The Essential Futures Conversation Game
Read on to learn how the Polak game, a simple yet profound exercise, opens up rich conversations on the future, challenging assumptions and shaping leadership and innovation.
radical Insights
One of the best entry points for surprisingly rich conversations about the future is a simple game that can be played anywhere with virtually any number of players. You can even play it alone – and still walk away with some real insights.
Since our days together at Singularity, Pascal & I have played versions of the Polak game with leaders and learners in our sessions. The game (also known as Where Do You Stand?) has an interesting history and many possible variations, but fundamentally, it’s designed to help players reflect on their views about the future (assumptions, expectations, beliefs – often unexamined) and begin to explore how those ideas about the future might shape leadership and action in the present – often in subtle or unrecognized ways.
The setup is wonderfully simple: Players are presented with two questions that they answer by situating themselves physically in a game space oriented with an X and a Y axis. How each player answers the two questions along a continuum of possible responses determines her location in a 2 x 2 where each quadrant reflects a sort of mindset or posture toward the future.
Classically, the two questions have focused on the type of future a player is anticipating (more positive/promising vs. more negative/challenging) and the level of agency a player expects an individual to have in shaping the future (more individual agency/influence vs. less individual agency/influence). I used this formulation consistently when facilitating the game on programs at Singularity, and it supported eye-opening exchanges between participants as they reflected on their own views about the future and recognized where and how (and how very frequently!) their assumptions and beliefs diverged from those of other folks in the room. And of course, Singularity as an organization had a point of view that was very much in the Positive/Promising + High Individual Agency quadrant and was invested in socializing that POV through its executive education programs.
Recently, I’ve shifted my framing of the first question to something that I find to be more useful in a wider variety of contexts – and while both have value, this is the framing that I generally recommend if you’re interested in running the game with your org or team. Rather than big picture optimism/pessimism, it asks instead about the extent to which participants feel that the future is fixed vs. flexible – i.e., Is the future largely set on a mostly fixed path or does it largely remain to be determined and still holds many possibilities.
The result is a 2 x 2 matrix that supports fantastic conversations (facilitated – always – by asking Why?) about seeing and shaping futures, riding waves vs. making them, theories of change, philosophies of innovation – and even life, etc. And of course, the game provides an excellent opportunity for individuals to reflect on how their own feelings about the future might inform (or enhance or limit) their decision making, leadership, and partnership in the present – and to see that their particular assumptions and expectations aren’t the only possible set, which can open yet another set of valuable discussions for any group of leaders or learners interested in building the future. @Jeffrey
The Thin Wisps of Tomorrow
The One-Minute AI Challenge Might Lead to an Existential Crisis 🤔
Much ink (or, more likely, pixels) has been spent discussing the effects AI will have on the workforce. Personally, I still believe most of the discussion is either too simplistic (“a specific job will just completely disappear”) or not far-reaching enough. Wharton professor Ethan Mollick recently revisited an experiment he conducted when ChatGPT was released. In his original setup, he attempted to perform a series of real-world tasks, such as writing a marketing plan, using ChatGPT within a 30-minute time limit. His revised experiment raised the stakes and reduced the time he allocated to just 60 seconds. The results were remarkable – within 60 seconds, the various AI systems Mollick utilized generated a PowerPoint presentation, a syllabus for a course on entrepreneurship, trend designs for a bathroom remodel, a product launch plan, and market research on the AR/VR market.
Mollick highlights a couple of changes since his initial experiment about a year ago. Firstly, AI has become much easier to use. By integrating AI into the Microsoft Office Suite, tasks like creating a PowerPoint presentation have become effortless: “Instead, these systems have made AI usage feel much simpler and more commonplace, eliminating the uncertainty (and some of the power) associated with directly using GPT–4. Now, companies are purchasing tens of thousands of Copilot licenses, and the most popular GPTs are being utilized hundreds of thousands of times. AI adoption is becoming standard.” This presents an intriguing challenge in the workforce: “But now, every employee with Copilot can produce work that meets all the requirements of a formal report without necessarily reflecting the underlying effort.”
