> 00:09:44.289

but then the process itself as well and what

00:09:44.289 –> 00:09:47.389

it can be and yeah i’ve cited that first paper

00:09:47.389 –> 00:09:50.669

it is a pretty popular one um and in fact i’ll

00:09:50.669 –> 00:09:53.409

put up your decision tree that you mentioned

00:09:53.409 –> 00:09:58.250

nicholas at the start because um it’s a it’s

00:09:58.250 –> 00:10:01.210

one of it’s actually one of the graphics uh figures

00:10:01.210 –> 00:10:03.870

i use to teach how to illustrate qualitative

00:10:03.870 –> 00:10:07.529

data to the PhDs and stuff, because decision

00:10:07.529 –> 00:10:10.210

trees are just really nice. They’re really intuitive

00:10:10.210 –> 00:10:14.129

and understandable. I can’t take credit for that.

00:10:14.269 –> 00:10:16.690

Matt thought of the flowchart idea. I thought

00:10:16.690 –> 00:10:20.769

so, Matt. I use it in a course called concept

00:10:20.769 –> 00:10:25.210

analysis. So you can use that format, right?

00:10:25.370 –> 00:10:27.389

So the concept analysis or concept engineering

00:10:27.389 –> 00:10:30.909

also follows a similar type of method, if you

00:10:30.909 –> 00:10:33.240

will. Right. So there are ways to do this kind

00:10:33.240 –> 00:10:35.799

of work independently of scenario planning. Right.

00:10:35.840 –> 00:10:38.580

I wrote a paper on greenwashing with some students

00:10:38.580 –> 00:10:42.100

that we use a very similar type of method. And

00:10:42.100 –> 00:10:45.820

I find that PhDs actually get a ton of value

00:10:45.820 –> 00:10:47.360

out of something like that because you’re teaching

00:10:47.360 –> 00:10:50.159

them how to do what’s called a scoping review.

00:10:50.360 –> 00:10:52.559

Right. Which is like a miniature literature review

00:10:52.559 –> 00:10:55.840

for students. And so it’s quite a really nice

00:10:55.840 –> 00:11:01.129

way to get inducted into the PhD. or the research

00:11:01.129 –> 00:11:03.809

field, right, by being able to work with the

00:11:03.809 –> 00:11:06.570

literature in a very abridged fashion before

00:11:06.570 –> 00:11:09.750

you go out and do, say, more systematized or

00:11:09.750 –> 00:11:12.970

large literature reviews. Right. And it gets

00:11:12.970 –> 00:11:15.750

cited. The paper actually gets cited a lot as

00:11:15.750 –> 00:11:18.950

a way to do that rather than for its value as

00:11:18.950 –> 00:11:22.149

kind of defining scenario in itself. So that’s

00:11:22.149 –> 00:11:25.509

interesting you bring that up. Well, well, there

00:11:25.509 –> 00:11:28.950

you go. I think it all fits well. And I just

00:11:28.950 –> 00:11:31.289

realized. In this moment, I never told y ‘all

00:11:31.289 –> 00:11:35.110

that I could use your decision tree as a regular

00:11:35.110 –> 00:11:43.049

teaching example. So let’s see if we can find

00:11:43.049 –> 00:11:47.730

out about similar exciting, unexpected insights

00:11:47.730 –> 00:11:53.730

with your new approach here. One thing I do recognize

00:11:53.730 –> 00:11:56.409

in your work, and there’s a few out there in

00:11:56.409 –> 00:12:00.799

our field where you consistently keep and when

00:12:00.799 –> 00:12:03.179

I say you I mean the both of you I’m trying not

00:12:03.179 –> 00:12:05.879

to be too southern here but y ‘all promote together

00:12:05.879 –> 00:12:11.080

um really like I don’t want to I’m trying to

00:12:11.080 –> 00:12:15.539

be not too flowery in this but you really bring

00:12:15.539 –> 00:12:18.679

in new stuff okay you bring in new concepts that

00:12:18.679 –> 00:12:20.740

maybe we’ve all been talking about a bit in the

00:12:20.740 –> 00:12:23.799

past or we we you know we chat about between

00:12:23.799 –> 00:12:26.519

talks at conferences and stuff but but y ‘all

00:12:26.519 –> 00:12:29.299

are really some One of the teams that gets there

00:12:29.299 –> 00:12:33.980

first and paves the way. So this chapter, I remember

00:12:33.980 –> 00:12:38.379

talking with each of y ‘all independently. And

00:12:38.379 –> 00:12:41.759

this idea just sort of came out. And I remember

00:12:41.759 –> 00:12:44.240

saying. What do you kind of just have sitting

00:12:44.240 –> 00:12:46.960

on the sidelines that you haven’t found a platform

00:12:46.960 –> 00:12:49.659

yet to talk about? And that’s where this conversation,

00:12:49.779 –> 00:12:53.039

at least with me, came up for the book. So I

00:12:53.039 –> 00:12:55.340

did some searching afterwards and I repeatedly

00:12:55.340 –> 00:12:57.500

have done this for the last two years when we

00:12:57.500 –> 00:13:01.100

first discussed your chapter, which is about

00:13:01.100 –> 00:13:04.659

examining the emotional elements in the facilitation

00:13:04.659 –> 00:13:09.100

of scenario planning. Right. So I just before

00:13:09.100 –> 00:13:12.629

this. interview here right i did it again i went

00:13:12.629 –> 00:13:15.590

and i did a broad search of scenario planning

00:13:15.590 –> 00:13:18.830

um as it’s represented both in the public sphere

00:13:18.830 –> 00:13:21.990

and in the academic scholarship because these

00:13:21.990 –> 00:13:24.649

are very very different representations sometimes

00:13:24.649 –> 00:13:28.549

and and maybe we rail against that a bit too

00:13:28.549 –> 00:13:31.269

much i don’t know maybe not enough but what i

00:13:31.269 –> 00:13:34.759

find is they do align in some key concepts, right?

00:13:34.860 –> 00:13:36.679

So if you look for scenario planning in the private

00:13:36.679 –> 00:13:39.779

sector, you’ll see terms like foresight and forecasting,

00:13:40.159 –> 00:13:42.919

uncertainty, risk, things like that come up.

00:13:43.039 –> 00:13:46.919

In the academics world, you’ll hear those plus

00:13:46.919 –> 00:13:50.019

decision -making. In the private sector, you’ll

00:13:50.019 –> 00:13:53.220

hear more about agility and adaptiveness. But

00:13:53.220 –> 00:13:56.940

what is almost exclusively missing? In fact,

00:13:56.940 –> 00:13:58.840

I didn’t get any hits, to be honest, except for

00:13:58.840 –> 00:14:01.980

your publication was a discussion of the concept

00:14:01.980 –> 00:14:05.519

of emotions, or as we see in social sciences,

00:14:05.539 –> 00:14:11.679

affect, right, in the scenario space. And I am

00:14:11.679 –> 00:14:17.820

just as interested as to why this is not being

00:14:17.820 –> 00:14:21.129

brought up more now as I was before. Because

00:14:21.129 –> 00:14:24.870

foresight is rooted in the human agent. It’s

00:14:24.870 –> 00:14:27.750

humans engaging in foresight thinking. It’s humans

00:14:27.750 –> 00:14:30.769

engaging in scenario planning. And it’s humans

00:14:30.769 –> 00:14:34.929

that are the facilitators. So we know that humans,

00:14:35.110 –> 00:14:40.049

we as the species, are almost exclusively motivated

00:14:40.049 –> 00:14:44.309

by our emotions. And so we need to bring that

00:14:44.309 –> 00:14:48.529

into the dialogue. So I would like to pass the

00:14:48.529 –> 00:14:52.029

ball back to you now. What got you started on

00:14:52.029 –> 00:14:54.429

this idea of looking at the emotional aspect

00:14:54.429 –> 00:14:58.309

of scenario planning? Sure. I’m happy to start.

00:14:59.450 –> 00:15:02.210

Three things come to mind right away. One of

00:15:02.210 –> 00:15:07.990

them is that a couple years prior, we had been

00:15:07.990 –> 00:15:11.769

invited to a book about cognition. The link then

00:15:11.769 –> 00:15:14.090

from cognition to emotion ended up happening

00:15:14.090 –> 00:15:18.490

in this paper because the way that emotion is,

00:15:18.710 –> 00:15:21.350

at least the most frequently, but I do agree

00:15:21.350 –> 00:15:24.129

that it’s extremely rare, especially in any coherent

00:15:24.129 –> 00:15:28.710

way, despite the obviousness of emotion in the

00:15:28.710 –> 00:15:31.870

human drama that is every group level facilitation,

00:15:32.009 –> 00:15:35.389

planning, practice, strategy, development, and

00:15:35.389 –> 00:15:38.830

so on and so forth, is in terms of hot and cold

00:15:38.830 –> 00:15:42.940

cognition. That’s the jargon from higher education.

00:15:43.620 –> 00:15:46.299

So could you walk us through that? Yeah, yeah.

00:15:46.320 –> 00:15:49.620

No, happily. Hot cognition is talking about during

00:15:49.620 –> 00:15:52.899

a, especially decision -making processes, times

00:15:52.899 –> 00:15:55.340

when basically emotions are running high. That’s

00:15:55.340 –> 00:15:59.480

the hot part. And that it’s seen as interrupting

00:15:59.480 –> 00:16:03.399

cognition. That is, is that it discourages rational.

00:16:04.480 –> 00:16:07.320

thinking in part because the emotions take over.

