## Metadata - Author: [[Last accessed on]] - Full Title: Three Horizons - Category: #books ## Highlights - It turns out to be quite natural, in almost any situation where people are working on some complex issue, to gently bring out the three ‘voices’ of the horizons: the managerial voice that is concerned with the first horizon responsibility for keeping things going; the entrepreneurial voice of the second horizon that is eager to get on and try new things (some of which won’t work); and the aspiration and vision of the third horizon voice that holds out for commitment to a better way and the opportunity that can be imagined in the mind’s eye. ([Location 97](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=97)) - The most efficient way to handle new problems or potentialities is usually to extend the old – never underestimate the power of the existing system to reach further than it has before. On the positive side, this means that incremental change can be brought about in efficient ways without disrupting too much how things are being done now. On the negative side, society can suffer from ‘regulatory capture’ when vested interests are able to control change to serve their own needs and prevent change that would have wider benefit. ([Location 309](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=309)) - We commonly describe the Horizon 1 systems as ‘locked in’ to emphasise the strength of their hold on resources and their resistance to change. Like a living organism, the social pattern re-applies resources to perpetuate and re-produce itself and fend off attacks from competitors. ([Location 318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=318)) - Those futures that could be imagined, but which are radically at odds with current social norms and locked-in systems, seem unreachable and fanciful and are, in fact, very hard to conceive and reach. They are hard to think about because there is not a deep body of expertise available, and they are hard to reach because the dynamics of H1 systems work against them. ([Location 349](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=349)) - To find H3 futures we must systematically explore the full range of possible social settlements and systems that could be brought into being. While we stay within our H1 thinking we are likely to remain silent about the underlying cultural assumptions on which it is based and maintain the fiction that we are studying uncertainties and emerging trends in an objective way. ([Location 356](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=356)) - There is no presumption that everyone will agree on the vision of the third horizon, but it is a step forward to clarify whether discussions are between competing visions of the third horizon or a conflict between the first horizon and the third. ([Location 363](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=363)) - Of course, the infinite complexity of human life and change cannot be adequately described by the framework of a few lines on a piece of paper, but this simple notation of Three Horizons turns out to be surprisingly useful and powerful in bringing people together in transformative dialogue. It might be compared to musical notation, which is a simple way of representing the infinite variety of pitch, rhythm and musical structure so that music can be written down and widely shared. Before we had the musical stave it was very difficult to share music except by long periods of study and memorising with a teacher, and the composition of complex pieces for many players, like a symphony, was infeasible. With the five lines of a musical stave and some conventions, the explosion of creative invention that we enjoy today in our rich history of music became possible. Even improvised music that is never written down gains from the depth and breadth of musical culture that the notation of music provides. Similarly, Three Horizons is a notation that enables us to express and share the infinite possibilities of transformative innovation. ([Location 439](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=439)) - we can expect that many H1 patterns will persist beyond any particular organisation, and that is part of their strength; the intent to maintain the order of the H1 patterns is distributed over many actors in society and, when one fails, another takes over. ([Location 591](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=591)) - We call this evidence of emerging second and third horizons that we find in the actions of those attempting to bring them about, ‘pockets of the future in the present’. ([Location 596](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=596)) - It is a familiar experience of futures work that once we have opened our minds to possible futures we quickly start seeing evidence of them that we had not attended to before; this is known as ‘cognitive priming’ – once we are primed to see something it can easily pop into our attention. ([Location 598](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=598)) - Change involves gain and loss; there can be much at stake. We cannot discuss futures that really matter without working with our values and bringing into the room big words that are often left outside: hope, fear, love and power. The most challenging situations involve deep disputes about what we are trying to achieve, and who gets to decide: where one group sees an exciting opportunity, another will see a challenge to cherished beliefs; where some see in the current practices a deeply unjust power system, others will feel threats to their identity in possible change; simple gain and loss of everyday personal resources and possibilities will frame the future for many. ([Location 802](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=802)) - In situations of deep conflict it is obvious that such questions of value are in play and must be dealt with, but in the context of our everyday organisational world it can seem inappropriate, impolite, to bring to the surface the really fundamental texture of change, which is all about how we are going to live our lives, what are our values, and how we will reach a shared view of the choices ahead of us. But if we fail to bring