Futures Thinking tools Causal Layered Analysis

One of the tools we use in futures thinking is called causal layered analysis, which sounds like so much gobbledygook until you kind of unpack it. It's a process developed by a futurist called Sohail Inyatullah. Causal layered analysis is, what are the layers of the causes of the things that we're trying to deal with? And imagine an iceberg. Right at the top, the part that we see above the waterline is the problems, the litany, the conversations we're having, the things we're complaining about, the data, the stuff we can see. And very often organizations and countries try and deal with those things that can be seen and they try to change the data. But we can't just change the data without going and exploring what comes beneath that. And immediately beneath that first layer is the layer of the systems, the things that are in place to create the data that we are looking at, the litany that we are complaining about. But below the systems is a worldview, a way that we believe the world works. And that is what causes us to put certain systems in place, to hold onto systems from the past, to not want to give them up or to go and look for new systems. But below our worldview are the actual myths and metaphors of who we really are, the stories we tell about ourselves at a very, very deep level. Now when we're trying to change something in the future, for the future, whether it is in our own lives, our own organizations, in our countries, in our cities, we cannot just play at that top level. We have to explore all the way down. We have to go down and understand The myths that we tell, the metaphors that we use to explain how the world works, because those myths and metaphors give us a worldview of what we expect from our existence on this plane. And then that worldview actually creates the systems, and the systems is what results in the data. So in order to use causal aid analysis in an organization, we want to dive all the way down. And take time to really, really understand that and all the different elements of an organization making up that picture. And once we've got down to the myths and metaphors, the things that we believe and talk about for ourselves, we may want to change them. We may need to choose new metaphors to use. We may need to find or develop new myths, new stories, new narratives to tell about the world. And once we've done that, then we can rebuild our worldview. And that can be quite uncomfortable. It can be quite a fundamental change. But once we've rebuilt our worldview about what we expect, what is fair, what the future could look like, then we recreate systems that actually serve that, that actually serve our worldview that we have consciously and intentionally chosen. And then the data changes by itself. We don't have to fuss around at the top.