Think Forward Ep 118 - Future-Proofing the Nation with Kara Cunzeman

🎙️ Welcome to Think Forward Show Episode 118: Engineering Foresight with Kara Cunzeman 🌌🔧

In this episode, I sit down with Kara Cunzeman, a visionary in applied foresight, to discuss how engineering and futures work intersect to tackle some of the most complex national challenges. Kara brings a unique perspective, blending systems engineering with strategic foresight to guide national security and space policy.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

•How to build a foresight function within large organizations from scratch

•The role of multidisciplinary teams in tackling complex issues

•Why applied foresight is critical for navigating uncertainty and driving actionable change

•Insights on the Federal Foresight Advocacy Alliance and the push for a national office of strategic foresight

Kara’s insights show how integrating futures thinking can create lasting impact, especially in high-stakes environments. This episode is a must-listen for anyone curious about the future of foresight in government and beyond.

How does foresight play a role in your organization? Share with us! #ThinkForwardShow #Foresight #EngineeringForesight #FutureOfWork #StrategicForesight

🎧 Listen Now On:

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO

🔗 Web: https://lnkd.in/eAVcg6X4

Think Forward Show (Light Version): https://lnkd.in/eVBVJRCB

Think Forward Show: www.thinkforwardshow.com

🔗 Steve’s Site: www.stevenfisher.io

Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.

Transcript

Steve F: 0:00

Kara, welcome to the podcast.

Kara: 0:01

Thanks for having me, Steve.

Steve F: 0:03

Always good to have you. And, for those that don't know you, share your background and how you became a futurist because it's always such an interesting journey for everyone that I talk to,

Kara: 0:11

Yeah. I don't actually know that anybody ever had. In there when they're five year olds talking about what they want to be when they grow up rights. I want to be a futurist, right? I didn't even really honestly know what a futurist meant until several years out of grad school. But yeah, is my background. I'm a engineer by training. I have my undergrad and multidisciplinary engineering and my master's in aero and astro engineering and Really primarily did a bunch of systems engineering type work out of school on a whole variety of projects. My husband was in tech, so I moved all over the country for him. And I think, honestly, it was such a blessing to see how versatile systems engineering and systems thinking actually can be across industries. And so I was able to get a lot of that. A lot of really good perspective in areas like obviously space and satellite manufacturing and operations and sensor, sensor development, but also the medical industry. Like I supported, um, systems engineering efforts. And just how complex honestly medical environments are for, and trying to maximize productivity of healthcare, professionals in this environment where everything's beeping and you're trying to figure out how do you prioritize? So that was really incredibly interesting. I worked at General Atomics working on electromagnetic launch systems for the Navy, which actually has a space application now. Which I may or may not have suggested and and then of course space and that, I loved this journey that I went on through all these different jobs that I honestly had to have because, we were trying to, when you're a power couple, you're just trying to manage just being in the same physical location. And so you have to

Steve F: 1:55

I'm familiar with the power couple thing. Yes. There.

Kara: 1:58

It's exhausting. But honestly, it was really, it was a blessing in disguise and but you know In that job that I have, we were both in San Diego. My husband was working at Qualcomm and I was like, you know what, I just miss space. And so I was looking at, a couple of my options and I landed at aerospace and jumped right into honestly, very deep strategy type work for the government. And along the way was brought into a lot of internal activities, focusing on our internal investments and science technology focus areas, innovation. And I was just witnessing as they brought me in as like the fresh ideas person and was observing, these incredibly, like literally world class experts trying to attack these, future problems with engineering solutions, but they were fundamentally strategy problems. And so that's where I was like on this endless hunt for what are the best in class approaches for managing uncertainty? Because it's not, the answer is 42. It's something much more nuanced than that. And how do you manage that? And so anyways, that's how I went to Institute for the Future. And that was just really eye opening to me

Steve F: 3:04

Oh, so you went to IFTF to do the future of the five day. Okay,

Kara: 3:09

yeah, yep, and was like, how the heck am I going to translate this to a highly technical audience? There's clearly something really powerful here, but. The people I work with don't speak this language. Like, how am I going to convert this to something that they can understand? And so anyways we got some folks together, spent a week talking about like, how do we make a business case for this? Like, how do we put this together? And just for our audience, I work at the airspace corporation, which is a federally funded research center. So we're a nonprofit. Trusted set of advisors focused on providing objective analysis, deep technical analysis and expertise to the government across all space issues. And we're not a for profit company, but we certainly have a value proposition. And I think actually, As we found out through this journey, I would argue that organizations that have this role almost have to practice foresight because the data isn't enough to make really important, critical decisions and strategy for the country. So that's how we went on this journey. And, seven, seven years into kind of officially Futuring. We're now a dedicated department focused on solving some of the nation's hardest problems using applied foresight methods.

