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.
The Three Horizons model is one of our key tools in the Regenerative Design Lab for exploring change. It’s simple enough to grab in a short space of time (see yesterday’s post on a the fit of a good tool), but deep enough to shape a deep, long-term exploration. For example we use the Three Horizons to create the arc of the Lab — in which we start with dreaming about a thriving future, return to the realities of the present, and then going on explore the steps that can create a change from one to the other.
The model also supports a half-day deep dive into innovation (See Kate Raworth’s excellent 6-minute video on facilitation questions to support such a process.)
But sometime the greatest value I see is in simply getting people familiar with the picture. If people can see the three mindsets — the manager (H1), the dreamer (H3) and the entrepreneur (H2) — the conversation can open up by itself.
Below is a 90-minute introduction I’ve been using. It gives people just enough structure to try on the model, and then lets them get on with using it. This is how it goes.
Three Horizons: 90-minute facilitation plan
Getting started
00h00 — Arrivals (10mins)
For the usual how-do-you-dos, and-I’m-sorry-I’m-lates.
00h10 – Warm-up (5mins)
Ask people to write down on post-it notes as many cool sustainability (or whatever topic you are interested in) initiatives as they have heard of on separate post-it notes. Requirements:
It must exist in the real world or as a prototype
Or it must have a website.
You don’t need to say this but we’ll use these later to populate Horizon Two.
00h15 — Introduce the model (10mins)
Acknowledge the familiar dynamic:
Dreams of the future
Frustrations with the present
Lots of opportunities pop up, but it’s hard to know where to start.
Introduce the Three Horizons as a way to see all of three simultaneously.
Step 1 — Horizon Three: the future we want
00h25 Breakout (10mins)
Prompt questions:
What are your hopes, dreams and values?
What future would be proud to hand on to future generations?
What elements of that future already exist?
Get participants to stick their post-it notes to the top right of the diagram.
00h35 Plenary (10mins)
Explore the different responses about the future.
What was easy and hard to discuss?
How did it feel to talk about the future?
Step 2 — Horizon One: Our reality
00h45 Breakout (10mins)
Prompt questions:
What holds your attention?
What keeps the current system in place?
What is causing pressure for change?
Get participants to stick their post-it notes on the left of the diagram.
00h55 Plenary (10mins)
Explore the different responses about the present.
What was easy and hard to discuss?
How did it feel to talk about the present?
This is the part of the process that my colleague Will Arnold would refer to as the Pit of Despair — when hope goes out of the room. It important to acknowledge this, and to welcome in Horizon Two as a way forward.
Step 3 – Horizon Two: The ideas that move us forward
01h05 — Breakout (10mins)
Prompt questions:
What steps could move us from H1 to H3?
Which of these opportunities already exist (you can use entries from the warm-up exercise as a prompt)
01h15 — Plenary (10mins)
Explore:
Which ideas act as stepping stones?
What conditions will enable these seeds to grow?
Who else needs to be involved?
Closing
01h25 – Conclusions (5mins)
What does the overall picture reveal?
How could use the model in your own work?
As a final signpost, I refer people to the Three Horizons entry in the Pattern Book for Regenerative Design and in our free online Tools for Regenerative Design.
01h30. Close.
Why this format works
This short workshop format gives participants:
A felt experience of each of the mindsets
A shared map of their collective thinking and their shared reality
Provides just enough detail to get people familiar with the model so they can use it in more depth themselves.
Overall I think it shows what the Three Horizons does best: to help people hold the future, the present and the opportunity for change all at the same time.
Rather than fight the revolution, he goes with it, because he senses that after the revolution the old power hierarchies will remain.
‘Everything had to change for everything to stay the same’.
This line could sound fatalistic. But I take it as a warning not to be complacent when we see change coming. Change might signal the dismantling of the status quo. Or it could simply mean the current system rearranging itself to maintain power.
How can we tell the difference?
Well, we can spend time thinking about what the future is we want to build. What are values? How is it wired together? What would thriving look like?
In the Toolkit for Regenerative Design, two models help with this”
Changing Mindsets — how our worldview shapes the systems we create
Living Systems Blueprint — the characteristics of systems that create thriving over time
When we have clarity, then we can scrutinise the latest novelty and ask:
is it a path to better, or is it a path to more of the same?
I like the word ‘torpor’ — a state of physical or mental lethargy. I like the word much more than I like feeling it.
I feel torpor when I spend too long doom-scrolling the news. I notice hope quickly sapping away.
The easiest thing is to be depressed about the state of the world. It is harder work to be hopeful.
And yet, we have to find the energy to stay hopeful. Because the elements of the future we want to build lie in the present. They actually surround us.
But if we succumb to torpor we stop looking, stop searching, stop noticing and then that future slips out of our fingers.
(There’s three-horizons thinking underlying this post. Check out the Three Horizons Model in Tools for Regenerative Design).
Earlier this week I wrote about designers needing to understand the conditions for change. What enables change and what blocks it?
If we understand organisational culture as how things get done in an organisation, then culture gives us some strong clues about what – or who might be enabling or blocking change.
Power is one of the six lenses of culture in the Johnson and Scholes culture web. How people with power wield it in the organisation sets a strong signal for what is valued and what can be ignored. The policy may say one thing, but it is what management or leadership actually do that sets the culture.
And so back to change. Do the people with power visibly support change? If so, a culture of change will enable you to do your work more easily. If not, you will have more work to do.
