如何为你的长远思考增添更多严谨性

我是艾莉森·比尔德。

I'm Allison Beard.

我是阿迪·伊格内修斯，这里是HPR Ideacast。

And I'm Adi Ignatius, and this is the HPR Ideacast.

阿迪，你预测未来的能力怎么样？

Adi, how good are you at predicting the future?

我非常不擅长预测未来。事实上，你可以把我的预测当作实际会发生事情的反向指标。但你为什么问这个？

I am very bad at predicting the future. In fact, you could use my predictions as a counter indicator of what actually is gonna happen. But why are you asking?

嗯，预测未来是每位商业领袖在制定长期战略时都会尝试做的事情，但这显然极其困难。尤其是在当今世界，无论你收集多少数据或做出多么合乎逻辑的预测，你似乎真的不知道接下来会发生什么。但我们今天的嘉宾有一个框架，可以帮助我们做得更好。

Well, predicting the future is something that every business leader tries to do as they're planning their long term strategy, but it's obviously extremely difficult. Particularly in the current world, it seems like no matter how much data you gather or logical projections you make, you really don't know what's next or what's gonna happen. But our guest today has a framework for helping us do a better job.

是的。这听起来非常有价值。我的意思是，我们正处在一个高度不确定的时期。这绝对是真的。有时候应对方法就是与不确定性共存，但肯定有更好的方式来梳理微弱信号，或者思考你自己的目标和愿景，从而在预测未来方面做得更好一些。

Yeah. That sounds really valuable. I mean, we are living in a period of hyper uncertainty. That's absolutely true. And sometimes the response is just live with uncertainty, but surely there's a better way to kind of tease out the weak signals or or think about your own goals and visions and be a little bit better at predicting what's next.

没错。这就是为什么我想和尼克·福斯特谈谈。他是一位未来学家，曾在一些世界最大的科技公司担任设计师，包括Google X、索尼和戴森。他还是《可能、应该、或许、不要：我们如何思考未来》一书的作者。他认为我们大多数人都会陷入这四种模式中的一种。

Yeah. And so that's why I wanted to talk to Nick Foster. He is a futurist who's worked as a designer at some of the world's biggest tech focused companies, including Google X, Sony, and Dyson. And he's the author of the book could, should, might, don't, how we think about the future. So he argues that most of us fall into one of those four patterns.

一方面是'可能未来主义'，这是一种过度乐观、以技术为中心的乌托邦。而在另一个极端是'不要未来主义'，你会考虑所有负面的外部因素，我们现在在关于AI未来的辩论中正看到这种情况上演。以下是我与尼克的对话。尼克，非常感谢你今天能来。

On the one side is could futurism, which is overly optimistic, tech centered utopia. And then on the opposite extreme is don't where you're thinking about all the negative externalities, and we're seeing that play out in the debate over the future of AI right now. So here's my conversation with Nick. Nick, thanks so much for being with me today.

哦，很高兴能来到这里。感谢您的邀请。

Oh, it's lovely to be here. Thanks for the invitation.

你曾与索尼、诺基亚和谷歌等公司密切合作，帮助它们思考和设计未来的产品与服务。根据你的经验，组织领导者通常如何开展这项工作？他们容易犯哪些错误？

You've worked closely with companies like Sony, Nokia, and Google to help them think about and design the products and services of the future. How, in your experience, do organizational leaders typically approach this work, and what do they tend to get wrong?

我的观点都受到我曾服务过公司的影响。所以，我的经验相当狭隘地集中在大型技术官僚组织上，这是我职业生涯大部分时间所在的地方。但我认为这是一个光谱，我很幸运能在那些通常有独立团队或一群人明确专注于长期未来导向项目的公司工作，我认为这既是问题的一部分，也是福祸参半的事情。通常需要大量时间和资金来建立这类部门，而且公司需要有足够的灵活性和探索塑造未来的意愿。很多时候，这类工作被分割成独立的实验室和部门。

My opinions are all tainted by the companies that I've worked for. So, you know, my experiences are quite narrowly focused on large technocratic organizations, which is where I've spent the majority of my career. But I think it's a spectrum, and I think I've been fortunate to work in companies that have, you know, typically a separate team or a group of people explicitly focused on long term futures oriented projects, which is, I think, a part of the problem and the sort of a blessing and a curse in equal measures. You need a lot of time and money typically to build those sorts of units, and you need to have a company where there's that amount of flexibility and the desire to explore and shape the future. Quite often, it's cleaved off into these sort of separate labs and separate units.

这是第一点。我认为这以一种无益的方式将这类工作'他者化'，让组织中的其他人觉得这不是他们的工作。但更重要的是，我注意到组织内的人在思考未来时往往落入四种类型之一。我认为这导致几乎所有我合作过的公司对未来思考的整体基调和质量缺乏严谨性。我认为这反映了我们在社会、文化和日常生活中对未来对话的更大定位问题。

That's the first thing. It sort of others this kind of work in an, I think, an unhelpful way, and it sort of means that other people in the rest of the organization feel like it's not their job. But more importantly, I think what I've noticed is the people within organizations tend to fall into one of the four pockets when it comes to thinking about the future. And what I think it leads to is a lack of rigor in in the sort of general tone and quality of future thought in almost every company that I've worked in. I think it's symptomatic of just the larger place we have found for conversations about the future in society, culture, and everyday life.

那么我们来深入探讨你在书中涵盖的这四种未来主义类型及其各自的优缺点吧。首先，你如何定义'可能未来主义'？

So why don't we dig into those four types of futurism that you cover in your book and their respective strengths and weaknesses? First, how would you define could futurism?

'可能未来主义'是我称之为最明显未来主义类型的未来工作，我们经常看到这种类型。如果你去谷歌图片搜索'未来'或'未来主义'，你会看到闪亮的水晶建筑、机器人、无人机以及所有我们熟悉的进步标志。可能未来主义就是关于那种对未来作为变革之地的睁大眼睛的技术官僚期待。

Could futurism is what I would call the most sort of overtly futuristic type of futures work that we see so much. If you were to go to Google Images and type the future or futuristic, you'd see the gleaming kind of crystal architecture and robotics and drones and all of the sort of usual whiz bang icons of progress that we're very familiar with. And and could futurism is about that sort of wide eyed technocratic expectation about the future being this transformational place.