Steve F: 4:21

You covered a lot of ground. That was pretty, pretty wild. You mentioned like no one when they're kids is I want to be a futurist when I grow up. When did you feel like you first learned about futures and foresight?

Kara: 4:33

It's funny. I think the essence of who I am has always been a futurist. Like I've always been a planner. I've always thought about the future. And for me, when I was younger, there was this undying question of, Why are we here? How did we get here? Where did we come from? And that is really my through line to my passion for space. Because I truly believe our answers are in the stars. We're going to find out those answers. through the work that we do in space. And so I've, oh, and my dad was a huge science fiction, nerd and just got me hooked on really early. In some aspects I guess without really understanding futures as a discipline I had, those innate abilities in me. And I also just love, I'd love to plan. I love to think about if this, then why. But I think it wasn't until I formally was introduced to this as a discipline and realize, wow, like people, this is a professionalized. Area that I started to realize there is such an importance, especially as we are just facing such immense uncertainty and the context is such high risk as well as the opportunities we owe it to ourselves and society to have to do the work that's needed to really make better obviously, I think one is just, Doing a better job of sensing what is actually happening and trying to put those together, but two is like being bold enough to imagine a better future, which I think society. Has really stopped doing because social media has been feeding us what, all these different snippets of the future, but they're not really the kind of futures that we thought about in the 60s through, just different, communication mediums.

Steve F: 6:18

I collect a lot of memorabilia and things of what people thought of the future. Like the, in the year 1900, what the year 2000 would be, or like in the 30s, like, various things that, they had video phones in there, they had all these things, and it was always in the, and I've used this example in other podcasts, it's they always, people are always stuck in the paradigm or the constructs of today and extrapolate from that, they don't The truly wild stuff data talks about with, if it's wild, then you're not, if it's not, if it's not out of your, out of your crazy, out of your mind, you're not doing your job or something like that. I'm

Kara: 6:52

Yep.

Steve F: 6:53

It's, I had this conversation with John Smart. It's like how the forecasting field and the foresight field had , a peaceful separation and divorce in the 70s , and I think it's finally getting there as a tool. I think COVID changed a lot of people's attitudes of uncertainty and fragility and all that. All those fine. Business buzzwords, but it really has brought it to the forefront. And I think Organizational Foresight is seeing a renaissance in that way. Because your organization, from what I can see, is you've done, you've built this from scratch.

Kara: 7:22

Yep.

Steve F: 7:23

it

Kara: 7:24

percent grassroots, baby.

Steve F: 7:25

And working as a futurist, The journey that you took, when you came in, how did you start, how did you present the idea to leadership?

Kara: 7:37

Yeah. This is always a challenge, I think, for organizations. We were fortunate in that we had some opportunities internally to almost sandbox this a bit before we went, and presented it. So we, brought in different perspectives across the company. We literally spent a full week focused only on this, no distractions. And we came up with a business plan and then we went to our senior vice president and and said, we have something. And he's tomorrow our internal strategic initiative proposals are due, usually you spend a whole year working with an executive on this concept. And we literally just threw what we had in a hat and the executive team was supportive enough to give a little bit of funding the first year. And we just kept demonstrating value. We demonstrated value of horizon scanning into strategic planning, scenario development into how we need to be framing different key pivot points for the company. And we were invited our second year to support some internal strategy efforts. And help leads those discussions, which is incredible. And then over time, we also on the other side, we actually, we're already having interest of, direct, customers who were paying us to do work and projects. And that has actually been our lifeblood because even if you have, skepticism, if they can see outside validation, that what you're doing is valuable, that helps them. Make the case for you. We're pretty self sufficient. We have, we are in this really wonderful spot where we were actually able to have and convince our leaders to put some, corporate effort behind this. But what makes us have sticking power is our directly applied projects, right? Which give us the relevance and also help us see where the blind spots are so we can step back out through the policy center. and write about what we're seeing. A lot of organizations, especially if you're in the private sector, they can't do that. They have to make their customers happy. And I think good foresight work isn't about happy, in the short term or satisfied or a plus work. It's about change, right? It's about getting leaders to do something different based on the insights that you hopefully have helped the organization open up on. And a lot of times the initial gut reaction is, I don't like this. It's different than the plan I had. It's different than the view I had. And so it's it requires like a pretty, tough skin to do this work. If you want to do it well, I've seen a lot of folks who like, they do the inspirational futuring and they, package things up into some high level bullet points and they move on their way. But if you really want to affect change, it's actually really challenging.