Design is about making change. Our aim is to turn an existing situation into a better situation. Sometimes that might be about designing a new thing. But other times it may be about allowing change to happen.
If we are interested in the latter then a useful question to ask is what is holding the existing situation in place? What is reinforcing the status quo? What is stopping innovation? What is preventing change?
Sometimes we need both. We need to float a new idea, but to stop it from sinking, we need to also create the conditions for change. But other times, it may be sufficient just to design the conditions for change, and then to allow something that has been waiting to emerge the chance to develop.
Last week at Hazel Hill Wood we ran a ‘dream walk’ with staff and trustees. The aim was to tune into our long-term hopes and aspirations for the site, as we continue the responsibility of creating a thriving place for care and learning.
Hopes and dreams are part of what a place is trying to do. They arise from our relationships with place and help steer the flow of change.
We began with Zuma Puma’s Box-Clearing warm-up (a technique I learnt from one of my clown teachers —more on that in another post), then set out into the woods. The rules were simple:
Walk to a place in the wood.
Walk with your gaze slightly raised to invite in fun and curiosity (another technique from another clown teacher, Robyn Hambrook)
Share what you’ve always hoped for this place.
Imagine how it could be, how it might change.
Speak until you’re done.
The next person picks up — not to challenge, but to add their own dreams.
We captured dreams in audio and notes, later mapped across the site.
What I learnt from facilitating the process
The temptation to say why not is strong — the delivery mindset of Horizon One is never far away. With reminders, we shifted into a more open Horizon Three frame.
Some dreams resonated and compounded — one voice building on the next until a vision took shape.
Some spots felt dream-silent, as if they were low-energy places. Others flowed with possibility, hinting at where change energy gathers. This was a real ah-ha moment for me.
You could consider carrying out a dream walk where you are: walk, notice, and speak your dreams of place aloud. You might be surprised by what takes shape.
The first stage in continuous place-based design is observation. It is a beginning that says before we do anything different here we need to try and understand this place.
The aim of this phase is to gather as much data and wisdom as we can before proposing changes. That data can be physical, cultural or even intangible — anything that helps us to notice what makes a place distinct, what gives it its feel.
One of the data sets I think is often overlooked — but vital — is hopes and dreams.
These are easy to dismiss as not ‘real’ but I see them as very real. Our hopes are distant but visible from where we are now — rooted both in the present and in the future. In the language of the Three Horizons Model, they belong in Horizon Three: an outline of what we see from here in the future.
Since the design process spans the present and the future, hopes and dreams are a vital link.
The hopes and dreams of the people that live or regularly used in a space are founded in their complex interaction with that place. So asking simple questions like:
What is your hope for this place? What do you dream I could become?
…can a great deal about the current lie of the land and its future potential.
One the questions we ask in the Systems Survey motif (see the Pattern Book) is ‘what is this place trying to do?’
Hopes and dreams are part of that answer. They are usually motivating — either towards one place or away from another. They inject energy into certain courses of action over others. And so that are an important clue as to what patterns are already unfolding here or are likely to in the future.
So pay attention to hopes and dreams as well as the things you can physically observe. These dreams may already be shaping the path that this place is taking.
It is hard to escape the idea that September is a new year. It’s a time for new stationery and new intentions.
But when resolutions for the year ahead crop up, the Three Horizons reminds me that what appears new was set in motion a long time ago, what is current will not last and what we do now sets the seeds for the future.
There is in fact very little that can be decided now; that can be implemented suddenly from here on. To do so is to shock the system. It can look effective but it can cause hidden stresses as things bend to your will. Often we can only sustain this pull into the opposite direction until the yoke of the system pulls you back in its direction.
What the Three Horizons shows us is that in fact everything is in flow. What’s better is to work with the currents of change, to notice trends, to know your destination and to seek to steer things in that direction over time.
In the Three Horizons pencil case,
The red pen is for what is current that will decline. In the season ahead, some things will give way. These are things that may have run their course or that have become unstable.
The blue pen is for the incoming — that which is taking the place of what is in decline. It is recognisable but it is different; it has been growing for some time; and it is distinct in some way that makes it more suited to the year ahead.
And the yellow pen is for what we are planting now and what is slowly awakening that will take the stage next.
In every new season, we can see the red pen that’s beginning to run out of ink, the blue pen getting to flow and the yellow pen beginning to make its mark.
The work of change is daily work — not a single decision on the eve of a new cycle but an ongoing act of noticing what’s in decline, what’s emerging and thinking about where to make your mark.
Check out the Three Horizons in our new Tools for Regenerative Design page.
In the Three Horizons model, Horizon One is the world that surrounds us — the one that grabs our attention, dominates our habits, and shapes our worldview.
Because it fills our field of vision, Horizon One obscures our view of possible alternative futures.
Earlier this week I wrote about cognitive ease — the brain’s tendency to favour familiar options over ones that require more thinking effort. It’s the easy option of taking the familiar path, rather than the harder work of beating a new one.
Horizons One is the beaten path. It’s the default route; the easy path.
But if we want to move towards a thriving future — one in which our work as designers and builders actually creates life and strengthens our communities and ecosystems — we need to beat a different path. And we need to do it every day.
That takes effort and resourcing.
We need time to reflect. We need time to rest. We need space to notice is what is missing and to dream about what is possible.
And we need the nourishment of living things and the nourishment of community.
Resourcing ourselves can help us resist the daily pull of the familiar. And we can keep searching for paths towards more thriving futures, even when walking down the Horizon One Highway looks like the much easier route.