00:16:07.379 –> 00:16:09.500

They’re sort of unregulated emotion. And then

00:16:09.500 –> 00:16:11.080

there’s this other thing called cold cognition.

00:16:11.220 –> 00:16:13.539

And you can imagine it’s basically just the opposite

00:16:13.539 –> 00:16:17.100

where you’re being like, you know, cold, very

00:16:17.100 –> 00:16:19.580

rational, and you’re keeping things, you know,

00:16:19.580 –> 00:16:21.820

keeping the emotion level low. And the belief

00:16:21.820 –> 00:16:25.639

in that line of research is basically that hot

00:16:25.639 –> 00:16:30.000

cognition is bad and it interrupts. and inhibits

00:16:30.000 –> 00:16:32.440

rational decision -making. And then there’s cold

00:16:32.440 –> 00:16:35.039

cognition, which seems to facilitate it in some

00:16:35.039 –> 00:16:39.360

way. Now, Matt and I weren’t super satisfied

00:16:39.360 –> 00:16:42.039

with that when we thought about our own experiences

00:16:42.039 –> 00:16:44.659

in this place, but that’s how we got to emotion.

00:16:44.860 –> 00:16:46.620

It was through cognition. It was being asked

00:16:46.620 –> 00:16:49.379

to write a book chapter about cognition. And

00:16:49.379 –> 00:16:51.799

secondarily, though, as soon as I read between

00:16:51.799 –> 00:16:53.779

the lines that even though those two terms are

00:16:53.779 –> 00:16:56.580

all about cognition, they’re also all about emotion,

00:16:56.799 –> 00:17:00.460

too, since that’s the major variable force that’s

00:17:00.460 –> 00:17:03.679

in the background. Right. And so being a very,

00:17:03.759 –> 00:17:06.160

I would say, a classically trained sociologist

00:17:06.160 –> 00:17:08.279

that took a lot of theory courses and everything

00:17:08.279 –> 00:17:11.900

like that, sociology of emotions has emerged

00:17:11.900 –> 00:17:15.579

in the mid 1970s and has been regularly utilized

00:17:15.579 –> 00:17:19.829

in order to look at. how emotions fit into social

00:17:19.829 –> 00:17:22.829

structure, how they were driven by shared norms,

00:17:22.930 –> 00:17:25.250

especially within organizations, and how they

00:17:25.250 –> 00:17:28.670

play a role in group -level processes, of which

00:17:28.670 –> 00:17:30.750

the facilitation of scenario planning is, of

00:17:30.750 –> 00:17:34.569

course, a great example. So for me, that wasn’t

00:17:34.569 –> 00:17:36.589

a leap at all, even though they didn’t seem to

00:17:36.589 –> 00:17:39.470

be connected in my understanding of those literatures.

00:17:40.089 –> 00:17:42.269

But then the third part, this is the real part.

00:17:42.329 –> 00:17:44.309

This is the heart of it all. is when I first

00:17:44.309 –> 00:17:46.289

started working again, remember how I told you,

00:17:46.309 –> 00:17:48.089

Matt and I kind of, we went to college together,

00:17:48.150 –> 00:17:49.910

then had like a period of time where we did our

00:17:49.910 –> 00:17:52.329

own separate work and then came back together

00:17:52.329 –> 00:17:55.650

once Matt was earning his PhD. When I would listen

00:17:55.650 –> 00:17:57.730

to Matt, and he had a lot of scenario playing

00:17:57.730 –> 00:18:01.390

experience already, in between the lines all

00:18:01.390 –> 00:18:04.769

the time was language about emotional regulation,

00:18:05.009 –> 00:18:09.029

you know, and that when, that was the most interesting

00:18:09.029 –> 00:18:11.890

thing, if you ask me. Bring a scenario planner

00:18:11.890 –> 00:18:13.349

in front of you. They’ll talk about emotion,

00:18:13.569 –> 00:18:16.289

no problem. Ask them to write about it. It doesn’t

00:18:16.289 –> 00:18:21.410

exist. For some reason, the very humanness of

00:18:21.410 –> 00:18:24.750

some of it just gets kind of taken out. And so

00:18:24.750 –> 00:18:28.670

honestly, I came to that conclusion in part just

00:18:28.670 –> 00:18:30.769

listening to Matt about when he was frustrated

00:18:30.769 –> 00:18:34.369

or when he had clients that were in a really

00:18:34.369 –> 00:18:36.650

negative emotional state and almost refused to

00:18:36.650 –> 00:18:39.609

play along and things like that. And so that’s

00:18:39.609 –> 00:18:43.519

the truth. behind it all, honestly. And so since

00:18:43.519 –> 00:18:45.059

I brought that up, Matt, do you want to pick

00:18:45.059 –> 00:18:49.019

up on that one? I think Nick was able to see

00:18:49.019 –> 00:18:51.480

that between the lines and that’s quite astute

00:18:51.480 –> 00:18:55.670

of him. I think a lot of times when… Scenario

00:18:55.670 –> 00:18:57.809

planners, consultants are called into organizations.

00:18:57.890 –> 00:19:01.450

You’re really not faced with a very bright, sunny

00:19:01.450 –> 00:19:04.509

day, right? Oftentimes, they’re struggling. And

00:19:04.509 –> 00:19:06.269

if they could solve the problems that they’re

00:19:06.269 –> 00:19:08.670

facing, they would have solved them. But they’re

00:19:08.670 –> 00:19:10.910

bringing in external help to do this often. And

00:19:10.910 –> 00:19:14.250

so there’s some issues that are already kind

00:19:14.250 –> 00:19:17.430

of unraveling inside the organizations. Perhaps

00:19:17.430 –> 00:19:19.829

they’ve lost a client. Perhaps they’ve lost a

00:19:19.829 –> 00:19:21.569

major supplier, and they’re trying to build back

00:19:21.569 –> 00:19:26.640

their resilience, for example. But one of the

00:19:26.640 –> 00:19:30.799

main tasks that I see is the facilitator has

00:19:30.799 –> 00:19:35.299

is when you’re walking into a situation in an

00:19:35.299 –> 00:19:39.240

organization in such a state, how is it that

00:19:39.240 –> 00:19:45.039

we can kind of make them do things differently,

00:19:45.240 –> 00:19:48.460

right? And so part of the emotional management

00:19:48.460 –> 00:19:53.890

stuff tries to shift them from… the state that

00:19:53.890 –> 00:19:58.109

they’re in to something where we can kind of

00:19:58.109 –> 00:20:00.970

jointly find new solutions together. And I’m

00:20:00.970 –> 00:20:03.329

a big proponent of the idea that that requires

00:20:03.329 –> 00:20:06.869

fun, right? So as an emotional state in itself,

00:20:07.009 –> 00:20:11.049

I believe that we’re having fun when we’re solving

00:20:11.049 –> 00:20:13.549

problems, when we’re seeing new things, when

00:20:13.549 –> 00:20:16.089

we’re collaborating with one another, when we’re

00:20:16.089 –> 00:20:18.130

building on other people’s ideas, when we’re

00:20:18.130 –> 00:20:21.920

iterating. And so… emotions can then work in

00:20:21.920 –> 00:20:23.920

our favor right when we can get that excitement

00:20:23.920 –> 00:20:27.940

going and and consultants and facilitators out

00:20:27.940 –> 00:20:29.660

there would recognize those moments that when

00:20:29.660 –> 00:20:31.700

you get that conversation and it’s moving in

00:20:31.700 –> 00:20:33.660

the right direction and and people are really

00:20:33.660 –> 00:20:36.819

kind of ping -ponging and doing a great job Our

00:20:36.819 –> 00:20:39.519

job as facilitators can be just to kind of hide

00:20:39.519 –> 00:20:42.019

over in the corner and not say anything, right?

00:20:42.099 –> 00:20:44.880

To get out of their way because they’re finding

00:20:44.880 –> 00:20:48.920

ways and doing things and reigniting that conversation

00:20:48.920 –> 00:20:51.640

that they’ve had a hard time having, right? Over

00:20:51.640 –> 00:20:57.079

time as they kind of slip and move and say drift

00:20:57.079 –> 00:21:00.720

in the directions that they’re going. The two

00:21:00.720 –> 00:21:04.059

of you paint a pretty, I think, accurate picture.

00:21:04.480 –> 00:21:08.640

of what a lot of us experience in the scenario

00:21:08.640 –> 00:21:11.680

consulting space right so we’re entering a room

00:21:11.680 –> 00:21:15.000

where we are already recognized because they

00:21:15.000 –> 00:21:17.859

brought us in as the scenario planning expert

00:21:17.859 –> 00:21:20.779

we’re taking that consultant role and often they’re

00:21:20.779 –> 00:21:23.380

strangers right we might know one or two people

00:21:23.380 –> 00:21:26.299

in the room because that’s who we’ve been setting

00:21:26.299 –> 00:21:29.069

up the intervention and the workshops with but

00:21:29.069 –> 00:21:30.710

a lot of the other people a lot of the other

00:21:30.710 –> 00:21:34.329

executives will be strangers and they have this

00:21:34.329 –> 00:21:37.190

way that they they everybody comes with their

00:21:37.190 –> 00:21:39.509

expectations in short right and those expectations

00:21:40.990 –> 00:21:43.450

As you say, like when we talk about this, we

00:21:43.450 –> 00:21:46.390

do, we imply a lot. Sometimes explicitly we’re

00:21:46.390 –> 00:21:49.410

saying, you know, they’re grumpy or disruptive

00:21:49.410 –> 00:21:52.930

or, you know, they’re very friendly or shy or,

00:21:52.990 –> 00:21:55.349

you know, and some of these are behaviors I’m

00:21:55.349 –> 00:21:57.410

largely mentioning, but they’re rooted in, you

00:21:57.410 –> 00:22:01.109

know, these assumptions of emotions. Right. And

00:22:01.109 –> 00:22:03.829

then our reactions to them, because it’s our

00:22:03.829 –> 00:22:06.630

role. We constantly talk about going back to

00:22:06.630 –> 00:22:09.410

what we say versus what we publish that Nicholas

00:22:09.410 –> 00:22:14.170

was mentioning is we present ourselves, though,

00:22:14.190 –> 00:22:17.589

as these sort of objective people, right? Like

00:22:17.589 –> 00:22:19.450

the way when the doctor comes in, we assume the

00:22:19.450 –> 00:22:21.009

doctor is going to be objective. When the expert

00:22:21.009 –> 00:22:22.430

comes in, we assume they’re going to have some

00:22:22.430 –> 00:22:26.690

sort of, you know, rational, if you will, look.

