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The Try Tank Podcast is about innovation and the church
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: From the Try Tank Research Institute.
This is the Try Tank
Podcast.
And welcome to the Try Tank Podcast.
Hello everyone. It's Father Lorenzo Lebrija with you.
This is episode
28028 on
scalable foresight. And before I tell you
a little bit about that, our guest is someone that you heard a
couple of episodes ago. He was, he joined us for
episode 26 when we were talking about
leaders in the future. And I found, and I was
like, tell me more about this other thing you do
again, which is his full time job. And thus I was like,
I need to have you back. And he is joining us back.
So our guest in on, um, today's episode to talk about
scalable foresight is Gabe
Cervantes, who's the director of scalable
foresight for the Institute for the
Future in Palo Alto, which we've talked about before,
um, at the Institute for the Future. Gabe, what he does is he
leads custom forecasts. He also does
trainings on foresight essentials. He does
speaking engagements across various industries
and sectors. He is actually a leading strategist
and scaling foresight, he works closely with
large organizations to help them foster an
environment that encourages the development and
application of foresight among the next
generation of future leaders and top
tier leadership. So all of that you can imagine,
right? Uh, when you think of large organizations that
are decentralized, the church should be among those that you
think about. So you're probably saying to yourself, all right, Lorenzo, so what's the scalable
foresight thing? So foresight, and we'll
talk about this, we will define foresight and we'll talk
about what real quick. It's just really
the practices, tools, uh, and methodologies
that one uses in order to do futures thinking so that you can think
of the future, look at that future, and
then do future backwards. Which is how you're like,
okay, we want this future and let's work backwards so that we
can make this future happen. And
the difference between this and like regular goal setting or something like
this, it's based on what's out there, what's already available
for us to see. So we'll talk about foresight, we'll talk about
futures thinking, we'll talk about signals of change, drivers
of change, all those things. But more importantly, we'll talk about what are
the five things, things that one needs
to do when you're doing scalable
foresight? Uh, we as
churches need to think beyond just our
own little congregation or our own little corner of the
world, but rather, how do we all of us
as the church of God in the world
today, how do we create this environment
that encourages the development and
application of foresight, the ability to look into the
future, to work backwards from it. So this is a
conversation with Dave and here also
hear about perhaps Tritank's new, uh, motto.
So I hope you like it, I hope you enjoy it. Uh, here we go,
right onto the podcast.
And Gabe, welcome to the Try Tank
podcast.
>> Gabe Cervantes: Thank you so much, Lorenzo, once again.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Actually, right, this is, this is your second time, like,
yeah, so this is you, you were with us with Bob,
uh, Johansson and the other authors of the book, talking about
leadership for the future. And now here we are
talking about this,
this amazing thing of how do we
sort of scale foresight? But before we get to
scalable foresight, let's get a little bit further
back as to what is foresight.
For someone who's just listening to us, like, okay, I have no idea what these guys
are talking about. Give us the, like the Lorenzo version, like
a five year old explanation of what is foresight.
>> Gabe Cervantes: Yeah, Lorenzo, that's a great question. Um, you know, the
foresight in futures thinking, you know, I'll use strategic
foresight in future thinking and like futures
forecasting interchangeably, right? But
at its very core, this
practice or this concept of thinking about the
future is just a collection of
processes, tools and methodologies
that shift you away from thinking, uh,
just about the present and thinking about
the long term future. Kind of any tool,
any process, any methodology
that asks you to pause, to suspend
your thinking about the present, to jump out to
the future, consider possibilities for the
future, and then work backwards to say, okay, so what do we do about
it now? That's foresight, right? Like, that
is future forecasting. That is futures thinking at its
very core, that is.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And, and that is a clear definition. I understand it because
somebody might say it's like when you take a 30 foot view, it's like, no, no, no,
the 30,000 foot view is still of the present. What
you want to do is stop right now and say, like,
okay, seeing these trends, these signals of, uh,
seeing what's sort of happening around, if these little points are
happening now, if we just sort of extrapolate going forward,
you know, five or ten years more, we can sort of see like, well, this could
probably happen. And then is when you get to make a
decision, is this a future that we want
to happen? Then yay. How do we sort of accelerate or
try to make that happen in the best way possible? Or if it's a
future that we don't want to happen, how do we either
mitigate for it or, or try to avoid
it?
>> Gabe Cervantes: That's absolutely correct. Absolutely right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Woo hoo. Look at me. Uh, it's like I was trained by the Institute
for the Future or something.
So then knowing what foresight is, what
is scalable foresight? What does that
mean?
