Virtual Time Travel:

A Scenario

“Ten... nine...eight...”

as the countdown to begin the Visionary Time Travel journey continued, the voice of the facilitator smoothly instructed the “Visionary Intranauts” to:

“Begin to finish your relaxation of the physical body, your thoughts and your emotions, ready to experience the future afresh.

“Seven...six... five...”

“Complete the process of jettisoning your previous ideas about the future. They will be waiting for you when you return, but for now, let them go.”

“Four...three...”

“Recall the business question we are journeying to explore: ...^[2]

“Two...one...”

“Here is the specific option you will explore. In the way you have learned to do, mock up the intention to make this option real in the future we will be exploring together.”

“Zero...”

“Begin the journey!”

What do you notice first?”...

Visionary Time Travel: What is it? What is it good for?

Visionary Time Travel is a new application of a decades-old approach known by such names as focused imagination and guided cognitive imagery. It involves a mental journey through time -- often both past and future. Depending on the purpose for which it is being done, the journey may be pre-planned and scripted in detail, or it may be more open-ended and exploratory. It can be used to inform hard-headed business decisions (“executive intuition”), or it can be used as an experientially entertaining way to study such subjects as history (“edutainment”). It is a potentially robust “Knowledge Management Technology” for use in the emerging fast-track global ecology known as e-business.

The use of focused imagination for purposes of investigating “ Futures” has for some years been taught by the author at the University of Houston-Clear Lake’s Studies of the Future Program, both to the graduate students there and to clients in business, government and voluntary associations; and before that, when he was a research futurist with the Management and Social Systems Group at SRI International. It is an especially appropriate technology for futures exploration, conjecture and forecasting in business and professional settings that involve a high degree of uncertainty, and an equally great strategic importance for the individual, work team, company, or institution involved.

Example One:

Career decision analysis by an individual.

Several years ago, a young psychotherapist in the Houston area came to the author’s consulting office in order to shed light on whether he should refocus his career, and if so, how. Feeling quite burned out by continued practice in what he was experiencing as an increasingly demeaning and resource-squeezing managed health care system, he wanted out. But he didn’t know what career path would be best to take. He came to Partnership Associates for access to our battery of tools through which to tap his deeper levels of intuition on the matter.

After first going through a hour-long sequence of processes designed to put him in touch with “what stands between me and feeling O.K. about this,” he formulated the following two career paths to explore:

1. Leave the managed care system, but continue the practice of psychotherapy with an emphasis on personal coaching, as an independent practitioner in Houston’s high-rise business community.

2. Leave behind the professional practice of psychotherapy, and commercially develop an avocation he loved -- that of oil and acrylic portrait painting of high-end yachts in the Gulf Coast area, and writing personalized poems that he framed to go with the portrait.

The result? After two Visionary Time Travel trips through the future --each of which involved the felt intention to enact one or the other of the above two options, and then relaxing into his deeper levels of intuition on the matter, he chose a third path -- that of moving to Austin, where he joined a family therapy group practice, and where he could greatly expand his artistic endeavors beyond what he had done in the past.

Example Two:

Policy analysis and alignment of viewpoints across different levels of management

in a multi-national corporation. A second case example involves a team from a large automotive and electronic data systems corporation who came to UHCL to learn state-of-the-art tools of applied futures research. As we were discussing various “ Futures” research tools, the group decided that they would like an experiential introduction to the method described above as Visionary Time Travel. Since the group had just several hours before involved themselves in a frustratingly inconclusive discussion regarding “Third World” markets, the policy option chosen for investigation of this futures method focused on this question:

“What would the future of our company and of the world look like if ‘First World’ Corporations such as us [do versus do not] strategically embrace the poverty-stricken ‘Third World’ as well as the economically growing ‘Second World’ of nations and cultures as customers (i.e., not just the source of low-cost labor)?”

The team’s two Visionary Time Travel journeys (one for each policy option) were facilitated by the author, who first described the process, then gave appropriate instructions for relaxation and focusing. Various frames of reference and time horizons to experience were suggested as the participants imaginatively journeyed through two different futures: one representing the “do” and one representing the “do not” policy options.^[3]

The results were clear cut. All participants, from the corporate team leader to the lowest graduate student research assistant to the team, experienced much the same thing.

Their conclusions? These two stood out:

1. The corporation’s long term sustainable growth and well-being is dependent on the well-being of all nations, not just the ones that have a good shot at becoming prosperous.

2. The question we should be focusing on is not: ‘Whether or not the corporation should move in

this direction;’ Rather, it needs to be:, ‘How might it be feasible to help leaders at all levels to experience and see this for themselves, so that meaningful progress in this direction might become feasible to achieve?”