00:22:26.890 –> 00:22:29.410

And I will push back maybe later on the difference

00:22:29.410 –> 00:22:33.299

between emotional and rational. I really want

00:22:33.299 –> 00:22:35.920

to get to your work first. I really want to focus

00:22:35.920 –> 00:22:38.299

on that. So I do like this picture that you’re

00:22:38.299 –> 00:22:40.680

painting here. And it’s something I agree. We

00:22:40.680 –> 00:22:47.039

need to be more maybe forthcoming with acknowledging

00:22:47.039 –> 00:22:52.519

what these pieces are. And all of us have a social

00:22:52.519 –> 00:22:54.579

science background. I think maybe that’s why

00:22:54.579 –> 00:22:59.000

some of us are more ready. to recognize that

00:22:59.000 –> 00:23:00.519

than others. Like you say, Nicholas, you were

00:23:00.519 –> 00:23:02.279

the one who started seeing these between the

00:23:02.279 –> 00:23:05.579

lines things. Matt, you’re the one who was speaking

00:23:05.579 –> 00:23:09.740

about these things to start with. So let’s take

00:23:09.740 –> 00:23:12.019

that picture, right? You’ve got at least one

00:23:12.019 –> 00:23:15.279

facilitator in the room. You’ve got a whole bunch

00:23:15.279 –> 00:23:18.200

of people who generally know each other and have

00:23:18.200 –> 00:23:21.779

a completely expectation of working with each

00:23:21.779 –> 00:23:24.980

other, which we are about to disrupt as the facilitator

00:23:24.980 –> 00:23:29.259

in the room. Now, when it comes to our, we talk

00:23:29.259 –> 00:23:31.420

about group think, we talk about group dynamics.

00:23:31.539 –> 00:23:34.339

Well, here’s a group emotions, right? How do

00:23:34.339 –> 00:23:37.079

you see these emotions, our emotions influencing

00:23:37.079 –> 00:23:42.079

the decision -making process that is happening

00:23:42.079 –> 00:23:44.980

or hope to happen when we do these scenario planning

00:23:44.980 –> 00:23:49.359

workshops? So I think that’s a very interesting

00:23:49.359 –> 00:23:53.859

question, what you’re asking here about. How

00:23:53.859 –> 00:23:56.299

does it influence the decision making that goes

00:23:56.299 –> 00:24:00.019

on in the room? In those scenario planning workshops,

00:24:00.279 –> 00:24:03.200

it’s not like they’re taking critical, like organizational

00:24:03.200 –> 00:24:06.599

type of decisions either. I mean, they’re simulating

00:24:06.599 –> 00:24:08.920

potential options through these different types

00:24:08.920 –> 00:24:10.900

of conditions and the scenarios. And I think

00:24:10.900 –> 00:24:14.160

so it’s more of an exploratory than it is some

00:24:14.160 –> 00:24:17.640

kind of like closing down kind of part of the

00:24:17.640 –> 00:24:22.130

design diamond, if you will. But there’s plenty

00:24:22.130 –> 00:24:24.990

of people that are coming in with loaded agendas,

00:24:24.990 –> 00:24:28.190

with something that they have to get done, with

00:24:28.190 –> 00:24:31.670

maybe a group of stakeholders inside the organizations

00:24:31.670 –> 00:24:35.109

that have their demands on the table. So there’s

00:24:35.109 –> 00:24:38.509

a lot of pressure that we can’t necessarily know

00:24:38.509 –> 00:24:41.609

all the intricacies of. And this is a challenge

00:24:41.609 –> 00:24:45.150

because these manifest themselves in all sorts

00:24:45.150 –> 00:24:50.130

of different ways. Being, you know, the person

00:24:50.130 –> 00:24:53.470

that doesn’t want to play along, right? And that

00:24:53.470 –> 00:24:56.730

can be any role, right? That can be a C -suite

00:24:56.730 –> 00:24:59.769

member. That could be a CFO, CEO, or that could

00:24:59.769 –> 00:25:03.250

be one of the external members, right? And it’s

00:25:03.250 –> 00:25:05.230

a delicate moment and it’s a fragile moment,

00:25:05.390 –> 00:25:08.789

right? And so trying to get them to back up and,

00:25:08.789 –> 00:25:12.720

you know. downplay if you will a little bit of

00:25:12.720 –> 00:25:15.980

the seriousness of the of the episode to take

00:25:15.980 –> 00:25:18.420

them into this kind of hypothetical this you

00:25:18.420 –> 00:25:21.059

know these aren’t real stakes we’re talking about

00:25:21.059 –> 00:25:23.670

right these are just going through some of these

00:25:23.670 –> 00:25:26.630

right thought experiments and trying to move

00:25:26.630 –> 00:25:29.369

them away from this whole, we’re going to make

00:25:29.369 –> 00:25:32.250

a huge decision right now, right. That’s going

00:25:32.250 –> 00:25:34.730

to impact all you, your agenda and all your stakeholders

00:25:34.730 –> 00:25:37.529

to something more. Let’s just explore, you know,

00:25:37.529 –> 00:25:40.170

some of the, the different options that we have.