>> Gabe Cervantes: Yeah, that's, that's such a great question. So when I joined
the institute kind of eight years ago, um, I came
in as a research assistant supporting Bob
Johansson and others, and quickly moved on to kind of
be a research manager and then a
research director. And then it was like, what comes after
this? And uh, you know, I looked around the
institute and I said, listen, I've been working with a lot of our
partners, I've been working with a lot of our clients,
and there's this question of like, if
foresight is a set of
practices and tools and methodologies,
like, how do we actually help
this scale at an organization? How do we
help this scale at a, ah, global organization,
at a community, kind of grassroots
organization, at our nonprofit, at our private corporation,
our government agency? How do we actually make this
scalable? And I was like, ah, uh, that feels like a
good kind of next role for me. Director
of scalable foresight. So at its core, Lorenzo,
it really is kind of assessing
an organization, assessing a community
and saying, how do you take this concept of
future thinking and make it a part of everyone's
job? You know, foresight should not be
something that is, it can be done once
every three years, once every five years, but it shouldn't
only be done every once in a while. It
shouldn't just live with an innovation team, it shouldn't just
live with an executive, it shouldn't just live
with one or two people. You, uh, know,
it really should be everyone's job. So this whole notion of
scalable foresight is how do you bring
everyone on this journey so that
everyone can continue, can contribute? You know, what we
know is that if you don't include
everyone in your future, the future that you're building
is not built for everyone. Right? If you don't
have representation, uh, the representation
that you want in the future, you are going to build
futures that don't account for, that, don't
benefit, that don't take into account the
people that you haven't brought into the conversation.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So to sort of translate that a little bit into sort of the
church model, which is what, what our audience is and who we
are, right? This would be, you don't Want
just the bishop being the one that's
looking ahead 10 years and trying to figure out this is what's
going to happen. And then she may give an order or try to do this.
And then people down in the. At the individual
churches or even the parishioners at, ah, each
one of the congregations is like, what are they talking about? Uh, you
know, we have this concern here today. And
uh, I think maybe that's a good point to make, right? Having
strategic foresight and certainly when we're trying to
scale it, but having strategic foresight doesn't
mean that you don't pay attention to the problems of
today. They're very real. They're still here. You're going to have to deal
with those anyways. But I think
it's so that the future might be a little bit
more how we create it, how we sort of.
We can have a little bit more agency in it is
by knowing where it is behooves us to take a moment to
sit and look ahead. But what you're saying is
that should be not just at the top. It really should
be that the scalability part of it is
everyone in the organization. So in our case, not just the
bishop or whoever might be in the councils that
serve the bishop, but everyone within the
church should be looking ahead and thinking ahead
of what is the future. So that again,
future back, right? We can say like, we want this future, let's
work backwards towards it. Uh, is that more or less what that
explains it?
>> Gabe Cervantes: Yeah, that's right. You know, Lorenzo, the thing is that, like, we
firmly believe you can't accurately and consistently
predict the future. Right. And so the best thing
you can do is to say, what are all the possible
futures out there? And we can narrow those
possibilities to what's probable, what's likely,
kind of what we think falls within some
predictability. Right. But like, you have to
start large, you have to start wide.
You have to start with the largest scope possible. And the way that
you do that is to include more people. Right?
I mean, I always say if I'm in a room with
70 people, we should be able to come up with 70
different futures fairly quickly. Because we're not
predicting, we're looking at possibilities, we're looking at what
we see today and saying, what are the
possibilities for the future? Now, uh, that's not
to say that there shouldn't be someone or something
or kind of a process where you're distilling
all of that and there's some kind of clarity and action
moving forward. But you know, because we
all accept, expect to be a part of the future,
we all should be in the conversation when it comes
to thinking about and building that
future.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I love what you just said though, that there should be a process by which you
distill it. Because again, going back to your example of
walking into a room of 70 people and having 70 futures,
it doesn't make sense for one organization to try to go in 70
different directions, right? That is
just leading to chaos. And there's just
no way that that can actually function and make it good for
anyone in the organization to do
that.
So can we talk for just a second before we talk? I know that you have
a framework by which you look at scalable, uh,
foresight, but can we talk for a second about the two main
components that anyone who's thinking about
futures thinking that we look at on
a day to day sort of basis, which are
the signals of change, which those of us who
have had this training, I recommend it, by the way, if anyone has the
opportunity to take the training from the Institute for the Future.
Not only is it just a cool thing to mention to people, I'm a
trained futurist from the Institute for the Future. And that's not a
thing out of the Marvel comics, you know, that's an actual place in Palo
Alto, California. And you can do them online now. And which,
which are great. So if anyone can do them, they really do have
incredible tools, practices and frameworks to
teach you. But the two things that you
always end up with are signals of change and
drivers of change. These are really the foundational
part of, of any futures thinking. Can you explain those to
our listeners?
>> Gabe Cervantes: Yeah. So Lorenzo, I always say kind of what separates
strategic foresight from science fiction writing
is like we don't just make up rules, right? We don't
wake up and say, well, in 10 years, you know,
this thing that has never happened before is going to happen,
right?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Gravity will go away in 10 years. That's
weird.
>> Gabe Cervantes: We have to ground our
futures, our forecasts, our possibilities for
the future have to be grounded in things that we see
in the present and what we see in the present,
kind of those building blocks or the present day evidence
are what we call, as you mentioned, drivers and
signals of change. Now drivers very quickly are
just kind of the things that we're all used to talking
about. They're the known knowns, they're uh, the
macro trends, the mega forces, kind of
the big trends that we're all tracking. Remote and
hybrid work, generative AI,
climate change in the climate crisis. Crisis. There
are things that, like, if we talk about the
future and we don't mention these
big drivers of change, we're really doing a disservice to
ourselves. If we're talking about the next 10 years
and we're not stopping to think, how is climate
change going to impact that? Or how is
generative AI going to impact that? How is
declining birth rate going to impact that?
