Day 3: Explore Impact of Change
We'll stay with bicycles for one more journaling session. So far, we've "zoomed in" on the parts and relationships that consititute a bicycle, and we've "zoomed out" to the various ecologies of systems around bicycles. Now we'll look at what's changing and impacting (one or more of) these ecosystems.
A Futures Wheel is a useful in exploring the impact of a change or trend. The change or trend is put in a circle at the center. In a ring of circles around that center, we identify direct effects or consequences of that change (see image above). Indirect consequences are identified and positioned in the outer (third) ring of circles.
Use a Futures Wheel to explore a change that is impacting cycling or the bicycle industry, in terms of direct and indirect effects. One example would be the trend toward ebikes.
It's not going to be perfect, but we're getting a taste of the exploration style — thinking about what a change induces, what effects it sets in motion, what the side-effects are. We're teasing out consequences.
Step back and reflect on what you learned.
Again, we're aiming to keep this to around 15-20 minutes a day, so part of the discipline here is being good with "good enough." At the end of Day 3, we'll add some notes and link to some of the work folk have shared on Mastodon, Bluesky or LinkedIn.
"I didn't make up the problems," I pointed out. "All I did was look around at the problems we're neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters." — Octavia Butler, A Few Rules For Predicting The Future by Octavia E. Butler, May 2000
"the kind of insight which is also foresight is essential to leadership. This doesn't mean that only the president [of a company] needs it. Foresight is necessary for foreman or head of department; the only difference is that in their case the range about which foresight is necessary is narrower. But no leader of however small a group can forget, without disastrous consequences, that the activities of each group have to be fitted into a whole which is constantly changing" — Mary Parker Follett, The Theory of Leadership (1928), Dynamic Administration
"By flying to these heights, swifts [..] can also use the wind itself to assess the possible future courses of these systems. What they are doing is forecasting the weather" — Helen Macdonald
Discussion
Spoilers ahead, so save reading this section until after you have completed this exercise.
Here are some of the wonderful explorations shared by our fellow Adventurers:
"Thinking further down the road is great and bad. Great, because you extend the system by so many more perspectives and parts. Bad, because you extend the system by so many more perspectives and parts. If you know what I mean." — Patrick Prill