Helping public institutions look beyond the curve
By: States Of Change
Tags: Innovation, Three Horizons, Framework, Government

We spoke to Jason Pearman in April about how he and his team are keeping an eye on the long-term and helping public institutions think about ‘the curve beyond the curve’. He’s been busy with charts and frameworks to give himself some useful mental models to make some sense of quite extraordinary times. Let’s jump in.

Hey Jason! First off, how are you feeling, are you ok?

Hi! Like most of us, the first few weeks of this pandemic were a struggle. After making sure my family and team were safe, I did spin my wheels a bit trying to find ways for our team to contribute to the immediate COVID response.

What’s got your immediate attention?

Young people. As part of a team with a mandate to support young people along their journey into the labour market, the COVID crisis has really forced us to think deeply about how we’re able to help them; not just right now (though that’s important) but through the duration of this crisis and into a period of recovery.

In the midst of this crisis, governments are being asked to respond to… just about everything. With so much to get your head around, how have you framed your thinking? Where did you start?

I’m sure I’m not the only one who was unsure where to start! But I have come to lean heavily on the International Futures Forum’s Three Horizons framework. Obviously, no framework or mental model is 100% accurate, but they can be useful and the Three Horizons Framework has given me a way to consider the continuum of this crisis.

If you’re not familiar with the Three Horizons Framework I’d check out this great video explainer by Kate Raworth.

From the immediate challenge of stretching the social safety net as wide as possible to protect people’s health and livelihoods; to the longer-term challenge of lowering the barrier many young people face when joining the workforce. It’s thinking about those longer-term problems that’s keeping me awake at night. We’re doing our best not to take our eye off of the long game.

We’re also seeing huge amounts of money from both funders and governments. Where that money goes will have a huge effect on whether we have a future we’re happy with. We need to make sure we structure this massive ‘portfolio of investment’ — because that’s what it is — well.

Practically, this means casting our attention and investments beyond what’s immediately in front of us at all times.

I like that the Three Horizon Framework helps us see three interconnected systems that are at play during any transition. The first system, Horizon 1, is the dominant system that we all recognize and rely on. Sometimes referred to as “Business as Usual” or the system that “keeps the lights on”, when conditions change this system loses its effectiveness. The third system, Horizon 3, is a new end state that is a better fit for the new realities on the ground. The second system, Horizon 2, is the collection of new innovations and new infrastructure that helps Horizon 3 emerge.

To successfully navigate a transition, it’s important to act effectively across these three horizons.

Can you get a bit more granular on what kinds of activities or investment that you’d want to see? What kind of portfolio is needed to lay foundations for a viable future?

I tend to obsess about how to operationalize innovation frameworks and strategy, so I recently ran a thought experiment to A) map the Three Horizons over the phases of a crisis response, and B) map some decision and innovation operational models like Cynefin, Innovation Portfolio Sensemaking/Management, Mission Oriented Innovation, Boring Revolution, Delivery-Driven Policy, and IAP2 over the Three Horizons.

Ok, that’s a lot of frameworks…

Yeah, it is. So I made it a table to make sense of when these ways of thinking are most helpful to us (or helpful to me and the team) over the duration of the crisis. This is where I got to:

Worth noting that H1, H2, and H3 systems act in parallel (not one after the other). I only included the dominant Horizon during a given phase of the crisis response.