飞行汽车、火星上的房子，诸如此类的东西。

Flying cars, the houses on Mars, all of that.

所有这类东西。是的。这种将未来视为某种现代主义理想、由技术作为伟大救世主和驱动力的思考方式。我认为这种思考方式的弱点其实有很多，但主要弱点之一是它非常英雄主义。就像科幻电影也非常英雄主义。

All of that sort of stuff. Yeah. This way of thinking about the future as a sort of modernist ideal brought about by sort of technology being this great sort of savior and driving force behind things. And I think the weakness of this way of thinking, there's quite a few actually, but one of the main weaknesses is it's very heroic. Just like science fiction cinema is very heroic.

它将未来生活在未来的人们描绘成这些英雄、这些极端角色，感觉更像广告而不是谈论真实生活、真实人物和真实经历。而且我认为，它再次将未来定位在某个遥远的地方，而不是它真正的本质——即现在的演变。它很少参与这样的讨论：如果我们要在十五、二十年后做这些事情，那么两年后会是什么样子？下一步是什么样子？当它大规模融入日常文化时又意味着什么？

It paints the future sort of people that live in the future as as these heroes, these extreme characters, and it feels more like advertising than it does talk about real life and real people and real experiences. And I think, again, it it pitches the future sort of over there somewhere as opposed to what it really is, which is an evolution of the present. And it it very rarely engages with conversations about if we are to be doing these things in fifteen years, twenty years' time, what does two years' time look like? What does the next step look like? And what does it mean when it is mass adopted into everyday culture?

我想，日常经营企业的人会觉得这太遥远，不值得围绕它制定战略。

And I imagine that it's something that people leading businesses day to day see as too far out to strategize around.

我的意思是，这要看情况。再次说明，我的视野被我工作过的地方所模糊，你知道，我在Google X当了很长时间的设计主管，那项工作的非常明确的本质就是非常有针对性地思考长期视野。你知道，我是一名设计师，但幸运的是，我也接触过很多科学家、工程师、企业家、战略家和商业领袖。真正有趣的是，当我们讨论产品细节、技术细节或科学以及我们正在研发的技术的核心构建模块时，人们渴望对我们谈论的内容进行真正的严谨和深度思考。但一旦我们谈论十年、十五年后的未来，各行各业的人就只是懒散地引用《杰森一家》或《少数派报告》或某种《星际迷航》的参考。

I mean, it depends. Again, my my eyesight is blurred by the places I've worked, which have been you know, I was head of design at Google X for a long time, and the very explicit nature of that work is to think very pointedly about long term horizons. You know, I am a designer, but, fortunately, I've also been around a lot of scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs and strategists and business leaders. And the thing that's really interesting is when we're talking about product details or technical details or science and the core building blocks of the technologies we're working on, there's this desire for real rigor and depth of thinking about what we're talking about. But as soon as we talk about ten years, fifteen years hence, people from all ilks just sort of lazily grab for things from the Jetsons or references from Minority Report or some sort of Star Trek reference.

而且我认为，那是某种关键失败，你知道，当我们发现自己过于依赖这种“可能未来主义”时。它只是一个占位符。它阻止我们真正拥抱和参与我们正在构建的东西、它为什么重要以及它可能带来什么。

And and I think that that's a sort of critical failure of, you know, when we find ourselves too heavily relying on could futurism. It's just it is a placeholder. It stops us really embracing and engaging with what we're building and why it matters and what it might lead to.

好的。那么让我们继续讨论下一类未来思维，“应该”。你这是什么意思？

Okay. So let's move on to the next bucket of future thinking, should. What do you mean by that?

嗯，'应该'是对未来的一种确定性感觉，这种关于终点的概念，我们知道它即将到来并且我们正朝着它前进。在工作环境和商业领域，我认为这很大程度上已被数据和利用数据模式的概念所取代，能够通过算法解码世界，将实线转化为虚线并进行预测，这已成为商业未来主义的主导形式。但我认为这类工作的挑战在于，首先，它让我们将未来视为图表上的一个单一的点，而不是一个领域或区域。此外，我认为任何在这种预测环境中花费过时间的人都知道，这些线并不会按照我们预想的路径移动。我认为我们对这类工作中的不确定性程度不够开放和诚实。

Well, should is this sort of feeling of certainty about the future, this notion of an endpoint that we know is coming and we're headed towards it. In work environments and in businesses, I think this has been replaced largely by the the notion of data and using sort of patterns of data and being able to algorithmically decode the world somehow to convert a solid line into a dotted line and make a projection, become the dominant form of sort of business futurism, I would say. But I think the challenge with this type of work is, firstly, it leads us to think of the future as a singular dot on a chart, a singular point as opposed to a territory or a zone. But also, I think anyone who spent any time around this sort of projection environment knows that these lines don't move in the paths that we think they're going to move in. And I think we're not open and honest enough about that level of uncertainty in this type of work.

所以企业战略可以说是这类工作在商业中的旗手。它有其好处，并且基于以往的经验和数据已经进入了众多大型组织的顶层，但它仍然是讲故事。我认为我们对此不够诚实。

So corporate strategy is sort of the flag carrier for this type of work, I would say, in business. And, you know, again, it has its benefits, and it's made its way right to the top of lots of large organizations based on previous experience and previous data, but it is still storytelling. And I don't think we're honest enough about that.

所以那种思维方式的弱点是相信数据所展示的是真实的，因为数据可以被操纵。你可以挑选数字来讲述任何故事。

So the weakness of that type of thinking is believing that what the data shows you is true because data can be manipulated. You can pick numbers to tell any kind of story.

是的，完全正确。而且我们寻求的所有数据本质上都是不完整的。它越来越具有随机性和波动性。我们所在的系统已经变成了这些边界非常模糊的超物体，随机事件可以在一夜之间对事物产生极其戏剧性的影响。

Yeah. Absolutely. And all the data we seek is inherently incomplete. It's increasingly sort of stochastic and volatile. The systems that we play within have become these sort of hyperobjects where the edges are really fuzzy, and random acts can affect things absolutely dramatically overnight.