Set aside the questions regarding the future of specific jobs and contemplate the broader implications of our own and our managers’ relationship to our work. In Mollick’s words: “Therefore, using AI at work necessitates reflecting on what your work signifies to others and what it signifies to you.” @Pascal
Why even bother creating new websites if no one is going to see them? 😵💫
This question, posed by Ryan Broderick in a recent Fast Company article(and in his newsletter Garbage Day), is not just a good one – it is also the one I have been pondering ever since I encountered data indicating that AI coding tools, trained on the vast corpus of insights and commentary curated by the extensive Stack Overflow community, are becoming prevalent. It’s commendable that AI tools like Microsoft’s Copilot or OpenAI’s ChatGPT can respond to coding queries more quickly and effortlessly than humans can – solving vexing problems with just a few taps on your keyboard. However, when an AI’s capabilities rely on human knowledge, which is currently predominantly sourced from the open web, and if AI eventually dominates the open web – who will contribute new knowledge to these language models? As Ryan points out: “Unless you plan on funding an entire internet’s worth of constantly evolving content with the revenue from your AI chatbot, the quality of information it generates will deteriorate as contributions dwindle.”
Initially, it was coding and Stack Overflow; now, it extends to search on a broader scale. If your search results do not lead you beyond the platform where your search began (such as ChatGPT), and if insights are confined within the AI – thereby disrupting the incentive structure of the World Wide Web as we currently understand it (from revenue generated by ads to mere boasting rights based on page views) – why would anyone continue to publish new content (especially on the open web)? It paints a dystopian future – one that may not be too distant. This scenario could unfold as one of those infamous “gradually, then suddenly” moments where everything seems enjoyable and light-hearted – until it isn’t. @Pascal
What We Are Reading
📈 9 Trends That Will Shape Work in 2024 and Beyond In 2023, organizations continued to face significant challenges, from inflation to geopolitical turmoil, and 2024 promises more disruption. Gartner researchers have identified nine key trends, from new and creative employee benefits to the collapse of traditional career paths, that will impact work this year. @Jane
💡 The 51% Rule (and 3 More Strategies to Think Like a Millionaire) with Steven Bartlett Insights in this conversation, such as the 51% rule and Type 1 versus Type 2 decisions, are great tools to use in everyday decision-making. @Mafe
🤨 Vaclav Smil and the Value of Doubt The legendary scientist and avowed climate solutions realist Vaclav Smil offers a critical take on optimistic projections for a climate future saved by transformative technologies. @Jeffrey
🛠️ KitchenAid Did It Right 87 Years Ago With new laws pushing manufacturers towards repairable devices, this anecdote is an interesting one highlighting the contrasting parallels between our increasingly intensified attachment to our technological devices during a concentrated period of usage, but our nearly completely lost attachment to that device once it reaches the end of its lifespan. @Julian
🤖 Reskilling in the Age of AI Discover the crucial paradigm shifts and effective strategies for reskilling amidst the rapidly evolving landscape of automation and AI. @Pedro
🎭 The State of the Culture, 2024 Are we entering the age of post-entertainment culture, where distraction and the pursuit of addictive digital engagement overshadow traditional forms of art and entertainment? @Pascal
Bits & Pixels
» Taking the open-source LLM Mistral–7B on an acid trip reveals a powerful approach to steering AIs.
» Of course, this had to happen: Using AIs to create autonomous bots for hacking websites.
» Beyond calculators: The threat of large language models to learning, teaching, and education.
» A recent study, unsurprisingly, highlights the lack of reliability in entrusting an LLM with your medical diagnosis.
» In case you’re wondering, no, offering incentives like bribes or world peace does not influence ChatGPT to provide superior responses.
» And no, we cannot completely eliminate hallucinations from LLMs.
» With “big data” still buzzing around, do you actually know what a terabyte of data entails?
» The logical conclusion of AI? Deutsche Telekom is showcasing a phone that eliminates apps, replacing functionality with AI.
» We are living in an Apple world. The top seven best-selling phones are all iPhones.
Some Fun Stuff
Explore a constantly updated collection of alleged gateways to the underworld in the UK. Discover a rich repository full of stories and myths about these mysterious portals thought to connect to Hell. 😈
radical Ignite Session: The Future of Spatial Computing (or: Whatever happened to AR and VR?)
Join Pascal Finette in our dynamic bimonthly live event series to dive into the heart of innovation. Pascal engages in candid conversations with eminent experts who demonstrate progress in practice.
On Thursday, March 21st, starting at Noon EST, we feature Aaron Frank, a longtime expert in Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Spatial Computing. Together, we will explore the future of this field.
With the recent release of Apple’s Vision Pro headset, Meta’s ongoing efforts, the continuous updates to the Quest Pro hardware, and the entry of new companies into the market, this could be the moment when headset-based computing takes off – or not?! Join our radical Ignite Session to find out!
Great newsletter Pascal and team, so much to reflect on and liked the reframe on the Polak Game which I’ll be using in the future as can see it adding value to subsequent discussions.