Steve F: 10:20

That's well said, and it's very hard to make you right. It's the smokejumper consultant, with the, my the utopian perspectives and, The real role of a futurist sometimes should be tough love, but they don't want to hear that. I even, many times I run across companies that don't want to look too far out. They're afraid or they just don't care. They just don't care. And they don't see them having the job, or they need to get their bonus their,Short term focus and short term incentive doesn't look for that unless it's marketing messages. And you're right. I've, I saw a lot with government foresight was it would get to the scenario stage. And it would be a report and it would go into a drawer. in terms of real action I went through the Houston program and I met, people that worked at NATO, people worked at Coast Guard. And, for them, it was about the kind of actionable foresight that they were doing. And I think this decade is when we're going to really get into that because then if you look at the stage of a product officer is looking, products are looking at 12 to 18 months on a roadmap and innovation is looking at a three year. Horizon and portfolio strategy and foresight is going even much farther out depending on the rates of change and horizon points. But if you bring them together and there are ways to be seen, the work symbiotically, then they inform each other. And when I was thinking about what your work is at aerospace, what is the typical day look like for you? What's your team like the makeup of the team? How does it, because I think many people are, let me preface it. I think many people are on, not on, they're unsure of what is. This even look like it's very clear like how an accounting department would work or design, product design or, but like foresight, organizational foresight, practice in the organization, the model of it. I think there's a lot of mystery, which I hope to demystify personally in the work I do, but because I think once it's demystified, it's then understood and then it's easier to implement and integrate. So what is it? Yeah. What does your day look like? The

Kara: 12:25

Yeah. I love this question. As well, I guess like first and foremost, my philosophy is that foresight is a team sport and it requires a strong team of diverse perspectives to really get to the kind of quality of insights that you need. A lot of times I see organizations that only quote unquote have room for maybe a single, a singular. Individual or like even that person's job is divided into two pieces, like they're, HR rep and foresight practitioner or strategist. I just don't think that works for really hard, challenging problems. So again, I've. I've really fought to build a team and our team is very multidisciplinary. We have, we have kind of representation across, law and poli sci, political science international perspectives, business engineering acquisition, design intelligence. Like we really try to make sure that we're bringing in Not only different kind of expertise and bringing, those experiences, but also like, how are those people showing up as an individual? Are they curious? Are they collaborative? Are they And how do you build that team dynamic so that you're bringing out the best in each other, you're challenging each other, you're making a solid product. And again, you're doing that thing that you said earlier, which is, your job is to help make sure that we are testing those quarter cases for, for individuals that we're working for. And It's so easy to try to, they try to shove you back in the box of comfort and it's your job to try to get them to a place where they're actually thinking about those corner cases. And then it's a whole other job to try to figure out is there an urgency or a need to take different action in the present? To, To make sure you're either posturing yourself for success or at least mitigating some of the risks that you see there. So we're often if we're in the office, we don't have workshops going on. We're not at conferences, which there's a lot of those. We're literally in a room all together for days a week. multiple days a week. I'd say two to three. We're spending a majority of our days in a room together in a room that has all whiteboards and we're sharing ideas. We're working through different projects. We're also thinking about independent research that and theses that we want to pursue and research associated with those topic areas on how we're going to bridge some of the knowledge gaps and insight gaps across mostly government issues, but also national leadership issues. So it's really a dynamic day. We're also, collaborating with all facets of industry and academia, on phone calls on, on podcasts. Like it's, we're really trying to build right. This like ecosystem that helps feed our insights, but that we also can give back to as well. We regularly engage with, K through 12, right. Trying to inspire them and get them to understand futures literacy and how that connects to space. And so there's no, it's a kind of a cliche answer. There's no. obvious day schedule, if that makes sense, but like all the activities I just listed it's usually a mix of all of those, but every day is a little different. Except the one kind of through line is collaborative teamwork and the ability to explore ideas together through, a methodological approach, of course.