某个名人可能会在推特上发布关于你的品牌或公司的内容。一艘船可能会被困在苏伊士运河，突然间你前一天还感觉非常确定的模型和预测就完全偏离了。这可能是我们目前能做的最好的技术，但我觉得我们对这些线和点的模糊性不够诚实，我们应该开始尝试更多地关注我提到的第三种未来工作，我称之为'可能'。

Some celebrity could tweet something about your brand or your company. A ship could get stuck in the Suez Canal, and suddenly all your modeling and projections that felt so certain the day before suddenly become completely off. And it is probably the best we can do right now in in terms of a technique, but I don't think we're honest enough about that sort of blurriness of those lines and those dots, and we should sort of start to try and look a little bit more perhaps at the third type of futures work that I refer to, which I I call might.

是的，这是一个完美的过渡。那么请继续告诉我们关于'可能未来主义'。

Yeah. That's a perfect transition. So go ahead and tell us about might futurism.

冒着这变成某种讲座的风险，'可能未来'基本上是我们每天都在做的事情。它关乎情景规划。它建立在这种自然的游戏策略心态之上。像国际象棋这样的游戏就非常符合'可能未来主义'。如果我走这里，他们可能会这样做。

At risk of this turning into some sort of lecture, might futures is sort of what we do every day. It's about basically scenario planning. Sort of builds itself off this natural game playing strategy mindset. Things like chess are very much Mike futurism. If I move here, they might do this.

如果他们那样做，那么我可能会这样做。这种思维在冷战时期变得更加正式化，像赫尔曼·卡恩、兰德公司以及曾在荷兰皇家壳牌工作的皮埃尔·瓦克等人推动了这一发展。这与大型计算能力的增长相吻合，实际上，这种理念认为前方的空间某种程度上是不可知的，但我们可以将可能性和不确定性投射到那个空间中。如果这个发生，那么那个可能会发生。在我的设计领域，这类未来工作通常作为服务出售，很多战略远见能力，能够运行模型，进行推演——我们应该这样做，我们应该那样做。

And if they do that, then I might do this. And it became more formalized in the Cold War with people like Hermann Kahn and Rand Corporation and people like Pierre Vak who working at Royal Dutch Shell. It coincides with the growth of big compute, really, which is this idea of the space ahead of us is sort of unknowable, but we can plot likelihood and uncertainty out into that space. And if this happens, then that might happen. In my world, in sort of design, this is the type of futures work that is sold as a service, a lot of strategic foresight, the ability to run a model, run a run an extrapolation of we should do this, we should do that.

所以这有点像在任何时候都有多重故事叙述。

So it's sort of multiple storytellings at any one time.

看起来企业大多已经接受了这种思维方式，设想了多种可能的未来——如果你选择某条战略路径可能会发生什么，如果选择另一条又会如何——然后基于所有这些预测做出决策。对吗？

And it seems like businesses have largely embraced this type of thinking, envisioning multiple potential futures, what might happen if you go down a certain strategic path, what might happen if you go down a different one, and then making a decision based on all of those predictions. Right?

是的，完全正确。而且，这可能是商业未来工作中比较普遍的形式之一，当然，它有其存在价值。对这种思维方式的批评实际上基于想象力。当我们思考未来时，它就像从我们胸前向外延伸的圆锥体。

Yes. Absolutely. And and, again, it's it's probably one of the more prevalent forms of sort of business futures work, and and, certainly, it has its place. Some of the critiques of this way of thinking are based around imagination, actually. When we come to thinking about the future, it sort of extends like a cone from our chest outwards.

我们看得越远，它就变得越宽，事物也变得越不确定。但我认为事实证明我们并不擅长想象那里可能真正存在什么。很容易说'那永远不会发生'、'那是不可能的'，然后将其推入这个可能性圆锥之外的不可能领域。而且，时间并不像我们想象的那样运作。

The further out we go, the wider it becomes and the more uncertain things become. But I think we are actually proven to be not very good at imagining what might actually be out there. It's very easy to say, well, that would never happen. That's impossible, and sort of push it out into the impossible outside of this cone of possibility. Also, time doesn't really work how we think it does.

很多事情都是指数级发展的，它们发生的速度比我们想象的要快得多。像诺基亚（我曾工作过）、百视达或柯达这样的美国公司，即使他们面前摆着所有关于未来的想法，他们可能会说：是的，我们有个相当不错的想法。但我们都从历史中知道，他们被一些要么没看到来临、要么被归入'荒谬永远不会发生'领域的事物打了个措手不及。我们对潜在未来的想象水平和构思广度并不像我们想象的那么好。

Lots of things are exponential, and they happen a lot quicker than we think they might happen. US companies like Nokia, where I used to work, or Blockbuster or Kodak, whether they had all of the ideas about the future in front of them in place, they'd probably say, yeah, we had a pretty fair idea, but we all know from history, they were sideswiped by something that they either didn't see coming or they put way out in the sort of preposterous that'll never happen territory. Our levels of imagination and a sort of breadth of ideation around potential futures is not as good as we think it is.

'可能'思考者需要在'能够'和'不会'方面做得更好，这就引出了四种类型中的最后一种。那么什么是'不会未来主义'？

The might thinkers need to do better at the could and then also the don't, which brings us to the final of the four types. So what is don't futurism?

我认为'禁止未来主义'是我们所有人都在做的事情，而且我觉得我们现在越来越多地在公共社会中看到这种现象——这种将未来视为我们想要阻止某些事情发生的概念。虽然不想过多地陷入反乌托邦的领域，但这确实是在指出如果我们继续沿着这条路走下去或做出那个决定，可能会发生的所有负面外部效应。我认为这可以非常强大，并且目前确实构成了政治和商业讨论的重要组成部分。有时它可能很容易被斥为危言耸听。它通常位于它想要改变的权力位置之外，从外部摇着手指说：不。

Don't futurism is something that I think we all do, and I think we're sort of seeing it more and more in public society now, this notion of the future as a place where we want to stop certain things. Without wanting to stray too far into the lands of dystopia, it's definitely about pointing out all the negative externalities of the things that might happen if we keep going on this path or we take that decision. I think it can be super powerful, and it's definitely forming a large part of the discourse in politics and in business at the moment. I think sometimes it can be quite easy to dismiss as as fear mongering. It often sits outside of the positions of power that it wants to change and sort of wags its finger from the outside and says, no.