this language into use we are hiding the most important factors in the analysis and crippling the debate. ([Location 807](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=807)) - we have within us a far deeper capacity for shared life than we are using, and that we are suffering from an attempt to know our way into the future instead of live our way. ([Location 1315](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=1315)) - The way we have built our modern society has privileged the patterns of collective knowing over collective living and in doing so is overwhelming us with the impossibility of knowing what to do about it. By strengthening our inherent capacity for creative living we might find better ways to handle what we know and don’t know. ([Location 1318](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=1318)) - What can it mean to face the unknown together with skill? How do we rope up and climb a mountain that is not there? What might it be like if we regarded the third horizon as our home, rather than the first? ([Location 1329](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=1329)) - Within the familiar ways of life in the first horizon our integrity is expressed within and through the established patterns: whether we are a politician or a plumber we turn up at work and get through the daily tasks meeting people’s expectations as best we can, respecting the laws of the land and maybe making them. But when a situation arises that lies beyond the normal we may have no rules to guide us except our sense of human solidarity. Then we must make a decision, in a moment of kairos we must act, and act in such a way that we will be able to look back and say, given those circumstances we did what best reflected our sense of human integrity. Such an act may lie entirely within the first horizon possibilities, or may set us on a new H3 path where we become the voice and leader of change. It is when we must move beyond the moment, when the act turns into a task, that we move into the realm of transformational change as we are exploring it here – the purposeful re-patterning of our collective lives. It is thus that the third horizon is the patterning of hope through the exercise of our creative integrity, our ability to create new patterns of shared humanity. ([Location 1457](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=1457)) - We live in a paradox: we must each assemble all the dimensions of a culture for ourselves within the bewildering variety of choices available that change from day to day, and yet culture is inherently shared, and everyone else is busy trying to assemble their own pattern of life. We need to find a way to make our home together in these changing patterns by sharing our transformative potential, so that each of us is participating in the flow of skilled living with each other, rather than being battered about and landing with broken bones or spirit. ([Location 1498](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=1498)) - To recognise that continuous transformation is the process of our creative lives together, we need to see each person as the holder of a unique insight into the emerging third horizon. By developing such a view we grant the power of fulfilment to each other. I believe that only an ambition to create a shared future consciousness for every human being, one that recognises the unique qualities of hope that each person embodies, can create a society which realises the potential of us all. ([Location 1524](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=1524)) - When you drive your car, use your iPod, look at a Picasso or eat a banana, you make the value in the moment of interaction. The car, the iPod, the picture and the fruit enable the value creation, but the value itself is a quality of life for the one who experiences it: the utility of getting from A to B, and perhaps the status of owning a fine car; the pleasure of listening to the music or enjoying the picture, and the wider interest you have in music or art; the quick snack that keeps you going, or an ingredient in a meal you make for others. Value in this sense is made in the life and lives in which the thing is taken up and takes part; value is for a life in a pattern of relationships. ([Location 1553](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=1553)) - I find that most discussions of policy and the problems of society-at-large are cast in terms of the contrast between the two sorts of organisation that have results on the outside – between profits and non-profits, business and the public sector – with societies being left out of the picture. I suggest that in doing so we are failing to see that, in the end, all the value of society is on the inside – in the ways we fulfil our individual lives in the richness of mutual life in all its forms. ([Location 1558](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=1558)) - Life is always a configuration of abundance. While any one life may have to experience hardship and scarcity, and all must eventually die, overall life itself is a manifestation of abundance. ([Location 1584](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=1584)) - As we have used up the stored riches we inherited on Earth, it seems that our future must be one of scarcity, but life must always be a configuration of abundance, and it is only towards abundance that we can navigate with hope. To search for new abundance need not be a blind hope that we can go on with our H1 patterns that are exhausting themselves using up historic stocks; rather it is to see that life takes what is there and realises itself in creative flows. The first step into the third horizon is to see all that is there with the eye of creative potential. It is to see what is there, already in abundance, that can come together in new life-creating patterns, creating life within those patterns of society. ([Location 1586](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=1586)) - We need to cultivate the invisible mind of the planet; a way of living skilfully together, where each act of intentional creation enriches every other. ([Location 1663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07BR1FZLX&location=1663))