Steve F: 15:51

I think the, the aspects of that do you, how do you see, especially with you built this from grassroots, that I've, I've drawn many parallels to the user experience feature. Field over the last 15 years of the, how it was viewed in engineering and how it grew into its own. And obviously futures has been around for seven years and the thing that I had mentioned before with Jake was we were talking about how many people before, 15 years ago, if you went on LinkedIn, you probably find. Me and 500 other people. it's I don't know, say there's a lot of I use the term, I like what Alex from Nani's talks about fake futurists. I think there are people that are practicing and there are people that are learning, that are aspiring. I'll call it that. But I think there's a lot more people that are trying to be futures fluent. And. When you think about the next, it can relate it to the airspace, but also the next decade, as you've been very well known to come well known in the field. How do you see the few, how do you see it growing over the next decade as a, as futurists?

Kara: 16:48

Yeah, I've also been in the same boat of like just some eye rolls about, again, individual actors who aren't necessarily tap into an ecosystem who haven't necessarily gone through formal training or even advance the training, advance the methodology themselves. And they're talking about, predicting certain future states. But, you got to step back and

Steve F: 17:06

When that way, let me stop you there. That's the most core tenant is a futurist. Do not predict. We look at possible future. So all this prediction stuff might be fun. So are horoscopes. Don't take them seriously. I, no, I just wanted to, for those listening, like that is a big, if you think people are predicting in their futurists, that's a big red flag. Like

Kara: 17:26

I absolutely. I think we need to all step, take a step back though and go I think it's a good thing that there are more people thinking about the future particularly with all the things going on. And I certainly know that a lot of times when folks will come to us and ask for help, it's because they've hit. Literally like rock bottom like they, they made the wrong call because the only thing that was really influencing their decisions was either not making a decision, and just because it was too. It was too. To uncertain. So we're just going to stay the course. And that obviously was a terrible idea and they're trying to, sweep that up, or they made a decision based on data, which is incomplete. Things are fast moving. So it's never necessarily representing quote unquote, the truth of where you're actually at today. Most of most likely it's representing historical standpoints, which may or may not be useful in terms of making strategic decisions about the future, and they're starting to realize this and they're getting desperate, and they're realizing like we need better way. So I think it will slowly, move towards a subset, a fraction of leaders across hopefully all facets of society. for having me. having that recognition. It's a slow trickle process. I will say I have not seen really good signals on the education side. I've seen like these quick, like boot camps or workshops, but I haven't really seen deep, deep education in here. And actually, honestly, some of our university programs that have been our go to of weekend. And I haven't seen this scaled. And I think if we really expect to have You know, not everybody needs to be a futurist, and I'm certainly not saying that everybody needs to have training in this, but I actually am a really big proponent that we need to be exposing K through 12, which futures thinking primarily because I think it helps us realize the agency we have in creating our futures. the inclusivity of diverse perspectives, the empathy that goes along with it. But also it's just exciting. It's inspiring. And I think, I forget what study that showed, post pandemic was at 60 percent of the workforce is completely disengaged. What are we doing? And I just think futures is just. It's this inherent way to get people to work together, to think about exciting futures, to help get ahead of risks that we, think might be there. And kids are actually super creative. I'm actually, I have two young kids and I actually just started doing the thing from the future card game that Seward Candy. And it's phenomenal. Like some of the stuff that my

Steve F: 20:04

come up with, my, my son is my son seven and I haven't started with him yet, but he's definitely got the creativity. And I want to talk about teach the future and the education. I always said there's 2 things that they should teach in high school is futures and foresight and personal finance

Kara: 20:22

Totally agree.

Steve F: 20:23

because those 2 things. And I, to your earlier point about what are we doing? I think a lot of people are just used to they're afraid of change, and this the potential of completely reworking the system. Look at Amazon, bringing everybody back to the office after they told everybody to go home because we needed to work. But everyone did that, and now they've got lives, and now they're just going to abjectly do that. I have my own conspiracy theories. I think it's around the fear of commercial real estate collapsing, but that's, that's for another podcast. But I think when you look at that is it's the factory model, right? It's like we're creatures of that 150 year old system. And I think it is, it almost has to be shaken. I thought COVID would really shake it. And it's, they're trying to claw it back. And I think it'll find an equilibrium to your point about. Teaching people and, where our programs, I think about the the work that you all have done. And it's such an interesting, you influence space policy. You put real perspectives together. That are not just reactionary to the time, to the administration or the time of day, you're, you have a different horizon because space is not just a, the business or the industry, it's a place,

Kara: 21:33

Yes.

Steve F: 21:34

and aerospace, and I know it's aerospace, it's broader than just space, but when you look at to get into this the kind of, The policy and strategy part. So you've been deeply in, how do you get trends? How do you work on, on, on gathering this stuff? What's the processes? How do you evaluate this stuff to like really make the, filtered through to make the impact, how you prioritize, like how do, how does that work for your team? Wow.