不。不。你们不能。我认为，如果这类工作更深入地融入这些人们想要改变的组织内部，将会更加有效。我认为存在一种不那么'掀桌推翻一切'的禁止未来主义版本，而是对我们正在生产的工作和做出的决定有一种责任感，认真思考我们正在带来的事物的各种影响。

No. No. You mustn't. And I think a a future where this type of work is more integrated within these organizations that these people want to change would be more potent. I think there is a version of don't futurism which is less sort of flip the table and burn it all down, which is this sort of feeling of responsibility in the work that we're producing and the decisions we're making, sort of playing through the implications of the things that we're bringing about.

现实是，今天我们所有人都生活在这个世界里，这是一个由我们的前辈意外埋下的时间胶囊，我们正在清理他们当初对未来缺乏思考所留下的烂摊子。所以我们开始觉得，也许我们应该在这方面多做一点，更负责任地思考。

The reality is all of us today are living in this world which is an accidental time capsule that was planted by our predecessors, and we're mopping up the lack of thought that they put into the future. So we're starting to feel like maybe we should be doing a bit more there and thinking a bit more responsibly.

从我的角度来看，企业界似乎一直非常专注于'能够'、'应该'、'可能'，而没有足够思考他们推向世界的产品和服务所带来的连锁反应。为什么你认为现在是我们所有人重新思考我们想象、预测或规划未来的方式的重要时刻？

I would say from my perspective, it seems as if the corporate world has very much been focused on could, should, might, and and not as much thinking about the knock on effects of the products and services that they've put into the world. Why do you think that it's an important time for all of us to rethink the way we are imagining or predicting or planning for the future?

这是我很长时间以来一直感兴趣的事情，因为我为大组织思考和规划未来已经工作了近四分之一个世纪。正如我所说，观察人们尝试这样做，感觉这是一项尚未充分发展的技能。我认为现在很重要，因为我们正处在变革的浪潮之中。要知道，一百年前还没有青霉素。我出生时，仅仅五十年前，地球上活着的人口只有现在的一半。

This is something that I've been interested in for a long time because I've been working in in thinking about the future for large organizations for nearly a quarter century now. And as I said, observing people try to do it, it it feels like an underdeveloped skill. And I think it's important right now because we are right in the midst of a tidal wave of change. Know, a hundred years ago, there was no penicillin. When I was born, only fifty years ago, there were half as many people alive on earth.

所以发生了巨大的变化，不仅是技术变革，还有政治变革、社会变革和文化变革。我觉得如果我们不开始训练自己以深度、严谨和责任感来思考未来，我们的视野只会变得越来越短浅。我认为这将导致我们走向我们真正不想去的地方。它将导致我们不断需要寻找变通方案、补丁和修复措施，就像我说的，这些是我们用很少的时间和精力做出的意外决定，几乎没有考虑它们对十年、二十年、三十年后的可能影响。大规模、高速改变事物的能力正在导致越来越多的连锁反应，感觉我们在关于未来的对话、我们的语言以及描述我们试图启动的事物的能力方面非常欠缺。

So there's been huge amounts of change, not just technological change, but political change and societal change and cultural change. And I feel like if we don't start to train ourselves to think about the future with depth and with rigor and responsibility, we'll just get even shorter and shorter in our horizon. And I think that that will lead us to places where we really don't want to be. It'll lead us into a place of constantly having to find workarounds and patches and fixes for the like I said, these accidental decisions that we make with very little time and energy being spent on what it might mean for the ten, twenty, thirty year horizons. The ability to change things at scale, at speed, is leading to more and more of these knock on effects, and it feels like we're really lacking in our dialogue around future and our language and our ability to describe what we're trying to set in motion.

当我们思考那些将在其组织中影响这种变革的领导者和公司时，首先想到的是那些正在发明未来的公司。你知道，谷歌、微软、苹果、OpenAI、特斯拉、SpaceX。你认为他们目前在平衡'能够'、'应该'、'可能'和'禁止'方面做得很好吗？因为正是他们在创造将驱动我们所有其他人做生意和过生活的产品和服务。

As we think about the leaders and companies who will affect this sort of change in their organizations, the first companies that come to mind are those that are inventing the future. You know, Google, Microsoft, Apple, OpenAI, Tesla, SpaceX. Do you think that they're doing a good job of balancing the could, should, might, and don't right now? Because they're the ones creating the products and services that will sort of drive how all the rest of us do business and live our lives.

你会在所有这些公司中发现各种思维方式的零星存在。我认为政治在塑造我们未来的方式中扮演着重要角色，但社会和文化以及媒体也是如此。因此，总的来说，我在这项工作中试图表达的是，我不认为我们需要更多那种带有宣言式或告诉我们未来应该做什么的书籍，我也不认为我们需要从商业领袖那里听到这些。人们希望对话更加细致、深入、严谨、详细，并充满不确定性。这些对于任何类型的领导者来说都是难以站在舞台上说'我们对此感到兴奋'的事情。

You will find pockets of all of these types of ways of thinking in all of those companies. And I think also politics plays a big role in this way that our future is shaped, but also society and culture too and media. And so across the board, what I'm trying to do with this work is to try and say, I don't think we need any more books that sort of have a manifesto or tell us what we should be doing in the future, and I don't really think we need that from our business leaders either. People want the conversation to be more nuanced and deeper and more rigorous and more detailed and be full of uncertainty. Those are difficult things for leaders of any ilk to stand on a stage saying, we're excited about this.

我们认为这可能是它的发展方向。我们认为这些是机遇，同时我们也不确定它可能会走向何方。你知道，这些都是困难的事情。我真的能感觉到，观众——无论我们称他们为顾客、用户还是普通人——他们真的想听到关于未来的更好的故事。当我说更好的时候，我指的是更平衡的。

We we think this is where it might lead. We think these are the opportunities, and we're also not sure about where this might go. You know, those are difficult things. I really feel, like, at my fingertips that audiences, whatever that we call those, customers, users, laypeople, whatever it is, they really want to hear better stories about the future. And when I say better, I mean more balanced.