We would be doing a disservice to ourselves. Now, that's not to
say that you need to include every driver. You kind of get to
select which ones you're bringing in, but you
start with the drivers of change.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And the way you select, you would, I'm guessing, is you would select the ones that you
think are most likely to affect your work, your
industry. In our case, the church. Right. So one of the drivers of change
in the church that we've seen now for a couple of decades is
the declining secularization is up, declining numbers of people in
the church, and the growing number of
Generation Z and Alpha that the parents are
saying, we'll let them choose when they're older. We're not going to baptize them.
Right. Those are, those are macro trends that
definitely will be. You cannot talk about
the future, you cannot talk about the church 10 years
from now and avoid that. It's like, no, no, no, everything's going to be fine. Don't
worry. People will just flock because they did in 19.
>> Gabe Cervantes: Uh, you know, and the thing, Lorenzo, is
that, you know, drivers of change are so big
and so kind of grounded that, like,
it's really hard to change them quickly. I mean,
they're going to be around, they're going to impact you.
And, you know, whether you're a, uh, small kind of
parish in California or you're this big
mega church in Miami, right?
Like what you, those drivers that you just mentioned are
still impacting, right? Like, you still need to consider
them. And so usually drivers of change
have global impact. There can be some
regional kind of differentiations, but, like, they're the
known knowns. We, we know what they mean for the future.
And again, it's foolish of us, for us to try to have a
conversation about the future without
addressing the very real impact that
drivers have on that. Um, a colleague of mine,
Rachel McGuire, you know, she does great kind of health and
wellness forecasting and she says, you know, we
have mental models for drivers of change.
Like, in our mind, we know the
boxes and the frameworks and the way to
talk about drivers of change. Right? Those are the
Things that we're all used to talking about. Those are the things that we read in
the newspaper. Those are the things that we bring up in our,
in our strategy meetings. Those are the things that we talk
about and that you, you know, we kind of hear all around
us. Signals of change are almost by definition the
exact opposite of that. Signals of change
are small present day innovations
and disruptions that have not scaled.
So where drivers are well established and like, we
have to talk about them in the future, signals haven't
scaled yet. They have the potential to scale and
possibly over time become those drivers,
but they're not quite drivers yet.
Now back to that mental model thing that my colleague
Rachel McGuire talks about. We have mental models
for drivers. We don't have mental models for
signals. And that's because signals are
disruptions to the drivers. Drivers
we can extrapolate from with confidence. You know,
declining membership means that
this is the impact on the church and this is the impact on
the work that we do. A signal of change will come
in and say, but what if in the future
it's not a declining membership rate? Right.
What if in the future, and it doesn't have to be the exact
opposite, it could take it in a brand new direction,
right? What if. And I'm trying to think of something on the spot, but I
can't really to counter that point.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Well, just this morning actually I read an article that was talking
about, and this was, we're recording this in late April,
but uh, of 2025, but I was reading an
article that was talking about how in Europe all of a sudden there's
an increase of young people flocking to church. It's
like, whoa, that's bucking every sort of
driver of change that we know about that. Right? We've seen decades of this
decline. Then all of a sudden you're telling me that in these
little places they're flocking to it. That's interesting
because what if all of a sudden, does that mean everything's going to turn
around and go the other way?
>> Gabe Cervantes: Yeah. And Lorenzo, the interesting thing is like, you know, it's
not the exact opposite either, because the research that
I, that, you know, the signals that I've seen is
that it's young men in particular,
young white men, who identify
many times as incels, right? As like
kind of being these young single guys who
don't expect to be in relationships, who don't expect
to have successful relationships, who don't expect to
have future families. And so it's not a, uh,
membership, declining membership Increasing. It's like,
hang on. Even if our membership increases,
we're faced with a brand new population with brand new
challenges that we need to start thinking differently
about.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And this is where those other drivers of change that you were talking about,
Right. The fact that fewer getting married, fewer
choosing to have children is like, that is not the same population
we've been serving for this long, where we knew they'd
get married, they'd come back, that we would have see their children
is like, are we just going to have single men only
in congregations? And what would that look like? Right? What would
that. Yeah, it's an. These are the types of questions,
right? When you start to sort of imagine these future
scenarios where you're like, well, what does the church do if that
is the future? And you can certainly then add
other complexities like climate refugees
and so many other things, like, how is that going to affect us
as all of this is happening? And at some point you're like, whoa,
that's. That's a lot coming at me in one. In one moment,
Lorenzo.
>> Gabe Cervantes: This is a perfect example of, like, strategic
foresight. And thinking about the future is, as Mark, is
as much an art as it is a science. Right. The
science is looking for the data, it's looking for the
information. It's looking for the concreteness that
from the present that we can take into the future. The
art is the mixing of the drivers of.
We've always talked about membership rates. We've never
really quite talked about membership rates related to climate.
We've never really talked about membership rates in
relation to the fact that, like,
the general population is more
illiterate than it's ever been. Right. Uh, like there are
segments of the population that, like, adults just
don't read beyond a certain basic
grade level. Right. Like, we don't talk about those
things. And so the art of strategic foresight is
pulling all of those in and saying
what then become the new challenges for us to start to
address. And the only way you do that, Lorenzo, is by
including a lot of people who are really smart, who are
experts in their own domain, and kind of raise
our hand and say, we haven't talked about this yet.