Kara: 22:08

aerospace is fortunate to have, over 4000 scientists and engineers and experts. And so we have a little bit of an edge in that literally. On any given technical issue, we can certainly pull together expertise and get all the things you were mentioning. What are the latest trends? What are, big kind of signposts we should be watching out for? That would be, have transformational change for either the energy industry or quantum or AI, whatever it is. And in terms of if I'm sure your listeners are familiar with, steeped, thinking about the steeped framework, societal, technological, economic, environmental, political, it's just one way to just make sure you're covering your bases in terms of a wide range of trends and signals. We have a very manually focused curation. So we have experts and. Curious employees who really like just reading a lot of different things and they help cull Not so much trends we get our trends data is pretty easily there's lots of just, Sources and stuff from that we spend most of our time focused on signals So like what are early indicators of change that aren't in mainstream news, but that are really interesting could have really big impacts and implications and we meet once a month as a kind of cohort and just talk through them like, okay, wow, I didn't know that. And then you put the two

Steve F: 23:21

This is not just your core team. This is the bro. You'll be extended. This

Kara: 23:25

aerospace community, and it's ongoing. It's not tied to any particular project. We just do it because that is the foundational base of what we believe needs to be done. And organizations have a really hard time doing this a lot just because they don't have The capacity is a creativity and the just the time right that individuals have to freely go look at stuff. So we prioritize that. And then, of course, our core team spends a lot of time. Speak if we need to expand our knowledge base, having one on one interviews or small working groups and piecing together things. And then of course we run a lot of fricking workshops. Oh my gosh. Like we just came off of a run. I think we ran seven workshops in two weeks. I am definitely exhausted and ready for the new fiscal year for sure. It is, but it's so exciting too. Cause you just you just see all these different lenses and honestly, echo chambers from different types of people. And you can call that out if you run enough of them with different groups of people. So we do a lot of that. And then of course, we have a pretty rigorous process in how we develop scenarios. And a lot of that is based on critical uncertainty. So we have a lot of arguments about what is actually the right thing to do. most critically uncertain about the problem or the question that we're trying to interrogate for this particular project. And we duke it out a lot. We're like, yeah, that's important. And we make cases and then we build out that corner case, set of things we want to explore and then work through those scenarios. But to your point, back to what makes it applied. What makes it applied is actually integrated into things like strategy, acquisition plans, technical investments and innovation, personnel and organizational changes. So like you have to have a through line, right? So a lot of the hard part is actually the, what I'll call like the customized analysis that you do on the back end. Once you have built your scenarios to bring meaning. To all those different areas. And I think the reason why we've had such success and where we are is because of our deep expertise on a wide variety of space and national security issues. I think if you just were doing this just at a high level, you're not really gonna. You're not going to build a compelling case study or story for the decision maker, but two, you're not even going to get to the meat of from an innovation standpoint, like what could we do that is different from today that really would change things? You have to have that expertise. So I think a lot of the time, futurists spend a lot of time on scenarios. And then they just hand over, whatever it is, but I actually think the real value of it is taking it from start to finish through the analysis, through the talking about innovative ideation on what we could do to completely change the game, and then getting it done. laid out into something like a roadmap or a policy plan or a set of investment guidelines that you can hand over to different aspects of and of course we support the U S government. So it's even more complex. There's not just one belly button. So you're also trying to have the whole stakeholder, herding the cats, right? If, if we think this critical areas, important to invest in guess what you got. 30 offices across, the government that probably care about it too. And so then there's that whole, convening aspect, which I think is again, why federally funded research centers are so valuable. Cause they sit at this nexus of commercial and academia and the government, and they're trying to literally herd the cats towards, better outcomes for the American public. So it's, very dynamic. But I think honestly building the scenarios is absolutely hard work. It is an art and a science, but getting it through to meaty strategy is also just as much of a competency.

Steve F: 26:56

Does the organization, let me start there. Do people in the organization make requests or get in your pipeline? Or do you set the agenda with executives and publish that out and then people can integrate into that? What are the back and forth, so they feel. People feel invested or ways that they can, they have something that's sparked or they want to look at a policy or they want to look at a, the horizons of a certain technology. Yeah. How to, how does it work within aerospace?