因此，你提到的每一家公司在不同时刻对不同受众说了很多'可能'、'应该'、'不要'或'或许'，但他们并没有全面地表达。我认为这正是我希望看到更多的，但这需要完全不同的商业方式和完全不同的资本和资源重点，来更明确地思考未来，而许多公司出于一些合理的原因对此有些犹豫。

And so each of those companies that you mentioned at different moments to different audiences says a lot of could or a lot of should or a lot of don't or a lot of might, but they don't sort of say it in the round. And I think that's what I would love to see more of, but that requires a whole different way of doing business and a whole different sort of focus of capital and and resource towards thinking more pointedly about the future, which a lot of companies are kind of reticent to do for some good reasons.

而且向消费者和投资者传达这样的信息要复杂得多。

And it's a much more complicated message to deliver to consumers and investors.

嗯，是的，它不太适合放在广告牌上或竞选讲台上，而且这样做需要极大的勇气，因为目前甚至连思考六个月后的事情都很困难，更不用说六年或六十年了。但这些月份和这些年代将会到来。而且，如果你是一家成功的公司，希望你将参与这些月份和这些年代。那么你的公司会是什么样子？它将做什么？

Well, yeah, it doesn't fit on a billboard very well or on a or a campaign podium, and it will take a massive amount of bravery to do that because it's hard to even think six months ahead at the moment, let alone six years or six decades. But those months and those decades will come. And, hopefully, if you're a successful company, you will be playing a part in those those months and those decades. So what does your company look like? What is it gonna be doing?

它关心什么？你的顾客将会得到什么？

What does it care about? What are your customers gonna be getting?

那么还有另一类公司，在更传统的行业中，可能并不设计尖端产品和服务，但他们仍然需要考虑未来将如何发展。你建议他们如何更好地应用这四种思维方式，以领先于可能面临的新技术潮流？

So there's a whole other bucket of companies in more traditional industries that maybe aren't designing the cutting edge products and services, but they still need to consider how the future is gonna play out. So how do you recommend that they do a better job of applying those four types of thinking to get ahead of the curve of the new technologies that might be coming at them?

很多公司都忙于追逐日程安排、完成交易、达成销售和完成任务，以至于建立一个未来团队或某种明确组织来关注长期发展，实际上是大多数公司不具备的特权。我意识到这一点。但这并不意味着你不能鼓励团队在各个层面上更有针对性地思考——是的，我们现在就做这件事。这看起来是正确的。我们能否在会议的最后十分钟讨论一下这四种思考未来的其他方式？

A lot of companies are so busy trying to, you know, chase the calendar appointments and and make the deals and make the sales and get things done that setting up some sort of futures team or some sort of explicit organization to look long term is a privilege that most companies actually don't have. So I'm aware of that. But it doesn't mean to say you can't encourage your team at every level to think more pointedly about, yes, let's do that now. That seems like the right thing. Can we just spend the last ten minutes of the meeting talking about maybe some of the other of these four ways of thinking about the future?

如果我们这样做，可能会发生什么不好的事情？是的，我们要这样做，但我们还可以做些什么？如果这件事真的成功了，我们最终会得到什么？将这种思维融入组织文化，融入各个层级的团队，并鼓励人们提出这类问题，我认为这将使组织更加全面。而且我认为如果得到鼓励，这种文化会传播得非常快。

If we do that, what bad things might happen? Yes, we're going to do that, but what other things might we do? If this thing really works, what could we end up with at the end? Breeding that into the culture of an organization and breeding that into teams at every level and encouraging people that it is their place to ask those kinds of questions, I think will lead you to a more rounded organization. And I think that culture spreads really quickly if it's encouraged.

所以这某种程度上是从高层开始，C级高管和董事会在做长期决策时进行这些更哲学性的对话，但你也希望看到它在团队层面渗透，每当讨论新倡议或项目时？

So it sort of starts at the top with the c suite and the board having some of these more philosophical conversations when they're making long term decisions, but then you'd also like to see it filtering down sort of to the team level anytime a new initiative or project is being discussed?

是的。我认为是这样。我认为这是一个大多数公司都能做到的可操作的事情，就是划出少量时间，给予每位员工权限去指出问题并说：这接下来会导致什么？这件事的第二、第三版本会是什么样子？那看起来怎么样？

Yeah. I think so. I think that's an actionable thing I could see most companies being able to do is just carving out a small amount of time and giving every employee the permission to point at things and say, well, what does this lead to next? What's the second and third version of this? What does that look like?

我们这里遗漏了什么？我们可能正在启动哪些影响？我认为这不需要太多时间或金钱的投资，而且我见过它给人们的工作方式带来了一些相当重大的改变。

What are we missing here? What implications might we be setting in motion? I think that doesn't take too much in terms of investment of time or or or money, and I think I've seen it make some pretty major changes in the way people show up to their work.

你会说对组织而言，目标是让每个人都通过这四个视角思考，还是可以组建团队来确保你有一个'可能'思考者、一个'应该'思考者、一个'或许'思考者和一个'不要'思考者共同合作？

Would you say for organizations that is the goal to just sort of get everyone thinking with through the four lenses, or can you build teams to sort of make sure you have a could thinker, a should thinker, a might thinker, and a don't thinker all working together.

这可能是我应该站起来说'我可能错了'的时候——这四个类别可能不对，或者可能有第五个。我写这本书是希望开启这样的对话：这是我看到的，这是我观察到的。回到你关于团队构成的观点，当我接手Google X设计主管时，那里有一个工业设计团队，有一个用户研究团队。

This might be the time for me to stand up and say, I could be wrong with these four categories. Just or there could be a fifth. What I'm hoping to do with this book is just to start that conversation about this is what I've seen, and this is what I've observed. Back to your point about the shape of teams, when I took over the helm of the head of design at Google X, there was an industrial design team. There was a user research team.