00:25:40.910 –> 00:25:43.710

Right. And so that’s a big moment, right. To

00:25:43.710 –> 00:25:46.930

get those people, if we call it the buy -in,

00:25:47.029 –> 00:25:48.650

right. To get the buy -in, to get the group moving

00:25:48.650 –> 00:25:51.750

forward together, to, to. To be able to do this

00:25:51.750 –> 00:25:55.789

kind of thinking. Big surprise. I agree with

00:25:55.789 –> 00:26:00.329

Matthew. Having observed him facilitate numerous

00:26:00.329 –> 00:26:04.710

times, I think he’s exactly right. And so maybe

00:26:04.710 –> 00:26:07.750

returning to that idea that emotion and rationality

00:26:07.750 –> 00:26:09.990

are sometimes somehow locked together in this

00:26:09.990 –> 00:26:14.509

hot and cold cognition modeling. I don’t know

00:26:14.509 –> 00:26:20.470

that I’ve ever seen a facilitator. actively try

00:26:20.470 –> 00:26:26.190

to bring the emotional state down in order to

00:26:26.190 –> 00:26:28.710

get to rationality. And in fact, when it’s the

00:26:28.710 –> 00:26:31.529

most successful, I often find what’s going on

00:26:31.529 –> 00:26:33.809

is they’re creating what we might now call like

00:26:33.809 –> 00:26:38.769

a safe space or a space where you can have hypothetical

00:26:38.769 –> 00:26:42.809

thought experiments where nobody is 100 % committed

00:26:42.809 –> 00:26:45.029

to any which direction. And like Matt said before,

00:26:45.089 –> 00:26:48.329

it’s exploratory in nature. And then you get

00:26:48.329 –> 00:26:53.589

people into, for lack of a better phrase, a somewhat,

00:26:53.769 –> 00:26:58.230

I would call it like heightened engagement. Because

00:26:58.230 –> 00:27:00.809

I don’t think it involves less emotion. I don’t

00:27:00.809 –> 00:27:04.049

think it involves, I’m not trying to get Goldilocks

00:27:04.049 –> 00:27:05.809

and the Three Bears here and say that it’s either

00:27:05.809 –> 00:27:07.650

too little or too much, but you got to get it

00:27:07.650 –> 00:27:10.710

just right. But I think there is an emotional

00:27:10.710 –> 00:27:14.970

state that can be induced. by creating an environment

00:27:14.970 –> 00:27:17.650

where people feel free to share and make guesses

00:27:17.650 –> 00:27:20.630

and maybe say something that isn’t the brightest,

00:27:21.069 –> 00:27:22.930

you know, as they’re just kind of exploring the

00:27:22.930 –> 00:27:25.829

future, but they’re engaged and they’re fully

00:27:25.829 –> 00:27:29.390

willing to, I don’t know, for lack of a better

00:27:29.390 –> 00:27:33.950

word, play, right? Like I was saying, yeah. Yeah,

00:27:33.970 –> 00:27:35.869

yeah, that’s exactly right. And so I don’t think

00:27:35.869 –> 00:27:38.009

it’s not cold cognition. I think it’s something

00:27:38.009 –> 00:27:41.349

more like what Matt is saying about getting people

00:27:41.349 –> 00:27:44.430

engaged and giving them a… enough room and

00:27:44.430 –> 00:27:48.089

enough emotional space so that they don’t feel

00:27:48.089 –> 00:27:50.430

like if they make a mistake they’re going to

00:27:50.430 –> 00:27:53.269

be judged by their colleagues or a situation

00:27:53.269 –> 00:27:56.309

where unlike in regular business operations maybe

00:27:56.309 –> 00:27:58.410

your boss brings up an idea and it hasn’t been

00:27:58.410 –> 00:28:00.829

the greatest idea that he or she has ever heard

00:28:00.829 –> 00:28:05.390

you know and you create some space to get out

00:28:05.390 –> 00:28:07.809

of the internal politics. This is probably the

00:28:07.809 –> 00:28:10.470

key. Get out of the internal politics that are

00:28:10.470 –> 00:28:12.549

blocking the ability of this organization to

00:28:12.549 –> 00:28:15.190

do this on their own. I think that’s the emotional

00:28:15.190 –> 00:28:17.970

regulation piece that gets delivered when someone

00:28:17.970 –> 00:28:21.329

like Matt is facilitating. There’s another model

00:28:21.329 –> 00:28:23.029

that we’ll often find also in the literature

00:28:23.029 –> 00:28:26.170

regarding Daniel Kahneman’s thinking fast and

00:28:26.170 –> 00:28:28.250

slow, right? Where he’s got the system one and

00:28:28.250 –> 00:28:30.650

system two thinking. And I think it’s got some

00:28:30.650 –> 00:28:33.569

similarity what we’re thinking about in the hot

00:28:33.569 –> 00:28:35.930

and cold cognition. But the hot and cold cognition

00:28:35.930 –> 00:28:41.470

is more about emotionally laden decisions again.

00:28:41.549 –> 00:28:44.619

And where the thinking hot… Or the thinking

00:28:44.619 –> 00:28:48.000

fast and slow is about the time or the speed

00:28:48.000 –> 00:28:52.180

it takes you to make a decision. And I also think

00:28:52.180 –> 00:28:58.940

that this is also an unfair, say, depiction of

00:28:58.940 –> 00:29:01.380

what’s going on in these workshops. You know,

00:29:01.420 –> 00:29:05.059

I’ll advocate for a Goldilocks, you know, third

00:29:05.059 –> 00:29:09.119

way that if we can switch this form that we communicate

00:29:09.119 –> 00:29:14.059

into. collaborative strategic conversation right

00:29:14.059 –> 00:29:18.299

where we’re using creativity and all of you know

00:29:18.299 –> 00:29:21.500

our imaginations and all of our puzzle solving

00:29:21.500 –> 00:29:25.500

abilities right to apply to these types of you

00:29:25.500 –> 00:29:28.500

know organizational questions then it does become

00:29:28.500 –> 00:29:31.359

something that’s really engaging right and we

00:29:31.359 –> 00:29:33.019

can really build and use each other’s momentum

00:29:33.019 –> 00:29:36.750

and so The positive side of this, it doesn’t

00:29:36.750 –> 00:29:39.569

necessarily require that it’s a hot or cold or

00:29:39.569 –> 00:29:43.650

a mode one or mode two when we can have that.

00:29:43.730 –> 00:29:47.210

And we feel like we can find that. And some people

00:29:47.210 –> 00:29:49.549

will find that flow. Right. But that’s often

00:29:49.549 –> 00:29:52.910

depicted as an individual type of activity where

00:29:52.910 –> 00:29:55.210

you find that flow when you’re in that in the

00:29:55.210 –> 00:29:57.910

zone kind of thinking. But we can also have that

00:29:57.910 –> 00:30:00.589

interpersonally. And we don’t find that very

00:30:00.589 –> 00:30:04.750

much in the literature. Hmm. Sounds like a future

00:30:04.750 –> 00:30:12.190

paper. Definitely. Um, well, the, I, yeah, let’s

00:30:12.190 –> 00:30:15.869

see. So many thoughts. Um, I do like the way

00:30:15.869 –> 00:30:18.930

you said, Matt, that, um, one of the things,

00:30:18.950 –> 00:30:21.230

one of the things you look for or is enjoyable

00:30:21.230 –> 00:30:26.029

or is aimed for in, um, in these strategic planning

00:30:26.029 –> 00:30:28.809

places, spaces, right. With the scenario teams,

00:30:29.089 –> 00:30:32.769

um, as a facilitator is it’s. like trying to

00:30:32.769 –> 00:30:35.250

manufacture, not manufacture, trying to excite

00:30:35.250 –> 00:30:37.890

fun, right? Trying to get some funness at which

00:30:37.890 –> 00:30:40.589

then, as you, Nicholas, say, it becomes almost

00:30:40.589 –> 00:30:44.769

like a hot, hot, trying to think of the word,

00:30:44.789 –> 00:30:47.329

and it left me, hot cognition, right? Emotions

00:30:47.329 –> 00:30:49.970

start running high, but not necessarily in a

00:30:49.970 –> 00:30:52.490

bad way. And then, as you say, Matt, you just

00:30:52.490 –> 00:30:54.069

kind of get out of the way and just let them

00:30:54.069 –> 00:30:55.849

run. And I think we’ve all been there before,

00:30:55.869 –> 00:30:57.190

where it’s like, no, no, no, I don’t want to

00:30:57.190 –> 00:30:59.650

disrupt this flow. And it puts me in mind of

00:30:59.650 –> 00:31:01.630

the old Model T cars, where you had to like,

00:31:01.789 –> 00:31:04.650

wind them up and sometimes it took a while and

00:31:04.650 –> 00:31:07.069

that first crank was always the hardest because

00:31:07.069 –> 00:31:09.869

the machine’s the coldest and that the way oil

00:31:09.869 –> 00:31:11.509

used to be back then and lubricants would be

00:31:11.509 –> 00:31:13.369

very thick and you really had to heat that up

00:31:13.369 –> 00:31:15.710

but once it went you would not touch it again

00:31:15.710 –> 00:31:17.250

you wouldn’t want to touch it again you would

00:31:17.250 –> 00:31:23.410

disrupt what um the the machines um now um self

00:31:23.410 –> 00:31:26.329

-perpetuating functioning was so or flow was

00:31:26.329 –> 00:31:29.930

so yeah to right and then we have to disrupt

00:31:29.930 –> 00:31:32.049

it because you know somebody set a time plan

00:31:32.049 –> 00:31:35.950

right for the day you gotta go and you have to

00:31:35.950 –> 00:31:38.170

go up there and say oh you know i’m really sorry

00:31:38.170 –> 00:31:40.309

that i have to interrupt such you know interesting

00:31:40.309 –> 00:31:45.630

conversations but now we have to move on so let’s

00:31:45.630 –> 00:31:47.829

go with that the speaking you know saying the

00:31:47.829 –> 00:31:50.470

things that we don’t really say in the professional

00:31:50.470 –> 00:31:53.970

spaces, like in our publications. I wonder in

00:31:53.970 –> 00:31:56.069

this one thing that I’ve wondered since we first

00:31:56.069 –> 00:31:58.309

talked about this topic of emotions in the spaces

00:31:58.309 –> 00:32:00.450

and what it means for the client, what it means

00:32:00.450 –> 00:32:03.529

for scenario planning broadly is I wonder how

00:32:03.529 –> 00:32:07.369

much of the facilitator has to like bring in

00:32:07.369 –> 00:32:10.109

this cult of personality almost, because we talk

00:32:10.109 –> 00:32:12.890

about fighting against that sometimes when we

00:32:12.890 –> 00:32:14.869

have the decision makers in the room, like we

00:32:14.869 –> 00:32:16.930

say, you know, the boss or the CEO or something

00:32:16.930 –> 00:32:20.779

who is. creating this sort of blockage, right?

00:32:20.960 –> 00:32:24.799

But it’s because they’ve cultivated this sort

00:32:24.799 –> 00:32:27.839

of like cultural, corporate culture, personality

00:32:27.839 –> 00:32:29.960

type, and then everybody’s responding to them.

00:32:30.059 –> 00:32:32.839

And one of our colleagues, George Wright, he’s

00:32:32.839 –> 00:32:35.119

talked about taking those people out of the room

00:32:35.119 –> 00:32:37.839

for a while so everybody else will talk. And

00:32:37.839 –> 00:32:40.380

I’ve wondered how much of this that we’re talking

00:32:40.380 –> 00:32:44.309

about requires us to… manufacture that within

00:32:44.309 –> 00:32:47.250

ourselves to this cult of personality. And I’m

00:32:47.250 –> 00:32:49.170

like, no, no, no, trust me. We just got to get

00:32:49.170 –> 00:32:51.069

through the first windup, right? We just got

00:32:51.069 –> 00:32:52.730

to get to the pitch. We just got to get to that

00:32:52.730 –> 00:32:55.869

and then just letting them go and then keeping

00:32:55.869 –> 00:32:58.970

that momentum going. Because Matt, it’s not just

00:32:58.970 –> 00:33:02.890

ending the workshop, right? It’s saying, okay,

00:33:02.950 –> 00:33:05.509

now we got to think in a different way. And now

00:33:05.509 –> 00:33:06.950

we’re going to take what you did and think in

00:33:06.950 –> 00:33:08.470

a different way now, you know, because we have

00:33:08.470 –> 00:33:11.609

like creativity at the start and then causality.

