You probably have a favourite piece of clothing to put on and put you at ease. Maybe a hoody, a jumper, … a favourite onesie.
When something fits, you wear it with ease, you move with it, you even forget it’s there, it becomes an extension of you.
The same is true of hand tools*. When we learn to use a hand tool, in the early stages, the tool may feel unfamiliar and the action strange. We think about the tool as much as what we are trying to create. But as the feel and the action become familiar, the tool seems to disappear from site, and instead we are just looking at the work.
These ideas of comfort, fit and adoption are helpful for thinking about how well conceptual tools and models work. A good model is one that is easy to pick up and start using. One that quickly gets beyond thinking about the model and to doing better work.
The Three Horizons model is one of the mainstays of our Toolkit for Regenerative Design, and it has the characteristics of a well-worn tool. People seem to pick it up with surprising ease. I hear people quickly adopting the language of different horizons — talking about Horizon Three dreams, Horizon One realities and Horizon Two opportunities.
Maybe it fits because it speaks to very human experiences. I think many people recognise times when they have inhabited each of these mindsets, sometimes at the same time.
And because it fits, it gets out of the way — and easily opens up a conversation about our hopes, our realities and our best possible next steps.
*When I write about our relationship to tools and how we think, I’m usually channeling Matthew Crawford’s book, The World Beyond Your Head.