你知道，当时有很多非常专业、我甚至可以说是各自为政的专业从业者。我很快就做了调整，把所有这些人整合成一个设计团队。我认为重要的是，你可以有自己的专业特长并带来贡献，但能够横向协作并理解他人的视角，这就是我所说的严谨未来研究的一部分。所以我们团队里既有来自麦肯锡那种战略背景、拥有MBA类型背景的人，他们擅长数据分析，思考竞争格局；也有极具创意的工业设计师，他们深刻理解物品和设备的未来，能更敏锐地在这一领域发挥作用；还有来自批判性和思辨背景的人，他们能够思考新产品、新技术的影响和社会意义。

There was, you know, very specialist, very sort of I wouldn't say siloed, but very specialist practitioners. And very quickly, what I did was reduce all of that and say it's the design team. And I think the important part of that is you can have your own specialism and bring it to the party, but being able to play laterally and understand other people's perspective is part of what I mean when I say rigorous futures. So we would have people in the team who came from a more sort of strategic McKinsey sort of MBA type background who could do the sort of the numbers version and think about competitive landscapes and think about that, but would also have very creative industrial designers who understood the future of objects and the future of devices and could play in that space more keenly. And then we had people that came from more of a critical and speculative background who could think about implications and societal reasoning around new products, new technologies, what it might mean.

让所有这些人在一个团队中协同工作其实并不总是那么容易，但最终产生了非常强大的成果，这些成果比企业界、媒体界乃至一般未来讨论中存在的绝大多数未来研究工作都更加全面立体——我至今仍为此感到非常自豪。我认为其中一些工作确实非常出色。

And getting all of those people to play together in a team wasn't always straightforward, actually, but yielded really strong results that felt way more rounded than most of the futures work that exists in corporations and in in indeed in in media and in the general discourse about the future that I'm I'm still really proud of. I think some of that work was really good.

是的。我猜想会有很多健康的讨论和辩论。谈谈细节的重要性，以及不仅要思考宏观图景，还要极其细致地考虑到你的产品或服务或新技术可能以最平凡的方式影响人们的生活。在思考未来时，为什么这一点如此重要？

Yeah. Lots of healthy discussion and debate, I imagine. Talk about the importance of detail and sort of thinking not just big picture, but extremely granularly to the most mundane ways your product or service or new technology might be affecting people's lives. Why is that so important when you're thinking about the future?

很久以前，我创造了一个短语——'平凡未来'，它就像鞋里的小石子一样一直跟随着我，实际上我现在对此非常自豪。我出生并成长于德比，这是英国中部的一个后工业城市，非常灰暗，多雨。我周围环绕着我称之为普通平凡的环境。这是一个非常中庸的地方，收入水平大约处于英国的中位数。

A long time ago, I coined a phrase, the future mundane, which has sort of followed me around like a pebble in my shoe, actually. I've become very proud of it. So I was born and raised in Derby, which is a post industrial city in The UK, right in the middle, very gray, very rainy. And I grew up around sort of what I would call ordinary mundaneity. It's a very middling place where the median income is about median for The UK.

它不热。它不冷。它不在北方。它不在南方。它只是普普通通。

It's not hot. It's not cold. It's not north. It's not south. It's just ordinary.

但当我开始我的职业生涯，作为一名设计师和未来设计师时，我做了很多之前提到的那种充满活力的美好未来主义——大量关于我们前方机遇的激动人心的渲染图，许多关于未来可能性的令人兴奋的电影、模型和故事。而我的大脑不断回到德比，思考着：实际上，德里克会怎么使用这个？这真的像……这感觉起来是什么样的？不是在某个原始实验室的愿景视频里，有基因治疗师在研究新疗法，而是在德里克公交车上的背包里。这种真正看清当下、望向窗外思考未来的能力，当你只是观察周围的世界，审视我们所有人都过的普通日常生活，思考我们谈论的深远未来的变化，想象着我所说的德里克在某个地方的公交车上，背包里有VR头显，或者有某种电子设备在他耳边低语——这开始让未来落地，让它更容易把握，真正深入细节，开始思考钟形曲线的中间部分、大规模普及以及事物的普通日常体验。

But when I started my career as a sort of designer and a futures designer, I did a lot of that energetic good futurism I talked about earlier, lots of excited renderings about all the opportunity that we had ahead of us, lots of excitable sort of films and models and stories about what the future could hold. And my brain kept going back to Derby and thinking, actually, how would Derek use this? Is this is this really like, what does this feel like? Not when it's in, like, some pristine lab in a vision video with some gene therapist working on a new cure, but, like, in Derek's backpack on the bus. And that ability to really see the present and look out the window and think about the future, as you just look at the world around you and look in that ordinary everyday life that we all lead and think about the changes that we're talking about in the deep future and thinking about this Derek that I'm talking about on a bus somewhere with a VR headset in his back or with some cybernetic thing whispering in his ear, like, it starts to ground the future and makes it easier to wrap your hands around and and really rolling in the detail of that and starting to think about the middle of the bell curve and mass adoption and ordinary everyday experiences with things.

它不性感。它不激动人心。也许股东们并不真想看到它，但它是严谨的。而且我认为它实际上能引导你在当下开发事物时，对做什么和不做什么做出非常明智的决定。所以，你知道，我去7-11或酒类商店思考未来，和去科学实验室或技术演示一样有收获，因为我认为这能帮助你理解：人是未来的重要组成部分。

It's not sexy. It's not exciting. Maybe shareholders don't really want to see it, but it is rigorous. And I think it can actually lead to really smart decisions about what you do do and what you don't do in developing things in the present. So, you know, I get as much out of going to a seven Eleven or a liquor store thinking about the future as I do going to a science lab or, you know, a a a tech demo, because I think it just it helps you understand that people are a huge part of the future.

是的。而且我们需要比现在可能做得更多地去理解它们。

Yeah. And we need to understand them a lot more than perhaps we do.

在那些你已经实施这种方法变革或与领导者咨询确保他们通过四个视角思考的组织中，你是如何看到这种更全面的未来主义带来回报的？

In the organizations where you have, you know, implemented this change in approach or consulted with leaders to make sure they're thinking through the four lenses. How have you seen that more holistic futurism pay off?

是的。说实话，我不会说这总是很直接。我认为这是一个结果的光谱。我很想多谈谈我的工作。

Yeah. I won't say it's always been straightforward, if I'm honest. It's a spectrum of results, I'd say. I would love to tell you more about my work.

但你签了太多保密协议？

But you've signed too many NDAs?