00:33:12.480 –> 00:33:14.599

puzzle solving in the middle you know and then

00:33:14.599 –> 00:33:17.559

we get all the way to others so i wonder how

00:33:17.559 –> 00:33:21.599

much of that is really facilitated by yeah embracing

00:33:21.599 –> 00:33:25.339

a very specific profile of emotional i don’t

00:33:25.339 –> 00:33:27.119

want to say manipulation but sometimes it almost

00:33:27.119 –> 00:33:29.539

feels like that because we have to get through

00:33:29.539 –> 00:33:43.339

it back to you I don’t have to do that, Megan.

00:33:43.680 –> 00:33:47.859

No, that’s great. Great observation. I don’t

00:33:47.859 –> 00:33:50.039

know. Just cut this out. I don’t know. I don’t

00:33:50.039 –> 00:33:53.799

know. I’m sorry. That’s a cult of personality.

00:33:53.920 –> 00:33:55.980

You got me stuck on that. That’s where you got

00:33:55.980 –> 00:33:58.680

me stuck. And you probably get Nick stuck, too,

00:33:58.740 –> 00:34:00.619

on cult of personality. Because we were thinking

00:34:00.619 –> 00:34:04.000

maybe we could go to the difference between emotion

00:34:04.000 –> 00:34:05.799

work and emotional labor if we haven’t been there.

00:34:05.819 –> 00:34:08.039

Have we been there yet? No, we haven’t. We’ve

00:34:08.039 –> 00:34:12.409

just barely touched upon that. With that in mind,

00:34:12.630 –> 00:34:17.989

you have these divisions that you have touched

00:34:17.989 –> 00:34:21.110

upon, which is the difference between, and it

00:34:21.110 –> 00:34:22.829

links into what we were just talking about, but

00:34:22.829 –> 00:34:25.309

I really wonder, it links between emotional labor,

00:34:25.469 –> 00:34:30.429

right, and emotional work. And again, along with

00:34:30.429 –> 00:34:32.849

the broader conversation about emotions, not

00:34:32.849 –> 00:34:37.090

really discussed. These not only… in and of

00:34:37.090 –> 00:34:39.309

themselves, but the difference between them.

00:34:39.389 –> 00:34:42.429

So with this idea of cult personalities and getting

00:34:42.429 –> 00:34:44.329

people going and all that kind of stuff, how

00:34:44.329 –> 00:34:49.969

do you see these differences? Interesting. Especially

00:34:49.969 –> 00:34:52.889

in the context of a facilitator, particularly.

00:34:53.630 –> 00:34:57.250

Right, right. I think these two terms get us

00:34:57.250 –> 00:35:01.110

some additional purchase in not only the way

00:35:01.110 –> 00:35:02.690

we think about it, but also the way we would

00:35:02.690 –> 00:35:06.380

examine this from a scientific perspective. The

00:35:06.380 –> 00:35:09.219

first piece that you brought up, I’m actually

00:35:09.219 –> 00:35:10.780

going to go in reverse because I think that might

00:35:10.780 –> 00:35:13.400

be better to start with work. So when we talk

00:35:13.400 –> 00:35:15.179

about emotion work, and again, keep in mind,

00:35:15.199 –> 00:35:17.619

this is the mid -1970s in sociology when these

00:35:17.619 –> 00:35:22.420

ideas first emerged. Emotion work, work is not

00:35:22.420 –> 00:35:24.719

meant to be, even though the other one, labor

00:35:24.719 –> 00:35:26.980

and work, you almost think they must be synonymous

00:35:26.980 –> 00:35:29.539

because those words could stand in for one another.

00:35:30.170 –> 00:35:33.309

When scholars use the terminology of emotion

00:35:33.309 –> 00:35:35.610

work, they’re simply referring to the effort

00:35:35.610 –> 00:35:40.550

that you or I or anyone else inside or outside

00:35:40.550 –> 00:35:43.769

of an organization is asked to exert on a daily

00:35:43.769 –> 00:35:50.690

basis in order to manage and control their expression

00:35:50.690 –> 00:35:53.750

and presentation of emotion during human interaction.

00:35:53.969 –> 00:35:59.349

So all the time we are… filtering what emotions

00:35:59.349 –> 00:36:02.170

we’re going to allow to move into the exterior

00:36:02.170 –> 00:36:05.969

part of our person or ourself and what emotions

00:36:05.969 –> 00:36:09.090

we’re going to keep, you know, tight to the chest

00:36:09.090 –> 00:36:11.889

or keep a poker face as they sometimes say, right?

00:36:12.050 –> 00:36:15.269

Now, all of us are doing that all the time, right?

00:36:15.349 –> 00:36:17.369

I mean, there are definitely moments for, you

00:36:17.369 –> 00:36:19.849

know, I’m sure lots of people know these moments

00:36:19.849 –> 00:36:22.369

where inside you’re really frustrated or really

00:36:22.369 –> 00:36:24.949

upset with somebody, but on the outside, nobody

00:36:24.949 –> 00:36:27.760

would know. So this is emotion work. And the

00:36:27.760 –> 00:36:29.400

reason they call it work is that’s the effort

00:36:29.400 –> 00:36:33.219

that you have to deliver in order to do that.

00:36:33.659 –> 00:36:35.800

Emotional labor, though, this is now we’re in

00:36:35.800 –> 00:36:39.360

the labor market. So we’re talking about occupations,

00:36:39.360 –> 00:36:41.579

work inside of organizations, things like that.

00:36:42.199 –> 00:36:46.420

And emotional labor then refers to the economic

00:36:46.420 –> 00:36:50.460

aspects where emotion is an explicit part of

00:36:50.460 –> 00:36:55.539

your job. To deliver your labor effectively and

00:36:55.539 –> 00:36:58.820

in exchange for money, you need to manage the

00:36:58.820 –> 00:37:02.400

emotional states of others and, of course, yourself.

00:37:02.699 –> 00:37:04.659

And in some lines of work, this is really obvious.

00:37:05.099 –> 00:37:08.260

So in one of the banner examples in early sociology,

00:37:08.739 –> 00:37:13.380

there was the case of airline stewards and airline

00:37:13.380 –> 00:37:16.460

stewardesses, where when, for example, a plane

00:37:16.460 –> 00:37:19.929

experiences some turbulence. Their job is to

00:37:19.929 –> 00:37:22.610

literally go into the cabin and manage people’s

00:37:22.610 –> 00:37:24.670

emotional state so that they’re calm and everything

00:37:24.670 –> 00:37:29.150

is collected, right? The truth is, loads of professions

00:37:29.150 –> 00:37:31.889

are asked to do emotional labor all the time,

00:37:31.889 –> 00:37:33.969

but you’d never find it in their job descriptions,

00:37:34.309 –> 00:37:38.190

right? Nobody’s going to say that, for example,

00:37:38.190 –> 00:37:40.449

a contemporary job, since we’re all faculty members,

00:37:40.630 –> 00:37:45.210

a contemporary aspect of the faculty workload

00:37:45.210 –> 00:37:47.570

right now is managing the emotional states of

00:37:47.570 –> 00:37:50.889

students. Sometimes that’s in the classroom where

00:37:50.889 –> 00:37:54.409

you want to keep discussions productive and so

00:37:54.409 –> 00:37:56.889

that they don’t devolve. Other times, and I know

00:37:56.889 –> 00:37:58.670

scholars are talking about this more than ever

00:37:58.670 –> 00:38:02.329

right now, in, for example, office hours and

00:38:02.329 –> 00:38:04.329

outside of the classroom where faculty members

00:38:04.329 –> 00:38:07.610

are being asked to act as kind of like de facto

00:38:07.610 –> 00:38:10.090

psychological counselors for their students and

00:38:10.090 –> 00:38:11.849

things like that. And so you’d never see that

00:38:11.849 –> 00:38:14.909

in a job description. But I think people are

00:38:14.909 –> 00:38:17.170

getting the sense that that is emerging as more

00:38:17.170 –> 00:38:20.670

of a norm. And so that’s the distinction. Emotion

00:38:20.670 –> 00:38:22.449

work, we’re all doing it all the time. It has

00:38:22.449 –> 00:38:24.929

a lot to do with how we keep some emotions in

00:38:24.929 –> 00:38:27.449

and let others out, sometimes selectively or

00:38:27.449 –> 00:38:29.849

even strategically. And then emotional labor

00:38:29.849 –> 00:38:33.630

is where your pay is effectively tied to either

00:38:33.630 –> 00:38:35.670

creating an emotional state in somebody else,

00:38:35.710 –> 00:38:39.530

like as a server, say at a restaurant. Or as

00:38:39.530 –> 00:38:42.789

part of managing, say, your clients or your customers

00:38:42.789 –> 00:38:46.550

or something like that. But you brought up the

00:38:46.550 –> 00:38:50.750

idea of how does that work with a cult of personality?