Let's spend some time thinking and
strategizing about how this could impact our
future.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And that, I think, is a wonderful prelude into the.
How you see this scalable foresight work, because
I know you have a framework for it. But now that we sort of have trained our
listener to know what foresight is and to look for
drivers of change, which are the Known knowns. And then these,
uh, signals of change, which are these little pockets of like. What is it?
The quote from the Institute is, the future's already here, just not
evenly distributed. Right. Is that more. Did I get that? More or less.
>> Gabe Cervantes: The future's already here, it's just not evenly
distributed.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah. So it's. And so every once in a while, though,
we get a little glimpse of. It's like, ooh, what happens if that
catches on? I remember this was pre pandemic,
the first time that I saw a church putting their services
on Facebook Live. This is when Facebook Live was. Was still
a thing. And I'm like, huh, uh, what happens if that
catches on? Are we all. We weren't trained to be
televangelists. Most of us in mainline Protestantism is like,
does that mean we're all televangelists now? It's an interesting
way.
So let's begin talking about scalable foresight. Because
this is something that the church needs to start doing.
Not just certain people looking at this, but how do we
spread it so that more people within the church can
also participate in this?
>> Gabe Cervantes: Yeah. So, Lorenzo, I've been doing strategic foresight
work for. Actually in May is my eighth year
anniversary. You know, I stumbled upon this field,
I stumbled upon this career, I stumbled upon the Institute
for the Future, like many people just happen to
do. And in eight years of doing this kind
of. I've distilled this down into
five basic principles.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Excellent.
>> Gabe Cervantes: Um, this may change. This may fluctuate.
Right. As the future. The future is constantly changing.
But, like, I've identified five key
principles for this kind of notion of scaling
foresight. And so here's the first one, and I'd love your
reactions, and just for you to kind of help me draw
connections to the church and to our listeners here. But the first
one is, you know, to have scalable foresight,
you should not future alone. Never future
alone. Right. And it's not, don't go
into the future alone. It's like, don't think about the future
just on your own. Now, there are times and moments where you
do need to do that and you do need to do some research, and
that might require some solo time or maybe just you
solo with ChatGPT or something. But.
But, you know, when it comes to building out these
possibilities for the future, as has
mentioned before, you want to do it in a group, you
want to do it in a community, because we all have our own
biases, we all have our own blind spots,
we all have our own opinions of the future. And the
natural question is, like, aren't you just building a future
that just confirms your biases?
But like, Gabe, you're a pessimist. Every
future you're bringing to the table is so dark.
But humanity has been around for
so long, it can't be all doom and gloom. And that's where
it's like, you have to find that. That balance. And
that's how you counteract that, is by bringing other
people along into the journey.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And I think beyond also our biases is probably an opportunity
for us to look at our own contexts.
Because if, if I'm doing ministry in a setting
that has more immigrants, right? And, and that's a
different setting than someone that's doing it in a more poshy
area that has different types of congregants, uh,
or if you're closer to a border or you're
getting more of the climate refugees, whatever it is
you're ex. How you're seeing the future sort of
coming at you is going to be different than how the other
person might be. And just being aware sometimes could be
like, I hadn't thought about that. That's actually kind of interesting. Let me,
let me now take that into consideration as well.
>> Gabe Cervantes: That's exactly right. I mean, you know, just think about the church
and how many different kind of. I'll use this language,
but like Personas there are in the church, right?
There are single mothers, there are singles
who don't want to have kids. There are grandparents
who are alienated from their family. There are very
large families, right? And so like, everyone
has their own context, Everyone
has their own life experience. And that is so
important to take into the future. Because the future
isn't just going to be populated
by educated people who have the
luxury and the time to spend in thinking about the
future. It's going to include immigrants, it's
going to include the poor. It's going to include those
who haven't had the possibility of getting an
education. It's going to include us all. And so if
the future is going to include us, why shouldn't we bring
them to the table? When we're thinking about how
to run towards the futures that we want and how
to avoid the futures that we, uh, you know, Lorenzo, I'm here in
Houston today. I was at a conference and kind of
talking about foresight, and someone came up to
me and said, you know, they asked a great question. I said, listen,
futures thinking is systems level thinking. At,
um, its core. Futures thinking is about
how do we approach the system
Differently, so that it works in a
different way to benefit everyone or to
benefit more people than it doesn't. Now, if
the people that are designing and
creating and manipulating the
system are only
white, heterosexual,
male, well educated. Right. The
system will continue to only benefit those
people. And that's why we have to bring
everyone in. And I say, you know, scalable foresight don't
feature alone, because the future is not just for
one person or one group of people. It's for
everyone.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: There you go. Actually, that might be Tritank's new new slogan.
We'll put it on bumper stickers. Don't future alone. There
you go, Try Tank. Don't future alone. All right, so
that's number one. Don't future alone.
Number two.
>> Gabe Cervantes: Yeah.
Now, this one might feel counterintuitive, but, you know, scalable
foresight is not about finding answers
or even the proper solution or.
Lawrence, I'm going to say that twice because it feels counterintuitive.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah. It's like, wait, what?