Kara: 27:24

say, I think at this point in time, maybe 70 percent of the work we do is driven by what our team feels is critical for the nation. And we have, we start conversations and then we get leaders to say, you know what, you're right. Like we need to go work that. I haven't been paying attention to that. Or that is a good thing for us to do. Let's do that. And then the other 30 percent is people coming to us going we've had this problem. We don't know how to get over it. Can you help try to, push things forward through foresight? So it's a bit, I would say we're also in this position where we, we get requests all the time. We don't necessarily work with everybody because we have limited bandwidth and we want to make sure that the resources we're spending are on. honestly, the hardest problems of national importance that can have the biggest impact. So we often have to neck things down ourselves internally. And we have a kind of an internal rubric, if you will, for doing that. But then of course, your last part of your question about okay, so once you're working, with somebody, how do you bring them along? And I think a lot of people start in different, completely different places. We've been in situations where, maybe their bosses said it was critically important and believe it, but they don't and you got to start from scratch and just have them air their laundry. What is actually their priorities? What is bothering them? Like, Where do they sit on the issue and then try to get them to sit through some of the exploratory discussions to bring them along in the process and then talk about implications and get them to see those implications viscerally. And that can take some hard work. It's, obviously much better when you have somebody ready at the get go, but very few people are ready are our entire like Western construct, whether you're in the private sector, whether in government, is incentivized. To have a short term bias. That's just how we are. So you're always gonna have your work cut out for you. But I think again, like some of these things gets to a point where you realize The strategic context here is too important for me to screw this up. And so that's why they bring us in.

Steve F: 29:16

Do you and let's follow that up is, do you do like once or twice a year like a two or three day intro to foresight? Do you teach the fish so that it's almost to your point, like if you bring them into it, it's drinking through the fire hose. And it's also processing. And if they're not engaged, this is just goes as a designer, like running design workshops, same thing. Do you do any, like you've had people that are looking for signals, like getting people futures fluent, literate within the org. Do you do anything like that? Like once or twice a year to bring the people in that are interested.

Kara: 29:47

Yeah. I wouldn't say we're necessarily like an education factory, but we certainly like for organizations we work with where they're like, we have a whole cohort of people that just want to know the basics. Like we also teach a course internally at aerospace just so people are speaking the same language and

Steve F: 30:02

That's what I meant. Like getting everyone on the

Kara: 30:04

Absolutely. Absolutely. And honestly I think there is a huge gap on applied foresight in the government because we, there's honestly, there's only a handful of certification and degree programs in the United States. And many of them, I feel like are disconnected from government type work from national security work from applied work. And so there's this question of even if they send individuals there, There's this gap. There's this learning gap. If they actually want their organizations to be proficient in this as a discipline, there's a gap. And so oftentimes they'll come to us and help us help them fill that gap. But I, back to your earlier question about Okay. In 10 years. How do we scale this? I think it's a huge issue. We've got to find ways to get into the leadership programs. But also emerging leaders, not just current leaders like I think this should be a competency for anybody that's even being considered to be put in the leadership position.

Steve F: 30:56

And then I agree that futures fluency is one of the things that should be on the matrix of skill sets, right? And futures literate, because it allows someone to talk in dual tones of short term results with long term vision. And, you mentioned about the government, it's a nice segue to the work. you've been doing with a few others on the Federal Foresight Advocacy Alliance. You're looking, tell me about, and I believe this kind of existed before, but I think really more you had, seven years ago you had RAND and, other labs that were connected to the government in terms of foresight or scenario work. But you've been, all been working on trying to get the Office of Strategic Foresight. In the U S government. So tell me about this initiative, how you co founded it. Tell the audience all about this. Cause I don't think a lot of people know about it and I think it's awesome. I think