00:38:51.269 –> 00:38:55.090

You know, when you’ve got a, let’s say, a big

00:38:55.090 –> 00:38:58.369

wig in the room while you’re trying to get people

00:38:58.369 –> 00:39:02.409

into a more dynamic and imaginary space to deal

00:39:02.409 –> 00:39:04.030

with some of the thought experiments that you’re

00:39:04.030 –> 00:39:06.550

really challenged with in the organization. And

00:39:06.550 –> 00:39:09.929

sometimes that gets clogged up. If the current

00:39:09.929 –> 00:39:12.210

strategy is being designed by someone who’s elite

00:39:12.210 –> 00:39:13.869

in the organization, you’re going to find out

00:39:13.869 –> 00:39:16.130

when they come up with ideas during brainstorming

00:39:16.130 –> 00:39:18.809

practices, they’re often the best idea in the

00:39:18.809 –> 00:39:21.829

room. And the reason why, of course, is that

00:39:21.829 –> 00:39:24.730

there are political consequences. Even though

00:39:24.730 –> 00:39:27.309

you try to create, for the best of your ability,

00:39:27.429 –> 00:39:30.789

a safe space to be exploratory in these facilitating

00:39:30.789 –> 00:39:39.579

practices, there are realities. There are employees

00:39:39.579 –> 00:39:41.860

and organizations that don’t want to look dumb

00:39:41.860 –> 00:39:44.239

in front of their colleagues. They don’t want

00:39:44.239 –> 00:39:49.219

to say something that might become, I don’t know,

00:39:49.239 –> 00:39:52.119

used against them in the future. They might find

00:39:52.119 –> 00:39:56.860

that if they make too many recommendations that

00:39:56.860 –> 00:39:58.980

are unpopular, it might come up in their next

00:39:58.980 –> 00:40:01.920

round of employee review or something like that.

00:40:04.650 –> 00:40:08.409

I think it’s undersold exactly how much at risk

00:40:08.409 –> 00:40:11.130

some employees put when we asked them to do some

00:40:11.130 –> 00:40:13.570

of this more exploratory work, especially in

00:40:13.570 –> 00:40:17.030

the context of their peers. And so I did my best

00:40:17.030 –> 00:40:19.369

to touch on the call to personality thing. That’s

00:40:19.369 –> 00:40:22.510

a hard one. That’s a hard one. The truth is,

00:40:22.570 –> 00:40:28.469

because that is so rarely talked about in any

00:40:28.469 –> 00:40:30.789

systematic way, I feel like part of it is we

00:40:30.789 –> 00:40:33.210

don’t even have the analytical vocabulary yet

00:40:33.210 –> 00:40:36.340

to fully. parse out some of those issues. I don’t

00:40:36.340 –> 00:40:39.539

disagree. I think that they’re real. And I feel

00:40:39.539 –> 00:40:43.760

like I know what that is when I hear it in a

00:40:43.760 –> 00:40:46.539

more casual conversation. But getting at that

00:40:46.539 –> 00:40:49.880

empirically, that would be interesting. Really,

00:40:49.900 –> 00:40:52.199

really interesting. Well, you know, I’ll tell

00:40:52.199 –> 00:40:56.000

you what first got me thinking about that as

00:40:56.000 –> 00:40:59.760

even like a mover and shaker in the room, you

00:40:59.760 –> 00:41:05.429

know, of this. of the scenario space is when

00:41:05.429 –> 00:41:09.449

i was learning with from george my supervisor

00:41:09.449 –> 00:41:12.429

and he had his ways i mean he had been doing

00:41:12.429 –> 00:41:14.570

it for ages so he was obviously teaching me through

00:41:14.570 –> 00:41:18.269

his methods which involved his even just physical

00:41:18.269 –> 00:41:20.070

gestures you know just the way he walks around

00:41:20.070 –> 00:41:21.710

the room all this kind of stuff just everything

00:41:21.710 –> 00:41:23.670

about him and i was absorbing it like a sponge

00:41:23.670 –> 00:41:26.590

as you’re just you should right this is how it

00:41:26.590 –> 00:41:28.510

works and you’re the student and you’re being

00:41:28.510 –> 00:41:31.769

mentored um and i really said none of it no,

00:41:31.789 –> 00:41:34.769

not none of it, but a lot of what I thought would

00:41:34.769 –> 00:41:36.849

work for me because I was just parroting him

00:41:36.849 –> 00:41:40.369

in these very effective ways as is not a bad

00:41:40.369 –> 00:41:41.750

thing, but I was noticing they weren’t working

00:41:41.750 –> 00:41:44.829

for me. And then I started, all right, I’m a

00:41:44.829 –> 00:41:46.590

researcher. I’m just going to systematically

00:41:46.590 –> 00:41:49.409

try and figure out, take notes and figure out

00:41:49.409 –> 00:41:53.710

which parts aren’t working and why. And I, I

00:41:53.710 –> 00:41:57.090

mean, it’s hard to pin down a lot of what I’m

00:41:57.090 –> 00:42:01.210

about to say. But my mitigations and alterations

00:42:01.210 –> 00:42:05.010

helped support what I thought I was seeing, which

00:42:05.010 –> 00:42:09.170

is George is an older man in the room who commands

00:42:09.170 –> 00:42:11.590

authority. And I was a younger female in the

00:42:11.590 –> 00:42:16.139

room. attempting to command authority. And even

00:42:16.139 –> 00:42:18.820

when I do, when I figured out how to bring that

00:42:18.820 –> 00:42:21.300

authority into the space, which goes back to

00:42:21.300 –> 00:42:22.699

something you were saying, Nicholas, about we

00:42:22.699 –> 00:42:24.300

got to get them to trust us first. We got to

00:42:24.300 –> 00:42:26.659

get them to trust the process. And then, you

00:42:26.659 –> 00:42:28.800

know, we go to what Matt was saying, which is

00:42:28.800 –> 00:42:30.880

then we can get them going. And then, you know,

00:42:30.900 –> 00:42:33.179

they start going right. Just to get to that trust

00:42:33.179 –> 00:42:36.900

part, I had to create a whole other version of

00:42:36.900 –> 00:42:39.940

myself. It’s not that it’s inauthentic. but it

00:42:39.940 –> 00:42:42.800

definitely wasn’t George and it definitely wasn’t

00:42:42.800 –> 00:42:44.579

who I was bringing in before. And that’s why

00:42:44.579 –> 00:42:46.380

I started thinking like, okay, well maybe this

00:42:46.380 –> 00:42:51.420

is like, I need them to sort of halo effect me

00:42:51.420 –> 00:42:53.679

a bit. And then I can just pass the ball back

00:42:53.679 –> 00:42:56.360

to them and get out of the way. Right. So that’s

00:42:56.360 –> 00:42:59.079

what got me thinking about it. And that as core

00:42:59.079 –> 00:43:03.199

is yeah. A lot of emotional, not work, just work

00:43:03.199 –> 00:43:05.980

for me and labor, but like specifically trying

00:43:05.980 –> 00:43:12.159

1. watch theirs and sort of facilitate their

00:43:12.159 –> 00:43:14.519

emotional spaces as well. At least that’s how

00:43:14.519 –> 00:43:18.760

I was interpreting it. I don’t know. We’re breaking

00:43:18.760 –> 00:43:21.260

new ground here. These weren’t part of our questions.

00:43:22.300 –> 00:43:25.400

I think that you’re on the right. I think you’re

00:43:25.400 –> 00:43:28.039

absolutely on the right track. And interestingly

00:43:28.039 –> 00:43:29.940

enough, despite the fact that you would think

00:43:29.940 –> 00:43:33.460

all of that should be a core part of the training

00:43:33.460 –> 00:43:36.500

process for getting people ready for the field,

00:43:37.550 –> 00:43:40.230

I mean, you just do not have an emotional management

00:43:40.230 –> 00:43:45.550

101 sort of piece, even though, like Matt said

00:43:45.550 –> 00:43:48.130

before, I think it’s really important that oftentimes

00:43:48.130 –> 00:43:50.469

the emotional state is already heightened when

00:43:50.469 –> 00:43:52.349

you show up because if things were going well,

00:43:52.409 –> 00:43:54.849

you wouldn’t need external support. And then

00:43:54.849 –> 00:43:58.510

the expectation is not only that, well, they’re

00:43:58.510 –> 00:44:01.130

coming in hot, is that you’re going to be able

00:44:01.130 –> 00:44:04.309

to manage them. Right. That they’re they’re asking

00:44:04.309 –> 00:44:06.329

for some outside. That’s literally the point

00:44:06.329 –> 00:44:11.409

of facilitation. Right. And so the assumption

00:44:11.409 –> 00:44:14.530

that, you know, you’re going to walk into a place

00:44:14.530 –> 00:44:16.769

with a heightened emotional state and that you’re

00:44:16.769 –> 00:44:20.690

going to be expected to manage it. And then simultaneously,

00:44:20.730 –> 00:44:23.949

keep in mind with the emotional work piece, also

00:44:23.949 –> 00:44:26.929

personally manage your own emotional emotional

00:44:26.929 –> 00:44:31.280

state, too, so that even if, for example. You

00:44:31.280 –> 00:44:32.760

know, you’ve got, like you said before, like

00:44:32.760 –> 00:44:35.119

one of the big wigs in the room just like won’t

00:44:35.119 –> 00:44:38.980

play ball or whatever the case might be. Instead

00:44:38.980 –> 00:44:41.260

of experiencing your authentic emotion, which

00:44:41.260 –> 00:44:43.900

could be deep levels of frustration, like why

00:44:43.900 –> 00:44:46.179

did you bring me here if you’re not going to

00:44:46.179 –> 00:44:50.170

play ball in the first place? So that’s where

00:44:50.170 –> 00:44:52.369

the emotional thing is really intense because

00:44:52.369 –> 00:44:55.349

you’re self -regulating your emotions while simultaneously

00:44:55.349 –> 00:44:58.090

managing the emotions in the room, all of which

00:44:58.090 –> 00:45:02.869

needs to move into a productive space or else

00:45:02.869 –> 00:45:07.050

things fall apart pretty quick. Right. So that

00:45:07.050 –> 00:45:08.769

was some of what we were talking about before.