是的，有一点。但未来工作本质上发生在项目的非常早期阶段。在我合作过的那些公司类型中，可能需要五、七、十甚至十二年才能发展成面向公众的产品提案，比如当你处理真正新兴的技术或相当不确定的技术时。而且很多这些东西就彻底失败了，有充分理由从未取得任何进展。

Yeah. A little bit. But futures work by its very nature happens very early on in a project. And in the types of companies I've worked at, it could be five, seven, ten, twelve years before that develops into a public facing product proposition, for example, when you're working with really nascent technologies or really sort of uncertain techniques. Also, a lot of those things just crater and and never go anywhere for good reason.

你明白吗？它们不是好生意。技术行不通，诸如此类。所以这类工作的KPI或ROI也是很多公司不投资的原因，因为很难指着某样东西说，因为我们做了这个，所以导致了那个。我更多把它看作一种文化上的推动，帮助打磨想法的尖锐边缘并赋予其形状，而不是说因为我们做了这个练习，它就导致了这些结果，并且有固定的美元金额与之挂钩。

You know? They're not a good business. The technology doesn't work, something like that. So the sort of KPIs or the ROIs of this type of work is also why a lot of companies don't invest in it because it's hard to point at something and say, because we did this, it led to that. I think of it more like a sort of cultural nudging and and helping to sort of knock the sharp edges off an idea and give it some shape as opposed to saying, because we did this exercise, it's led to these outcomes, and it has a dollar amount fixed to it.

但我确实在我合作过的一些领导者和帮助塑造的一些项目中看到了变化。我认为我们最终得到的东西更加周全、更有理有据，并且有更好的机会存活下来，产生那些提出想法的人所希望的影响和变革。

But I've definitely seen the change in some of the leaders I've worked with and some of the projects I've helped shaped. And the things that we ended up with, I think, are more well rounded and well reasoned and stand a better chance of surviving and making the kinds of impact and change that the the people who came up with the ideas were hoping for.

对于那些说这太耗时、太不切实际、只是个思维实验而无法实际应用到我的战略或未来一三五年的规划中的潜在客户或其他人，你会怎么回应？

And what do you say to potential clients or other people you come across who say this is just too time consuming? It's too pie in the sky. It's a thought exercise that really I can apply practically to my strategy, to the things that I'm doing in the next year, three years, five years.

是的，外界有很多不同意见，每个人都有权持有自己的观点。我认为这很正常。历史表明，那些有好想法并真正注重细节的人往往能成功。我认为，相比短期交付，拥有更长远的视野对任何公司都至关重要。

Yeah. There are many opinions out there, and everyone's entitled to theirs. I think that's fine. I think history shows that people that have a good idea and really work at the details, those are the people that succeed. And I do think that having an idea about longer term horizons than near term shipping, let's say, is just a vital part of any company.

即使长远规划还很小、处于萌芽阶段或只是背景存在，花专门时间构建它也有助于提升士气、改善决策，并帮助理解哪些地方存在困难、哪些问题可能需要未来解决。

Having a long game, even if it's sort of small and it doesn't it's just nascent and it exists in the background, spending dedicated time to build that thing is good for morale, is good for decision making, is good for understanding where things are difficult, where things might need to be addressed at some point.

在商界、政界或非营利领域，有没有一两位领导者你认为目前在思考未来方面做得特别出色？

And is there a leader or two that you would point to in the business world, political, nonprofit, you know, that you see doing a really good job of thinking about the future right now?

我觉得这方面参差不齐。Demis Hassabis 在快速推出产品方面做得很好，同时也对这项工作可能带来的影响有前瞻性视角。

I think it's spotty. Demis Hassabis is doing a nice job of shipping product real quick and getting things out, but also having a perspective on what that work might lead to.

他是谷歌、DeepMind 和 Isomorphic Labs 的CEO。

And he's the CEO of Google, DeepMind, and Isomorphic Labs.

没错。绝对是的。我认为他在平衡短期目标与企业社会责任、以及理解他们所构建技术的影响和不确定性方面做得很好。这种责任感和对未来思考的能力在很多人的身上正在逐渐增强，我觉得这很令人耳目一新。

Yeah. Absolutely. I I think he does a good job of balancing sort of short term with a level of sort of corporate social responsibility and an understanding of the implications and uncertainty around what they're building. I think that's quite refreshing as well of that level of responsibility and thinking about the future that I think is is a growing skill in a lot of people.

我知道你说过不喜欢未来主义被边缘化到组织中的想法，但对于达到一定规模的公司来说，任命一个专门负责此事、负责在组织内建立这种文化的人是否有用呢？

I know you said you don't like the idea of futurism being sort of sidelined in with organizations, but would it be useful for companies of a certain size to appoint someone who's responsible for that and responsible for sort of building that culture within the organization?

我认为是的。我的意思是，我会这么说。我认为这能从高管层面很好地表明：我们关心这些事情，这很重要。请关注我们引入这个高级职位的这个人，并听取他们的意见。挑战通常在于随后会围绕这个人形成一个团队，然后它就变成了一个独立的事物。

I think so. I mean, I would say that. I think it does a good job of saying from a c suite level, we care about this stuff, and it's important. Please pay attention to this person we brought into this senior role and listen to what they say. The challenge is typically then a team forms around that person, and then it becomes its separate thing.

很多时候，这要么意味着它被分割成一个独立的部门，只做一些宠物项目或者可以说是营销噱头，要么就变成了拿着严格标准在组织中巡查的警察，说'你们做得不够，应该这样做'。我认为这时就开始出问题了。真正需要的是能够引导人们，向他们展示：这是我们关心且认为重要的工作类型。

And quite often, that either means that it's cleaved off into, like, a separate unit that just does sort of pet projects and maybe sort of marketing fluff, let's say, or it becomes the police that moves through an organization with a strict rod and says, you're not doing enough of this. You should do this. I think that's when it starts to break down. I think what you really want is for people to be led by the hand a little bit and shown, like, this is the kind of work that we care about and we think is important.

在较低层面上，我认为这确实在很多组织中发生，但往往是在年度外出会议或头脑风暴会议上，大家对所有潜在想法都充满热情，然后实际上什么也没发生。那么如何克服这个问题呢？

At a lower level, I do think that happens in a lot of organizations, but it tends to happen at sort of annual off sites or brainstorming sessions, and everyone gets really energized about all these potential ideas, and then nothing really ever happens. So how do you overcome that?