>> Gabe Cervantes: Scalable foresight is not about finding the
answer or even the proper solution. You know,
scalable foresight is really beneficial when
you go through the process and you
uncover questions you didn't even
know needed to be asked. Right. Uh,
when you get the community to ask
questions, when you get really smart people to
present new challenges and questions
that you weren't considering before, and then you start to
address those and build those. Right. I think
the classic example is we
all know generative AI is
going to play some role in the future. But
once generative AI, a, uh, known
technology, and it's embedded and integrated into our
systems in our daily life, what then,
Right? I mean, the, uh, the Institute for the Future did a report
on what we called the Internet of Actions when everyone
was talking about the Internet of Things, kind of
animating these inanimate objects with kind
of just being smart, Right? A, uh, smart
toothbrush and a smart hair comb and a smart
bookmarked.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I remember those days, right?
>> Gabe Cervantes: So everyone was talking about that. We were saying,
okay, well, what happens when you have all of
these smart devices? You get an Internet of
actions, right? And to us, the
really kind of surprising questions
were, what happens when everything's connected to the
Internet and everything can start interacting with
everything else while everyone's focused on, let's just
connect everything to the Internet because we can.
We're thinking, what are the capabilities, what are the
affordances, but also what become the
pitfalls of kind of living in this future?
So again, scalable foresight is not about getting to the
answer. It's about uncovering new questions
that you didn't know existed in order for you
to start to address strategy and
implement kind of action steps towards that.
Because all of this should ultimately lead to action.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So it's related to making sure that you're asking the
right questions, uh, for your strategy. It's not
just should we keep the buildings? Like before we even talk about the
buildings, let's. If we look at the future, that may
not. That may be the least of our concerns of what's. I
literally, uh, this morning I was reading an article from the Harvard
Business Review that I sent out to my friend saying, well, this is
kind of disturbing because it talks about the top
AI use cases for business and other
people in 2025 that they've seen so far.
And number one, and number three should be really concerning
to the church because the number one use
was therapy and companionship. Users in
regions with limited mental health care access find AI
helpful for processing grief, trauma and emotional
support. The 247 availability, affordability and
lack of judgment are key advantages. We as a church
should be like.
>> Gabe Cervantes: Oh wait, that's our role.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And number three is finding purpose, where
users leverage AI to define values, overcome
obstacles and pursue self development. It's like,
wait, that used to be what we did. So
these. It's like, so before we talk about the building, let's talk about
what, what AI is going to do to the, the, to the people that we
want to save the building for. You know, it's like, it's like
that matters a little bit too. If they're, if they're
replacing us with generative AI to,
to do this work.
>> Gabe Cervantes: It's like, oh, uh, that's such a great point, Lorenzo. It's like, why
focus on the building when you can focus on what
happens in the building first?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Because the relationship building the right.
>> Gabe Cervantes: If you answer the question of what happens in the building first
and you realize, uh, buildings in the future
aren't that important, it changes the dynamic.
Or alternatively, buildings in the future
become even more important. And that means
we actually have to be a lot more aggressive with our
strategy than we thought we had to be. Right?
That's how you become resilient in the face
of impossible future and it doesn't.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Take you in one or the other way. I know a rector of
a church in Seattle who saying, you know what? The church
is going to become the place where you can still be
fully human, where there will be no technology, where there will
be no AI, where it's Just us in relationship with
each other. So I see a lot of people flocking back to
the church. He says, because this is going to be the
place where you don't have to worry. This is going to be the
IRL place, as opposed to everyone just,
uh, either being in the metaverse or being with AI
or whatever it might be. So it's like, you can go in either direction with
it, where you can sit. But if it does
make you look at the question differently than just, should we save the building?
Right. It asks different questions, so that's awesome. Okay, so
we're not looking for answers or the proper solution. We're looking for
those different questions to uncover those questions. That's
number two.
What's number three?
>> Gabe Cervantes: So number three is scalable foresight. Kind of
this practice of thinking about the future in a systematic
way. It requires a Sherpa. Ah. Or a
kind of guide into the future. The future. Right.
Like, you need someone who doesn't
have the answers but can stay true to
the process and say, we're
on a journey to uncover different possibilities for the
future. So scalable foresight requires a Sherpa, uh, or a
guide into the future. Now, here's the thing that I've learned
from doing this work, uh, especially with kind of corporate
clients, nonprofits, and even government
agencies, both foreign and domestic. Uh, with my time at the
Institute, sometimes that guide is not the
boss. Sometimes having
the boss in the room is actually a
disservice to the process.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: It's detrimental. People don't want to be honest or
fully open and say, like, yeah.
>> Gabe Cervantes: I mean, when we talk about futures, you know, there's
a very famous quote about the future, and I'm blanking on who said it
exactly, but any useful statement about the future should
at first seem ridiculous. And you, uh,
mean me as a young engineer
at this brand new hot tech
company? You want me to stand up in front
of the CEO or the Director of
strategy or my boss's boss's
boss and say something ridiculous.
No, thank you. Right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Like, they shy away from, that's not gonna happen.
Yeah.
>> Gabe Cervantes: And it limits our futures. Right. It
limits our resiliency. So sometimes you
have to have the boss's permission to have or
the leader's permission to have the conversation.