00:45:10.050 –> 00:45:13.030

Yes. So there’s these challenges, right? These

00:45:13.030 –> 00:45:16.750

challenges of as the facilitator of managing

00:45:16.750 –> 00:45:21.469

a bunch of cats that we’re trying to herd in

00:45:21.469 –> 00:45:25.190

the room for their betterment. So let’s step

00:45:25.190 –> 00:45:28.110

from there. I think we’ve talked about this quite

00:45:28.110 –> 00:45:32.050

a bit, but I’d like to hear what ethical concerns

00:45:32.050 –> 00:45:34.170

arise when facilitators manage or manipulate

00:45:34.170 –> 00:45:37.170

emotions in the workshop. How does that go? How

00:45:37.170 –> 00:45:40.400

does that go, Nick? Well, just the idea that

00:45:40.400 –> 00:45:45.179

people in other areas where the work is highly

00:45:45.179 –> 00:45:48.380

about emotional regulation talk about burnout.

00:45:48.559 –> 00:45:53.059

So like the airline craft or the airline stewardesses,

00:45:53.139 –> 00:45:56.079

for example, because they’re so disassociated

00:45:56.079 –> 00:45:58.760

with their authentic emotional state on a daily

00:45:58.760 –> 00:46:02.000

basis, they become slowly more and more estranged

00:46:02.000 –> 00:46:04.679

from their actual feelings. And this coming from

00:46:04.679 –> 00:46:06.599

the States, you’re familiar with that restaurant

00:46:06.599 –> 00:46:11.659

named. Hooters. Hooters. Yeah. Is that right?

00:46:12.019 –> 00:46:14.219

Sports bar kind of place. I mean, it’s like.

00:46:14.280 –> 00:46:17.500

Oh, it’s a Hooters. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know

00:46:17.500 –> 00:46:20.099

what? Well, so they ran almost the same kind

00:46:20.099 –> 00:46:22.940

of interviews with women that were working at

00:46:22.940 –> 00:46:25.559

these places. And one thing that I will never

00:46:25.559 –> 00:46:29.039

forget was they were conducting one of the interviews

00:46:29.039 –> 00:46:31.440

right after a woman had gotten off like three,

00:46:31.519 –> 00:46:34.579

like long back to back to back, you know, where

00:46:34.579 –> 00:46:38.079

she was just like. being you know low -key uh

00:46:38.079 –> 00:46:41.699

sexually exploited in the workplace basically

00:46:41.699 –> 00:46:43.780

you know like can’t wait to get you guys more

00:46:43.780 –> 00:46:45.900

beers so you can sexually harass me more this

00:46:45.900 –> 00:46:49.380

should be great and at the the first question

00:46:49.380 –> 00:46:51.900

she basically said something like well how are

00:46:51.900 –> 00:46:53.659

you today how are you feeling there’s just kind

00:46:53.659 –> 00:46:56.260

of like a early rapport question and her answer

00:46:56.260 –> 00:47:00.519

was i don’t know i haven’t been myself all week

00:47:00.519 –> 00:47:04.969

and i was just like god damn you know like that

00:47:04.969 –> 00:47:09.250

really hits you know and so either way some emotional

00:47:09.250 –> 00:47:11.369

estrangement i think is there so i can start

00:47:11.369 –> 00:47:14.989

with that yeah maybe but i don’t as a facilitator

00:47:14.989 –> 00:47:18.329

i can’t say i mean i’m drained like energy wise

00:47:18.329 –> 00:47:21.409

but i wouldn’t say that i get into some kind

00:47:21.409 –> 00:47:25.070

of emotional or do i that’s hard for me to feel

00:47:25.070 –> 00:47:28.449

i don’t know do you get there megan because well

00:47:28.449 –> 00:47:30.800

i don’t know if i you just said you did Right.

00:47:30.920 –> 00:47:34.059

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to an extent, exactly. And

00:47:34.059 –> 00:47:38.559

what Nicholas mentions is, is, I mean, not to

00:47:38.559 –> 00:47:41.219

make it reduce it too much, too reductive, but

00:47:41.219 –> 00:47:44.139

like, welcome to the woman’s world. I mean, I’ve

00:47:44.139 –> 00:47:45.940

had these conversations with my kids who are

00:47:45.940 –> 00:47:49.400

both boys and I’ve told them jokingly, but it

00:47:49.400 –> 00:47:51.360

came from a very serious place. Just one day

00:47:51.360 –> 00:47:52.920

out of the blue said, wow, I don’t know how much

00:47:52.920 –> 00:47:55.440

of my personality is me and how much of it is

00:47:55.440 –> 00:47:58.139

just a lifetime of coping mechanisms because.

00:47:58.460 –> 00:48:03.650

Jesus Christ. Sorry. Right. I said it. And I

00:48:03.650 –> 00:48:06.769

think that gets back to what I was saying about,

00:48:06.809 –> 00:48:11.190

you know, as facilitators. how we command the

00:48:11.190 –> 00:48:14.610

space, how we lead the space or how we feed into

00:48:14.610 –> 00:48:16.929

the space or, you know, whatever approach we

00:48:16.929 –> 00:48:19.150

take. And clearly George had one approach after

00:48:19.150 –> 00:48:23.329

a career of making, you know, this, this practice

00:48:23.329 –> 00:48:27.349

really famous basically. And, and then myself

00:48:27.349 –> 00:48:29.869

who was brand new and not only from a different

00:48:29.869 –> 00:48:33.019

country, but a different. you know, selection

00:48:33.019 –> 00:48:37.460

of demographics on top of that. So yeah, yeah,

00:48:37.519 –> 00:48:41.860

no, I think these are very real functions in

00:48:41.860 –> 00:48:43.880

the space that maybe we don’t always bring out.

00:48:43.960 –> 00:48:50.860

So that does bring in this ethical sort of conversation,

00:48:51.179 –> 00:48:53.940

right? Okay, go ahead and ask the question. I

00:48:53.940 –> 00:48:55.900

think that Nick can do a really good job here.

00:48:56.429 –> 00:48:59.530

I’m not sure that I can maybe you guys go for

00:48:59.530 –> 00:49:01.869

1. If I can bring in this Peter Schwartz stuff,

00:49:02.010 –> 00:49:04.550

if I find a dovetail for it, that makes sense.

00:49:04.630 –> 00:49:07.309

I’ll go there. But it’s not the facilitator’s

00:49:07.309 –> 00:49:11.170

ethical problem. It’s more of a contextual ethical

00:49:11.170 –> 00:49:14.289

problem than it is our problem. Right. So Peter

00:49:14.289 –> 00:49:18.309

Schwartz says in the extended version of The

00:49:18.309 –> 00:49:22.110

Long View. Right. That was his book. The Long

00:49:22.110 –> 00:49:26.449

View. Lessons from the Longview that came out

00:49:26.449 –> 00:49:29.969

in 2010 was kind of like an echo book that he

00:49:29.969 –> 00:49:35.409

wrote. He talks about a facilitation session

00:49:35.409 –> 00:49:38.530

where he’s got a gold mining company in the room

00:49:38.530 –> 00:49:41.469

and the CEOs in there and all of the top brass

00:49:41.469 –> 00:49:44.070

are in the room and they’re building out some

00:49:44.070 –> 00:49:46.210

of the scenarios but the CEOs had a very kind

00:49:46.210 –> 00:49:51.800

of dedicated kind of strategic direction. And

00:49:51.800 –> 00:49:53.800

he’s going to buy up other gold companies, and

00:49:53.800 –> 00:49:56.800

that’s what he’s going to hear to do. And in

00:49:56.800 –> 00:49:59.659

the scenarios comes the question, what happens

00:49:59.659 –> 00:50:03.380

if the gold prices turn and go south? And that

00:50:03.380 –> 00:50:07.559

would kind of be a bad result of the strategic

00:50:07.559 –> 00:50:12.139

plan that’s sealed. Anyway, after the session,

00:50:12.380 –> 00:50:15.179

the CEO was able to identify the people in the

00:50:15.179 –> 00:50:19.820

room who had different opinions about his strategy

00:50:19.820 –> 00:50:25.550

direction. and he fired him, right? And Peter

00:50:25.550 –> 00:50:27.650

Schwartz didn’t know that this was going to happen,

00:50:27.750 –> 00:50:30.449

right? But he did it anyway, right? And then

00:50:30.449 –> 00:50:33.289

lo and behold, doesn’t take much long after that.

00:50:33.369 –> 00:50:35.250

And then the actual, the prices of the gold go

00:50:35.250 –> 00:50:38.369

south, right? And the CEO gets fired by the board.

00:50:38.670 –> 00:50:42.449

So, I mean, it’s, but the facilitator in the

00:50:42.449 –> 00:50:44.989

room, Peter’s trying to create the safe space

00:50:44.989 –> 00:50:46.949

for the people to speak their minds and explore

00:50:46.949 –> 00:50:50.429

freely. That’s the irony though. Where it wasn’t

00:50:50.429 –> 00:50:54.420

the case. That it was actually being used as

00:50:54.420 –> 00:50:59.059

a moment where the CEO could identify the people

00:50:59.059 –> 00:51:05.179

who might be against his strategy. That’s a good

00:51:05.179 –> 00:51:07.860

one, though, because the facilitator is the one

00:51:07.860 –> 00:51:09.679

who’s brought in and asked to create this safe

00:51:09.679 –> 00:51:16.420

space. And then it can be used for purposes like

00:51:16.420 –> 00:51:19.400

that. I mean, that’s an ethical issue. But you

00:51:19.400 –> 00:51:21.519

got a lot of this. Yeah, a lot of it’s this value.