是的。这又回到了这类工作的KPI投资回报率问题。2000年代初我在伦敦的设计机构工作时，客户会来参加这些会议。很快我们就意识到，这些要么是没人真正在意的小打小闹的练习，只是作为一种外出活动的方式，要么说实话——这种情况确实发生过——财年末会剩下一些额外预算，他们就会想：我们可以搞个外出活动或密室逃脱，或者去做这类事情。

Yeah. It gets back to the sort of KPI ROI of this type of work. When I was working in sort of design agencies back in London in the early two thousands, clients would come in and we'd run these sessions. Very quickly, realized that they were either little puff pieces of exercise that nobody was actually that bothered about, but it was it was just a way to sort of have an away day, or it was honestly, this happened. There was a bit of extra budget left at the end of the financial year that they were like, we could do an off-site or an escape room or we could go and do one of these things.

我还认为，很多专业从事这项工作、将其作为技能或服务出售的人，并不是跟进执行的最佳人选，这种衔接往往无法实现。我认为这类工作需要倡导和支持。你需要有人成为这类工作的倡导者，说：我真的很关心这个。这不仅仅是一次有趣的外出活动。我看到我们前面有问题。

I also think a lot of the people that do this work professionally and sell it as a skill or sell it as a a service, let's say, are not the best people to follow through with it, and that bridging often doesn't happen. I think you need advocacy and air cover for that type of work. So you need somebody who is the champion of this type of work and says, I actually really care about this. This is not just a fun off-site. I see problems ahead of us.

我看到我们前面有机会。我看到我们需要解决的事情。我想在这个环境中做这件事。但是因为，再次强调，这类工作很难量化，也很难看到直接的因果关系，所以这类工作也需要支持。需要有人来保护它并说：不。

I see opportunities ahead of us. I see things we need to address. I want to do it in this setting. But because, again, this work is very difficult to quantify and very difficult to sort of see the direct through lines, you need air cover for that work as well. You need someone to protect it and say, no.

不，不。给它时间。给它时间和空间。给它，你知道的，保持距离。

No. No. Give it time. Give it time and give it space. Give it you know, keep away.

不要扼杀它。要开始坚持到底。我从我的好朋友西蒙·沃特福尔那里学到了这一点，他说倡导和空中掩护是让这项工作保持活力所需要的东西。否则，正如你所说，它会被扼杀、被遗忘或被忽视。

Don't kill it. And start to see it through. I learned that from a good friend of mine, Simon Waterfall, who who said advocacy and air cover are the things you need to keep this work alive. Otherwise, as you said, it gets killed or it gets forgotten or it gets ignored.

是的。我想补充一点，就是从中产生一些可操作的东西。你知道，即使是在几年后能够回顾并说，嗯，这个练习使我们以这种方式转变了思维，从而产生了这个产品。也许你无法计算投资回报率，但你是在证明那种思维导致了行动。

Yeah. I would add another a, sort of generating something actionable out of it. You know, even if it's a couple years in the future to be able to point back and say, well, this exercise enabled us to shift our thinking in this way, which yielded this product. And maybe there isn't an ROI you can calculate, but you are making the case that that thinking led to action.

是的。你需要——我讨厌'下一步'这个词——但你需要一些我们明天要做的事情。比如，我们实际上要用这个做什么，它会带来什么？我可能不是确切说明如何做到这一点的合适人选。我只是试图揭示这种认识，我认为这在个人、组织和领导力中都是一项未充分发展的技能。

Yeah. You need to I hate that term next steps, but you need something that we're going to do tomorrow. Like, what are we actually going to do with this, and what is it going to lead to? I might not be the right person to say exactly how we do that. I'm just trying to prize open that realization that I think it's an underdeveloped skill in individuals, in organizations, in leadership.

我花了很多时间做这类工作。我见过它。我接触过它。我领导过其中一些。我认为它没有达到我们在业务其他部分不会容忍的许多其他事情的标准，这种程度的异想天开、松散和缺乏严谨性。

I've spent a lot of time doing this type of work. I've seen it. I've been around it. I've led some of it. I don't think it's up to the standard of a lot of other things we we wouldn't tolerate it in other parts of business, this level of sort of whimsy and looseness and lack of rigor.

所以我非常希望看到关于未来的对话变得更深入、更负责任、更严谨、更全面。可能有100种方法可以做到这一点，但希望通过将未来分解成更易消化的小块，我们至少可以承认我们陷入了某些习惯和某种步调一致，这可能使我们闭目塞听，看不到其他思维方式和我们可能错过的东西。

So I I would love to see that conversation about the future get deeper, more responsible, more rigorous, more well rounded. There's probably a 100 ways to do that, but hopefully, by breaking up the future into some more digestible chunks, we can at least acknowledge that we fall into certain habits and certain lockstep that might be closing our eyes off to other ways of thinking and other things we might be missing.

太棒了。嗯，尼克，非常感谢你帮助我们所有人更仔细地思考未来。

Terrific. Well, Nick, thank you so much for helping us all think more carefully about the future.

哦，这是我的荣幸。谢谢邀请我。

Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

这位是未来学家尼克·福斯特，《可以、应该、可能、不要：我们如何思考未来》一书的作者。如果您觉得这期节目有帮助，请分享给同事，并务必在苹果播客、Spotify或您收听的地方订阅并给《Ideacast》评分。如果您想帮助领导者推动世界前进，请考虑订阅《哈佛商业评论》。您将获得HBR移动应用访问权限、每周独家内幕通讯以及HBR在线无限访问权限。只需前往hbr.org/订阅即可。

That's futurist Nick Foster, author of the book could, should, might, don't, how we think about the future. If you found this episode helpful, share it with a colleague, and be sure to subscribe and rate Ideacast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. If you wanna help leaders move the world forward, please consider subscribing to Harvard Business Review. You'll get access to the HBR mobile app, the weekly exclusive insider newsletter, and unlimited access to HBR online. Just head to hbr.org slash subscribe.

感谢我们的团队：高级制作人Mary Du、音频产品经理Ian Fox和高级制作专家Rob Eckhart。也感谢您收听《HBR Ideacast》。我们将在周二带来新的一期节目。我是艾莉森·比尔德。

Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Du, audio product manager Ian Fox, and senior production specialist Rob Eckhart. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR Ideacast. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I'm Alison Beard.