They step away so that you can have that
conversation. Those seemingly ridiculous
futures, pull them back to what you do, and
then you bring the boss back in to kind of fill them in
on what it is that you've discussed.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And again, in a church setting, that would be you either ask the
priest who's in charge of the congregation, or if it happens to be
a diocese that's doing this, ask the bishops to not be there
to have these conversations. Because you're absolutely right. Who wants to be
the one that stands up and says, I don't mean to be that person,
but that strategy we're following is, I think,
totally wrong, and here's why. And they're like, yeah, we don't like
you anymore.
>> Gabe Cervantes: That's right. That's right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You know, so. And. And that's. That's a fear. Sort of like, I don't want to
do that. I, uh. My life is fine, thank you. I don't need to be the one that stands
up and gets all the blame for it. But you're absolutely right
that, that having someone where you can have an open and
honest conversation is how you lead to those
70 possibilities of the future. So then you can discern,
where do we really see ourselves?
>> Gabe Cervantes: And again, you know, that guide should not be doing the
work. That guide shouldn't even have the answers.
That guide is about the process. That guide
is about kind of staying true to the process
and saying, it's not about an answer. It's about
getting to questions that we didn't even
know needed to be asked in the context of
the new future that we're headed in.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So it's someone who guides the processes, the tools and the
methodologies, as you talked about, is at the core of strategic
foresight.
>> Gabe Cervantes: That's absolutely right. And that person needs to be personable.
That person needs to be comfortable with different opinions.
That person needs to be welcoming and
inviting, but also help us challenge our
own biases and our own assumptions.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Are there people that do this professionally now? Uh, that
actually, uh. I guess I'm probably right now looking at
one. Right. Uh, are there people who, who. Who sort of do
this for that. That go to a. Say, to a
diocese or go to a corporation and say, all right, I'm going to
help you through this process. I don't know what the answers are. I'm not here to
give you the answers. I'm just here to. These are. I have certain number
of frameworks, and we're going to walk through them together.
>> Gabe Cervantes: That's. Yes, absolutely. I mean, the Institute for the Future
does it. A lot of other people do it. Generally, though, that
person comes armed with. With some kind of
research, some kind of information.
So, uh, they usually understand
what the drivers and the signals of change
are, and they've done at least some preliminary
Thinking of, like, where this could end
up. And the job, uh, of everyone
in the room is to help add color, to help add
depth, to help add nuance and
really contextualize it for the group. So if you
call me in to do this right, these days, I have very little
context for what goes on in the church. Right. Just kind
of formally, officially. So my job is to come in with my
expertise and my perspective and the church
that I'm working with. Your job is to kind of
say, and this is how we. Right. Size it to the context.
This is what we should be kind of focusing in
on as we do that.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: All right, Sherpa Gabe. Uh, so that's
number three, having the right Sherpa. What is number
four?
>> Gabe Cervantes: Number four? Uh, you know, scalable foresight is a muscle that needs
to be worked out. You know, again, this is not something
that you. It can be done once
every three years, once every five years. You kind of
go through the process of creating a strategic plan
and addressing. How do you address, you know, kind of
falling membership or, you know, whatever the case may be.
Right. That can happen, but it shouldn't
only happen in those brief end instances.
Scalable foresight and these practices need to
be small, daily habits.
I mean, this whole concept of signals of
change. You're finding signals of change
all around you each and every day, probably each and
every hour. You're just not used to talking
about it in that language and with that framework.
You know, just to go back real quick, Lorenzo, I always talk
about. Drivers are puddles of water
that exist on the ground. And as you're walking into
the future, you're going to notice a puddle of, of water
and decide what to do when you're confronted with it.
Signals are the raindrops. Signals
are the raindrops that, like, if you're walking down the
street and a raindrop lands on you, you
may notice it, but you may not notice it either.
But what we know is that if you pay attention,
over time, the raindrops collect
and they reshape old puddles or they
form new puddles. And so what I'm suggesting here is
that that daily habit, that small kind of
muscle that you're flexing is looking for the
raindrops. And over long periods of
time, you get really good at
saying, this is where the new puddle is, this
is where the next puddle is. This is how this puddle
is shaping and transforming.
And this is why, now that we're doing our three
year strategic plan, it's important for me to bring up
Excellent.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I, I, I love that analogy of, of the raindrops
versus the puddles because it is true. You know what it brought to my mind
is there you, we've seen particularly like
Native Americans or indigenous people in certain places that can
look at, oh, the wind's blowing from that direction. That means
tomorrow afternoon there's going to be rain at 3:00. And you're like, how
on earth. Like, uh, we, you know, we, that signals a known
signal since I was a little kid, right? It's no longer something
different for me, it was just a wind that came in from the northeast or
whatever. To them it's like, oh, it's definitely going to rain tomorrow, it's going to be bad.
You know, they know what, what that could mean. And so bringing that
into a conversation again, if you're not aware of these
things, is having some of this like. But are you aware that tomorrow afternoon when
you're trying to have this party is going to rain? You're like, I hadn't thought about that
question.
All right, so working out our foresight
muscles, looking for those signals on a regular basis is
number four. And what's number five?
>> Gabe Cervantes: Uh, so the last one, and this was a surprise to
me, but scalable foresight demands that
you challenge present day assumptions about
everything. You know, Lorenzo, part of kind
of human history and there's neuroscience to
back all of this is like our brains are
constantly trying to predict
what's going to happen next. Now we say, don't predict the future.