00:51:21.579 –> 00:51:23.139

The other way you could go with a question like

00:51:23.139 –> 00:51:25.980

this is this kind of value free exploration where,

00:51:26.059 –> 00:51:29.079

look, we don’t have dogs in the fight in a sense.

00:51:29.159 –> 00:51:31.139

Right. So the scenarios are up on the wall and

00:51:31.139 –> 00:51:34.280

we try to treat them rationally. Right. Whether

00:51:34.280 –> 00:51:36.119

or not we want them to happen is not kind of

00:51:36.119 –> 00:51:38.360

the point of the exercise. It’s whether or not

00:51:38.360 –> 00:51:40.559

they can plausibly happen and what we should

00:51:40.559 –> 00:51:43.119

we do if that’s the case. Right. And that’s a

00:51:43.119 –> 00:51:46.539

different discussion. Right. Where van der Heiden

00:51:46.539 –> 00:51:49.510

very much is in. the movement of we should create

00:51:49.510 –> 00:51:52.510

value -free scenarios, where we don’t necessarily

00:51:52.510 –> 00:51:57.409

take ethical positions on them. But then you’ve

00:51:57.409 –> 00:52:00.690

got things like Popper coming in from the back

00:52:00.690 –> 00:52:03.130

door saying, look, if the solutions to those

00:52:03.130 –> 00:52:07.130

puzzles or those scenarios are ethically challenged,

00:52:07.469 –> 00:52:10.349

then that’s justification for the refutation

00:52:10.349 –> 00:52:13.949

of that. So there’s a moral in -context moment

00:52:13.949 –> 00:52:18.849

of ethical types of, say, reasons to get rid

00:52:18.849 –> 00:52:22.929

of maybe the unethical strategic options, right?

00:52:22.989 –> 00:52:25.610

In the moment, rather than judge the scenarios,

00:52:25.610 –> 00:52:28.469

you judge the options, right? And I don’t know

00:52:28.469 –> 00:52:30.110

if you want to go there with the question, right?

00:52:30.210 –> 00:52:31.869

Because the question, you can go in a number

00:52:31.869 –> 00:52:33.190

of different ways. You know what I mean? When

00:52:33.190 –> 00:52:38.210

you bring ethics in. In your experience, what

00:52:38.210 –> 00:52:41.050

are people right now, what are people not talking

00:52:41.050 –> 00:52:43.750

about that you think they should be talking about?

00:52:46.480 –> 00:52:49.219

Well, I’ll take the first swing at this one.

00:52:49.579 –> 00:52:54.280

And it loosely relates back to our paper, but

00:52:54.280 –> 00:52:56.719

not exactly. I would say that probably one of

00:52:56.719 –> 00:52:58.739

the most important trends that’s being discussed

00:52:58.739 –> 00:53:02.699

both publicly and in scholarship for strategic

00:53:02.699 –> 00:53:05.000

foresight and scenario planning in the entire

00:53:05.000 –> 00:53:09.860

future -oriented planning area is the rise of

00:53:09.860 –> 00:53:13.820

AI and specifically what that means for facilitators.

00:53:14.480 –> 00:53:16.719

If you want to talk about something that stirs

00:53:16.719 –> 00:53:19.219

some strong emotions amongst facilitators, it’s

00:53:19.219 –> 00:53:21.380

whether or not their jobs could be replaced by

00:53:21.380 –> 00:53:28.019

1. And one of the themes that I seem to sense

00:53:28.019 –> 00:53:32.480

in this area is that a lot of scholars, and it

00:53:32.480 –> 00:53:34.760

turns out ourselves included in some of our earliest

00:53:34.760 –> 00:53:39.639

work on this topic, engaged with different AI

00:53:39.639 –> 00:53:44.400

tools. And the underlying current was more or

00:53:44.400 –> 00:53:46.460

less some version of, well, these machines will

00:53:46.460 –> 00:53:48.320

never be able to do what we are going to do.

00:53:48.380 –> 00:53:51.719

And there was a kind of low -key celebration

00:53:51.719 –> 00:53:54.659

of human exceptionalism in those conversations.

00:53:54.760 –> 00:53:56.800

But I think a lot of that needs to be returned

00:53:56.800 –> 00:54:01.480

to, and we need to think a lot more deeply about

00:54:01.480 –> 00:54:06.099

what… can be done with AI and where and when

00:54:06.099 –> 00:54:08.500

and really have a much more structured and strategic

00:54:08.500 –> 00:54:11.039

conversation, which I say, obviously, without

00:54:11.039 –> 00:54:15.519

irony. That said, in all of the discussion about

00:54:15.519 –> 00:54:18.360

AI as it pertains to strategy and planning, just

00:54:18.360 –> 00:54:21.119

like the broader discussions, Megan, that you

00:54:21.119 –> 00:54:24.920

brought up before, also almost exclusively missing

00:54:24.920 –> 00:54:26.960

from those discussions is any role of emotion

00:54:26.960 –> 00:54:31.780

and affect. And to be clear, Matt and I have

00:54:31.780 –> 00:54:33.940

been writing about AI. Matt and I have been writing

00:54:33.940 –> 00:54:37.800

about emotion and scenario planning. And I don’t

00:54:37.800 –> 00:54:42.219

know that even we ourselves noted that part of

00:54:42.219 –> 00:54:46.300

our reaction to the rise of AI is starting to

00:54:46.300 –> 00:54:48.380

think through some of these emotional regulation

00:54:48.380 –> 00:54:54.420

pieces in facilitation that I’m not sure how

00:54:54.420 –> 00:54:58.260

AI figures into just yet. But that’s where I

00:54:58.260 –> 00:55:01.179

think. I think we should be going as trying to

00:55:01.179 –> 00:55:05.460

understand that piece for facilitators, for scenario

00:55:05.460 –> 00:55:08.320

planning related to AI and emotion. I think there’s

00:55:08.320 –> 00:55:14.679

some real work to be done there. Okay. And to

00:55:14.679 –> 00:55:18.940

you, Matt, what do you think? I think Nick said

00:55:18.940 –> 00:55:21.800

it the best. So thanks for having me on your

00:55:21.800 –> 00:55:25.099

podcast. Okay, well, I agree. Not going to take

00:55:25.099 –> 00:55:29.730

a swing, Matt? No. I mean, that’s some heavy

00:55:29.730 –> 00:55:32.050

hitting stuff. That’s the question, right? I

00:55:32.050 –> 00:55:33.889

think Nick did a great job there. I don’t think

00:55:33.889 –> 00:55:37.429

I want to add anything to that. Okay. Sorry if

00:55:37.429 –> 00:55:42.070

I stole your thunder. No, no, no. Nor thunder

00:55:42.070 –> 00:55:44.989

stolen. Everything else is, I mean, the question

00:55:44.989 –> 00:55:46.889

is, what should we be talking about? And there’s

00:55:46.889 –> 00:55:49.489

lots of little things that are coming in the

00:55:49.489 –> 00:55:54.610

pipeline, but stay tuned. Right. Okay. We will.

00:55:55.130 –> 00:55:58.269

Everybody stay tuned. It was great having both

00:55:58.269 –> 00:56:02.309

of y ‘all here today. I’m glad we could get through

00:56:02.309 –> 00:56:06.530

a bunch of the topics we had floated around ideas

00:56:06.530 –> 00:56:09.530

about before, but just never had the time to

00:56:09.530 –> 00:56:12.190

really just have a chat about them. So that’s

00:56:12.190 –> 00:56:16.449

great. Hopefully our audience laughed and cringed

00:56:16.449 –> 00:56:20.670

as much as we did. And yeah, I will see you at

00:56:20.670 –> 00:56:23.050

the next conference. So thank you very much.

00:56:24.010 –> 00:56:28.090

You know, I teach cringe. I teach cringe. I have

00:56:28.090 –> 00:56:31.789

a lecture on cringe and why we should be looking

00:56:31.789 –> 00:56:35.190

for it. Right. Very good. Thanks, Megan. Amazing.

00:56:35.949 –> 00:56:38.469

Scenarios for Tomorrow is produced by me, Megan

00:56:38.469 –> 00:56:42.230

Crawford, with invaluable feedback from Dr. Isabella

00:56:42.230 –> 00:56:45.750

Riza, Jeremy Creep, Brian Eggo, and as always,

00:56:45.949 –> 00:56:49.340

my kids. This is a production of the Futures

00:56:49.340 –> 00:56:52.139

and Analytics Research Hub and Pharr Lab affiliated

00:56:52.139 –> 00:56:55.239

with Edinburgh Napier Business School. You can

00:56:55.239 –> 00:56:57.699

find show notes, references, and transcripts

00:56:57.699 –> 00:57:02.940

at scenarios .pharrhub .org. That’s scenarios

00:57:02.940 –> 00:57:06.449

.pharrhub .org. You can follow us across social

00:57:06.449 –> 00:57:09.289

media by searching for scenario futures, all

00:57:09.289 –> 00:57:12.250

one word. You can subscribe to Scenarios for

00:57:12.250 –> 00:57:14.050

Tomorrow wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:57:14.590 –> 00:57:17.769

Today’s track was composed by Rocket, whose links

00:57:17.769 –> 00:57:21.130

are provided in the show notes. This is Scenarios

00:57:21.130 –> 00:57:23.690

for Tomorrow, where tomorrow’s headlines start

00:57:23.690 –> 00:57:25.030

as today’s thought experiments.