To the practicing futurist, this is not a very startling result. What may be greater interest is the fact that by having all members of the group experience the same facilitated “time travel” in the theater of their own imaginations, a very similar conclusion was reached by participants reflecting the alignment of widely diverging points of view on the ideological spectrum from economic conservative to ecology activist. And these conclusions were reached in ways that directly tap the level of motivation we usually ascribe to “core values.” Similar results occurred when using this method with an international group of human resource directors brought together by the Group VP for HR of a Fortune 50 petrochemical company, for a day of "Out of the Box" visioning of their individual and collective futures.

Professional Documentation and Future Possibilities

My ways of using Visionary Time Travel and other Focused Imagination methods are reported in

the professional literature,^[4] and will be described in a session at the forthcoming July, 1999 Conference of the World Future Society in Washington, D.C.

What are the main ways in which a Futurist or a Business Intranaut can use these methods?

Because the approach has as yet not really caught on as a way to help clients in different settings to experientially envision possible, probable and preferable futures for themselves and their clients, it is hard to say what the limits will be to which this method will ultimately be constrained. But the author has found two methodological approaches as particularly “user friendly” and effective:

1) The general Visionary time travel method described here for purposes of futures exploration and for experiencing the future needs of one’s company (or one’s own self) now needing to be prepared for, as well as the needs of future generations needing to be responded to;

2) An integrated set of methods for: a) need finding, b) transforming perceived needs into opportunities, c) choosing between alternative policy options, and d) transcendental exploration of personal sources of intuition and wisdom.

Or, said in less technical phraseology, the two approaches enable you to:

1) Personally journey into an experiential exploration of the future possibilities and preferences revealed as revealed to you from your own intuition and imagination; and

2) Use other “” processes for:

• Finding out what stands between me and feeling o.k. about ...[e.g., the future]

• “Connecting with personal ‘depth intuition’ as to how perceived needs and problems can be seen as essential opportunities to be explored, rather than threats to be resisted;

• Doing the type of process described at the beginning of this article;

• Journeying to the "Source of Awareness" to experience what our own personal

depth intuition reveals about our own “preferred” as well as “probable” futures.

Summary/Conclusion

The purpose of this note is to present both a vision and some of the intellectual foundations for a practical approach to “strategic visioning” that is proving of interest to business leaders looking for leading-edge tools and techniques for wise choosing. Visionary Time Travel and Focused Imagination tools represent a clear way to improve conventional scenario forecasting and strategic planning methods, especially applicable for Just in Time (JiT) business environments.[5]

^[1] This process was featured in the October/November, 1998 issue of FAST COMPANY magazine.

See it online at www.fastcompany.com/online/18/visioning.html.

^[2] The questions to be explored in Visionary Time Travel take many forms, depending on the purpose of the client. They include:

• “What will happen if “X” (a decision or policy option of great uncertainty, but equally great strategic importance) is, versus is not chosen and acted upon by the client?”

• “Which policy option or decision is better, “X” or “Y”?

• “In a future involving a specific scenario [that is chosen up front], what important bases for feeling good and for feeling bad are likely in this particular future, but not yet recognized?”

It would be misleading to suggest that the technology of Visionary Time Travel in its current state of development can provide a full deck of answers to such questions. But the use of this method can provide an experiential “feel” for what the client inwardly believes about these things, which can be even more valuable than a ‘predictive’ grasp on the future, which for most of us, is uncertain to the extreme in any event.

^[3] It should be pointed out that the instructions described in the opening scenario are only meant to illustrate how the process of Visionary Time Travel proceeds. The instructions as worded there are not meant for literal use!

^[4] Two articles by the author on this are: “ Futures: Guided Cognitive Imagery in Teaching and Learning About the Future” (pp. 522-530 of the Nov/Dec., 1998 special issue of AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST devoted to Futures Studies in Higher Education); and "Using Depth Intuition in Creative Problem Solving and Strategic Innovation," Selection 40 in Sidney Parnes (Ed), SOURCEBOOK FOR CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING: A FIFTY YEAR DIGEST OF PROVEN INNOVATION PROCESSES, Creative Education Foundation Press, 1992.

[5] For readers concerned about the ethical or legal probity of using this type of tool in the workplace, this last footnote is offered: Recalling that the Latin root word, educare, means to draw forth that which is latent within, the author considers that these methods should be categorized as educational , rather than as psychological or psychotherapeutic, even though knowledge of cognitive psychology is essential for good facilitation. And trust.