Kara: 31:45

Yeah. It's probably one of the most exciting things I've certainly worked on in my recent history. Federal Foresight Advocacy Alliance is a nonprofit bipartisan organization. It's stood up by three of us. So Rob and Champ, who used to lead the Foresight Program at the Secret Service and Suzette Masters Brooks, who's been an incredible advocate in the democracy space the three of us. guys. Just, we're we've known each other for a while and we've been really frustrated at the lack of progress in discussion on advancing our capacities for managing uncertainty at a national level and through either the lens of, are we really building a stable and, Democracy that America wants to are we ready from a national security standpoint to like, do we have the governance organizations and mechanisms like we all just really jived on this and there have been a few calls in the past in like the 90s and early 2000s for something like this, but It was never as grand or bipartisan as what we're recommending, right? Like we, through the work, especially through the work I've been doing on the national security side, like the way our government is set up is we have a bunch of stove pipes and inter agencies that. Don't actually, there's, back to the incentives problem. They're incentivized to take care of what's in their swim lane and nothing else. And when you talk about as a nation, how we have to navigate trade offs between domestic and foreign affairs and economic issues and technology issues and, wellbeing of American society. We don't have a place to have those discussions. issue, what we do is largely done in stovepipes on technology or business, but we're not having these holistic conversations about like, how do we even make this a better proposition for the American people writ large? And of course, there are, I always say the implementation of this obviously gets very political when you're talking about near term implication. But when you think about long term vision for the United States, we should actually agree on most things. no matter where you sit. And we've actually done this. I ran through aerospace in the center, something called Project North Star. You can go to our website to look it up, but we actually piloted this approach to how do we get people from all facets of ideologies in the United States to have discussions about our collective future states, our North Stars, and how do we start working in a realistic strategic implementation plan. We're basically like, You could have milestones on the whatever subset of key issues that America decides that it wants to invest in long term. And it doesn't matter who's president. We're going to hold the government accountable for making milestones on these issues. Right now we don't work like that and it's actually getting worse. We're actually becoming, I think, even more short term and reactionary. So we, recognizing this situation, the three of us said, you know what? We're going to write a case statement. Nobody has ever put together a true case statement for why foresight is actually necessary. If the United States wants to continue to lead, wants to continue to bring prosperity and freedom to its people and wants to uplift, honestly, the world's If we want to lead, we're going to have leadership and we're going to have inspirational ideas about where our future is going, and we're not really putting the work in right now. And so this is what, led us to stand up, wanted a push for an office in the highest levels of federal government that integrates all these perspectives and that helps drive an interagency progress on a national future strategy.

Steve F: 35:19

How does capitalism change in the country? How does free markets change? How does educational, how does the department of, all of that, right? I think that would be a way to look at, America, because a lot of the kids who are born today will be alive. They will, they'll be alive for that. My

Kara: 35:35

And all the jobs that they'll be working don't exist today. I think that's what makes me most excited is talking about all these new opportunities, markets, organizations. That don't exist today, but that will because, society hopefully is gonna, move things forward and we can help accelerate that through future thinking.

Steve F: 35:52

And, I love. This concept, do, will there have to be some sort of, congressional budget? Will it, would that be the ultimate, where the, where there'd be like an executive order that forms the branch? Would it, where would it live? Like, where would it would it live in a department? Would it live just in the OMB and, next door to the white house and yeah. How would that, how would you, how do you envision this kind of working?

Kara: 36:17

In the case statement, we actually are very specific about what we're recommending. However, I think we all acknowledge there's 20 ways to skin a cat. So as long as we have a cat that's what matters. We are making the recommendation for it to sit in OMB. Primarily because they are directly influencing budget and policy, and that is required if you're going to be effective and driving, interagency changes. This will absolutely 100 percent require legislation if this is going to have staying power, and it's going to require budget, it's going to require personnel, just like any other initiative. Do I think it's a monumental effort to do that? I don't think it has to be. Like We are aware of multiples, congressional studies going on right now that all recognize the need for this capacity. It's just a matter of how do we get this in? How do we get it led? How do we get it funded? So I'm actually pretty optimistic that we can get this done. Of course there's a lot going on, that we may or may not have anything control over, but I think there is. really strong consensus on both sides that we have a strategy problem in the United States, that this is existential and that we've got to start leaning into being leaders in our future if we want to continue to have the things that we hold dear in our constitution. So I am optimistic that we are going to make movement on this. Absolutely.

Steve F: 37:36

would I would say that the, very much a bipartisan issue because everyone, we want to all solve the problem. It's how we feel it should be solved or the instruments in which we do that or the philosophies. And I think doing the scenarios and playing it out, the ones that don't like it. I think in my sense is that it would expose the fallacies of arguments, whereas, or it would actually really have to figure it out. And you have to solve the problem instead of just kicking the can down the road.

Kara: 38:01

Yeah. Yeah. So I guess like back to our case statement, the reason why we felt like there needs to be Almost a cabinet level, right? Implementation of this is exactly to your point, right? You need to hold the interagencies accountable. You have to have integration and you have to have a legal mandate to deliver this national future strategy.

Steve F: 38:19

The National Intelligence Director, like the

Kara: 38:21

Absolutely.

Steve F: 38:22

it's the, because then it brings together offices and different groups and different foresights and yeah, and then ID type. Yeah, I can absolutely see that. So I know we're coming up with that. We could obviously talk for another hour about all this stuff and we will have you back. But I wanted to who are, getting in the field and, learning about this and trying to be becoming futurists, a professional practicing futurists, what would you say is like when I want to do some of these, like when people ask you about your work, what's the one question you would like people to ask you about what you do?