Our brains do it anyways from a neurological
perspective. I mean, subconsciously, my brain
right now is like, I'm in a room right
now and am I safe? Is something
going to fall on me? Is someone going to bust in through the door and do
me harm? Like if I'm walking down the street,
subconsciously I'm trying to predict what's going
to happen next. Now many of us wake
up and we think that today is going to
be exactly the same as it was yesterday,
which was the same as it was before, and tomorrow will be the
same as it was today. But think
back to 2019, when we all woke
up and we were expecting to go into work. And the
first thing we're told is, don't go into the office, office,
don't go into church, stop shaking people's
hands, only go outside for food and
medicine. You know, don't even go and see
your relatives because there's a global
pandemic. And then the assumption was, this is only
gonna last two weeks. You know, We're a little, oh, I.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Remember two weeks to flatten the curve. Two weeks to flatten the
curve. Yeah, about that.
>> Gabe Cervantes: We're so stubborn. Uh, the best of us, including
myself, were like, okay, the government is saying two weeks, but we
really think it'll be six to eight. And it's like, you
know, there are still Covid surges going on, uh,
still, uh, see people wearing masks on airplane and
in public places. And so scalable
foresight is take the most basic
assumptions that you have and run it
through and say, will this assumption still
hold true and hold the same weight and the same
value in the future, or should I spend some time
thinking about that?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And I guess putting it in a church context, a way that
we could look at that one would be. One of the assumptions that I think
we always have had about church is that it includes a
building. You know, going back to what we were talking about earlier is like,
we've had this building since when it was built, you know,
100, 200 years ago. So we're always going to need a building
for this church. And, and one of those things to question
is like, but will we always need this building for this
church? Is that, is that, uh. Which again
forces you to look at it differently and to ask, well, what
do we need the building for? What is the unique thing that the building gives
us for the work that we're doing inside the building? And
then you're starting to look at it from a different perspective. And
to your point, it just questioned the assumption
that you're. Yeah, we're always going to need a building. It's like, but will
we, as an ordained person
who's looking ahead and seeing the number of
lay, planted, lay led congregations.
And I'm like, like there's always been an assumption you're always going to
need a priest is like, or will we,
you know.
>> Gabe Cervantes: Right, exactly. Or will we. That's. And you
know, kind of let me give you the example that made it crystal
clear in my mind that like this was just so true. I was
talking to uh, the, one of the world's
largest retailers, probably the largest retailer in the
world. And they're like, Gabe, what do we need to think
about? What do we need to consider? And I came in and I was like,
listen, we have to talk about, about fraud and the future of
fraud and what this means for the retail environment and what this means
for the world. And they kind of like, you know, we're like, gabe,
fraud, we know fraud is bad. We deal with
fraud constantly. We have these strategies
to apply with it. I'm like, but the way we talk about
fraud in the future will change. And they're like, what do you
mean fraud is going to be like an okay thing
now? And they're like, uh, like this new administration is that. And I
was like, listen, let's not go there, right?
But fraud looks differently. And so I brought
kind of these drivers of change, but also some signals
like, yes, we see more and more fraud. Yes, we see more
kind of counterfeit things kind of out in the marketplace,
but we're starting to see some really interesting
signals. In Australia. The
Australian taxation office, about two
tax seasons ago, social media
influencers, particularly on TikTok,
went and said, hey, Australian folks, this
tax season, I've got a hack for you to get
more money. Turns out the hack was
tax fraud. People were creating fake
dishes businesses. Now they didn't know they were doing
this. They were just like, you go here, you apply for
this kind of business license number, although
it wasn't called that. You get a number, you put it in your
taxes and voila, you get an extra
$5,000. Now the taxation
office kind of came out and said, we
caught this late in the game and we are telling you
right now we will never recuperate. A
hundred percent of the
refunds that have been sent out now, some
people were caught and were sent to jail. Some people
started facing fines. You know, there's been a lot
of that. And the really interesting thing,
Lorenzo, is that the
Australian Tax Taxation Office and you
know, bravo to them, they said, you know, some of
our own employees fell for this hack.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Wow.
>> Gabe Cervantes: Some of our own people fell for
this. Accidental fraud
in the future is very different
than fraud and how we talk about fraud being
bad today. There's another kind of great example that I
showed. There's a brand new study that, that shows that Gen
Z thinks that the, the economy
is so unfair that they are willing
to commit fraud. They are willing to tell
doordash, hey, I never got my food.
They're willing to tell Amazon, hey, my package
never arrived. They're willing to call
up, you know, I, uh, I don't know,
the pharmacy and say, hey, you know, you delivered
my pills. Or we're supposed to be 30, there were only
25. Right. Like they are
knowingly committing fraud because
they think the economy is stacked against
them. They have zero hope for the future.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So uh, they justify it.
>> Gabe Cervantes: This is their way of fighting back. Now. Yes,
fraud will still exist. Fraud will still be regulated,
fraud will still be bad. And Frowned upon. And the
church and businesses and governments need to address
that. But accidental fraud, fraud
or bold face fraud because of
feelings of survival or for survival
are brand new contexts of fraud that we've
never talked about. And the assumption is fraud
will continue to be bad in the future. But you have
to go back to that basic assumption and say
the way we talk about fraud, the way fraud is dealt
with, the way people even kind of
justify fraud. I mean, fraud used to be
intentional. It used to take. Take time. Yeah, it m.
Used to be very calculated. Fraud can now be
instantaneous. Fraud can now happen
accidentally. And those are the kinds of assumptions
that we should be using scalable foresight to
kind of test and in order to
again build action that helps us be
more resilient for the future.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Uh, I think perhaps another example of something that
especially those of us in the church, right, we always see
murder is wrong. Right? It's in the Ten Commandments, Thou shalt not
murder. But recently, when, last
fall, when the United Healthcare executive was
shot in cold blood. Right, right. From someone. Most
of the time, if you were to tell someone's this, this person shot him and they shot him in
the back and killed him, you'd be like, well that's obvious murder.
Yet how many people came out and said like, but
yeah, but he, you know, the guy was a healthcare executive. And
so that changes the dynamics. It's like, no. And there's
the people that are like standing the moral grass like, no, no, murderer's murderer
is like, yeah, but you know, so it, it's. Who would have thought,
right, that there would be a time when we are
deciding like he killed someone. But we as uh, a,
as uh, a society are sort of deciding that the guy deserved it in some way or
another. It's like that's a completely different type of looking
at, at what happened then we would have thought about,
certainly not in the 1950s. That just never would have happened.
Right. Or the 60s. And so all of a sudden to. In
2024 at the time to be seeing like this
can happen, that all of a sudden there are vigilantes
that we now say yay for. It's like, that's a,
that's a different world. I mean that's a different future.
>> Gabe Cervantes: You know, even today, in late April of 2025,
we're having conversations about due process. Um,
exactly. I'm headed out of the country
next week. I'm headed to Toronto. And you know, I am
raising the flag internally of like, hey, one of our
researchers with uh, you know, the last name
Cervantes is going to be.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Exactly.
>> Gabe Cervantes: It's like, oh, you know, I've got my passport, I
am a US citizen. I have been a US citizen my whole
life. But like, this assumption that it'll be
easy for me to come back in is like,
hang on, we should spend some time now.
Hopefully it doesn't happen. Hopefully, you know, everything
goes smooth, you know, even with these questions of due
process and all these other things. But we would be
doing ourselves a disservice if we didn't spend
time to stop and think and consider
the possibility. Let's upend the
assumption, run through the possibility and
create an action plan in order to, you know,
be prepared. So that as my colleague Jake Dunnigan
says, it's better to be surprised by a
simulation than to be blindsided by
reality. Right. Go through the process,
learn what you can. Because the alternative
is you do nothing and you wake up
and your entire world is upside down right
now.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah. And think about it. It's not even about the fact that you
make anyone, since there's so much
agency given to the agents at the border that at any
time any of us could have been pulled aside. But I think the bigger issue
that you began with on this one is it's the due process part. Because what
if all of a sudden Gabe just disappears and we don't even know where you are? And it's like,
how do we prove that he's right if we don't even have an
opportunity to do that, that we just take for granted that that
was going to be there. And so you're right. These scenarios. So to
reiterate, the five parts of this were
don't feature alone again, the new Try Tank, uh, slogan
for 2025. Not looking for answers or proper
solutions. We just want to make sure that we are uncovering new questions
to consider. It requires a Sherpa, a guide to do
this so that we can actually guide through the future. And that
person should have some basic information
that the foresight is a muscle to be
continued to be worked out that we need to have the daily habits.
Thinking about those raindrops and seeing them, ah, how
they impact those puddles later.
And then to make sure that we challenge our present day
assumptions about everything and anything.
Uh, wow, that is, that's pretty good.
You see, look at that. In 46
minutes we've been able to really, you've given us a
full class. Uh, this is great. Uh,
so I just got to mention you, uh,
do have a new book out, uh, with Bob Johansson.
And remind me, Jeffrey. Jeremy
Kirschbaum, Jeremy Kim. And the
new book is really good. I have a copy of it. The full name
of it is Leadership. Ah, go ahead, help me
out.
>> Gabe Cervantes: It's Leaders make the Future. It's the third edition.
It's 10 new skills to humanize
leadership with generative AI.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: There you go. So, and if. If anybody wants, uh,
or needs a Sherpa, you know, Gabe, uh, is available through the Institute
for the Future. Uh, you know, assuming
he gets back into the country after Toronto.
>> Gabe Cervantes: No.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Gabe, thank you so much for being with us, for
taking the time out of your trip in Houston to join us for this. I
really appreciate you being with us. I know this will
be one of those things that people will be like, you need to listen to this. This is a good
one. You need to pay attention to this and start doing this.
And maybe Try Tank will start having, like, a
signal network where we can share signals with each other within the
church so that we can actually start scaling our foresight, uh,
as well. Maybe we can be. Be part of that Sherpa ing of
information.
>> Gabe Cervantes: I would love that. I would love that. Lorenzo, always a
pleasure.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Thank you, Gabe. Thank you so much.
Thanks for listening. Please subscribe and
be sure to leave a review. To learn more About
Try Tank, visit
tritank.org be sure to sign
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up with all of our exceptions experiments. The Tri
Tank podcast is a production of Trank in association
with Resonate Media. Trank is a
joint venture between Virginia Theological
Seminary and General Theological
Seminary. Again, thanks for joining
us. I'm, um, Father Lorenzo Labrija. Until
next time. May God bless.