Kara: 38:55

That's a really good question. I think it's, how do you know that the work you are doing is valuable? Because that is such a, I think, a contested set of questions. Metrics that are in the eye of the beholder. But, one of the things I was fortunate enough, I think, to realize really on and listen, like you would mention, we're a start. We're really a startup and a large behemoth organization that has a lot of bureaucracy that works with a lot of bureaucracy. So there was a lot of uphill battles that we had to, had to overcome. But, I. I knew it was going to be hard, but I didn't know how much grit you had to have, and just keep going. But also just the ability to just see past the nose and the, the Oh, that's not relevant to the next step. Because honestly, if you keep going and you're doing good work, there will be change. It may not be right now. It may not be in this meeting. It may not be even in three months, but I have telling you, like there are projects we have worked on. I have heard about things three years later that have, I would never would have guessed from those organizations where they have made changes for the positive based on the work we've done. And we never got feedback on it except I heard through the loop, the loop, the grapevine. It may not be such an obvious, we do this work, this outcome will happen. It is, again, this is a change process. It's an ecosystem you're building. It's a mindset, hopefully that you're trying to grow in other leaders. And it takes time. It takes patience and it takes a lot of grit. And honestly, like I'm a huge pain in the ass. Like I don't give up. And you have to have that if you want to be quote unquote successful. And I think that's hard. That's a really hard thing. I, for somebody that just wants, to get all the credit and to get the quick wins, it's probably not for you, right? This is really about passion for making a better future.

Steve F: 40:40

It's great. And what's the one thing you've learned in your career that you wish you knew when you started all this? When you were going down this case, you don't, you have an engineer journey with engineering and futures.

Kara: 40:50

I think stop asking for permission and validation from people that like honestly don't control the keys to your future. Like I, I learned after I played it safe for a few steps and things were going along the way, it's like, why do I keep asking for permission? Just go do this. Just go build this thing. Nobody's saying no, you have the space, safe space to do it. It's the right thing to do, even if leaders aren't really supporting you. So I just went and did it. But it took me a while to get the courage. Took me about a year to just say, okay, we're really going to lean into this. I'm going to give it all I got. I wish I would have known that when I was like a teenager, right? I think I learned that when I was like, I don't know, almost three probably.

Steve F: 41:27

Yeah I, in the same place, I started a business, yeah, it's the same thing. You have to learn to just. Ask for forgiveness and for permission seems to be the tenant.

Kara: 41:35

Yeah. Honestly,

Steve F: 41:37

I always like to wrap like the legacy question. Obviously we're very young people, you've got a long career ahead of you. And when you look back, do you want your impact and your work to be remembered? Like, how do you want it to be looked at and like the impact you have on the world?

Kara: 41:50

I'm not even sure I'll be remembered and that's okay. I think, I'm not a celebrity. But I

Steve F: 41:55

it's not. It's not a celebrity thing. It's more about you reflecting back on, people, what you did and the impact on the field because you do have, you have impact now and the things you're

Kara: 42:05

for sure. For sure. And I think it's like, again, it's even with standing up of the Federal Foresight Advocacy Alliance, I think there's a lot of people who all agree like it needed to be done, but nobody took the time. to put that case statement together to start championing it in the right set of leadership channels. And I think it's just, again, it's back to, Nike was onto something like, just do it right. If you're passionate about something, you don't see it happening. Pick up that football and get it done. Get it done for your kids. Get it done for the future generation. Get it done. Honestly, I think about my dad all the time and What kind of legacy? Because there's an obligation, right? This intergenerational obligation of, he did a lot of things so that I could have the opportunities I have. And it's my turn to do the best I can with my capacities to make the future better and to pave that out. So I feel a great sense of duty to do those things. And I think when I look back, I don't want to have regrets about, I was fearful or I thought it was too monumental. I just want to just try and honestly even if, government can't pass a bill or a budget, at least we tried. And at least my kids know that we tried and we built a community along the way. And then the next generation can give it a go. So I think that's really what's important is that my kids see that. this constant push for making it better and not just getting complacent because of the bureaucracy or just because it's easier just to sit back

Steve F: 43:28

That is a great way to end this podcast. Very nice. So I want to thank you for the time. It's been great having you on and I can't wait to have you back and so many more things we can cover, but this is great. It's great conversation.

Kara: 43:40

I had so much fun nerding out with you steve

Steve F: 43:42

Me too. Thanks.