Everyone’s a Futurist: Structuring Tomorrow’s Thinking

“It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning… the twilight of the dawn.” – H.G. Wells
But how do we shape what comes next—and prepare for futures we can’t yet see?

Join us for a compelling episode of the UCLA LiveWell podcast featuring Dr. Andy Hines — futurist, professor at the University of Houston, and expert in strategic foresight.

Andy guides us through:

• 🔭 How to scan for signals and build stories about the future.
• 🧠 Why vision is the antidote to chaos and uncertainty.
• 🐸 The role of “frogs”—those who bridge foresight and organizational reality.
• 🧩 How stealth strategies can embed future thinking in resistant cultures.

Whether you're navigating change or dreaming big, this episode will help you think ahead with clarity and purpose.

🎧 Tune in and explore how strategic foresight can help you live—and lead—with intention

Dr. Andy Hines' Website

Imagining After Capitalism 

University of Houston Foresight Program

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Welcome to the LiveWell Podcast. Today we are thrilled to have Dr. Andy Hines with us. Dr. Hines is a renowned futurist and a professor at the University of Houston where he leads the graduate program in foresight. His work has spanned various organizations, including Kellogg's End, Dow Chemical, where he has successfully integrated future thinking into their strategies.

[00:00:25] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Please join us as we explore his fascinating journey. Delve into the principles of foresight and discover how we can all become better prepared for the future. Welcome, Dr. Andy Hines.

[00:00:42] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Such a pleasure to have you on our LiveWell Podcast. And I'd like to just dive right into your personal path to foresight and your journey. You describe in some of your writings and with us is that it began with a class that was called The History of the Future. How did that class inspire you to pivot and focus on foresight?

[00:01:05] Dr. Andy Hines: Well, it was the old days when we used to stand in line. I had pick our courses at a table and I'm reading the program desperate to find something before I get to the my place in line. And I see this thing called History of the Future, and I'm like, huh, well that sounds interesting. What the heck? Now at the time.

[00:01:21] Dr. Andy Hines: I was on like my third or fourth major and I wasn't really, you know, finding anything. So I take this class and I was just like, you know those, oh my god, moments. Oh my God, this, this. And what I've found since then, and my encounters with many people new to the field, especially students, is we call it the stumble upon almost everybody says, and they often use those very words stumble upon.

[00:01:47] Dr. Andy Hines: I stumbled upon this one day and I went, huh? And, uh, so that seems to be the serendipitous pathway to foresight is the most common one. 

[00:01:56] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Wow, that's pretty cool. It's, it's almost ironic given in that it was just by chance, given the strategic approach to foresight. 

[00:02:05] Dr. Andy Hines: Exactly. And if you think about, well, we don't teach it in school and so how do you hear about it?

[00:02:10] Dr. Andy Hines: Right? There's really is no easy and, and of course that's one of the things that we hope someday, as my predecessor Peter Bishop says, our goal is to one day teach the future as we teach history. 

[00:02:21] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Hmm. 

[00:02:22] Dr. Andy Hines: But we've got a ways to go. I think. 

[00:02:24] Dr. Wendy Slusser: I'm sure all the listeners are wondering, like we're talking about your framework and thinking about the future.

[00:02:29] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Is it possible for you just to say those principles? Fairly succinctly at this stage. 

[00:02:36] Dr. Andy Hines: Absolutely. So the basic, so first we frame, we frame up what we're looking for. Then we have what we call scanning, which is looking for signals of change. We just have a methodology to find change, if you will, and we, once we find that change, we package it together.

[00:02:53] Dr. Andy Hines: Into a set of stories about the future, which we call scenarios, but it's stories. The future might look like this, might look like that, but it's all based on research with a little imagination, storytelling, research, imagination. And then we say, if those stories happen, what does that mean to us? How might it change what we're doing?

[00:03:12] Dr. Andy Hines: As we just said, we can't deal with every single change and what are the three or five things that we should really put in our agenda and how do we, how do we package those into plans and then, and then carry it out. There's, and we like to say that we hope that when we recommend an action, which sometimes will seem quite shocking to an organization, not always, but sometimes that we can trace back where it came from.

[00:03:35] Dr. Andy Hines: Well, that that recommendation came from these options we developed. These options came from these implications. The implications came from the scenario scenarios came from the signals, so that it, oh, okay. Yeah. We didn't just make this up. We have a foundation, or as we say, a chain of custody or chain of evidence that says, this is why we recommend it.

[00:03:54] Dr. Andy Hines: It's not a guarantee, but you know, it makes you feel a little more secure that if you're gonna make a serious change, again, you're gonna ask people to change something. You better have a good case for it, or else they ain't gonna do it. 

[00:04:06] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Well, you know what really attracted me was this. Idea of being able to take agency for things that you might feel like you might not have any control over.

[00:04:16] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Just like you're saying, we had no control over pandemic. Right? And there's all these other rapidly changing things that are happening in our world, like ai. We can't change that, but we can take action towards that and what that impact might be. 

[00:04:29] Dr. Andy Hines: To me, one of the most powerful things of, of this work. For individuals and for organizations is when you develop that sense of vision, that sense of direction.

[00:04:39] Dr. Andy Hines: Here's where I want to go, and it doesn't have to be a 10 point plan, but it says, we're going this way. And if you really believe that, oh my. Then all the uncertainty, all the chaos comes, and if you believe in your vision, it helps you navigate your way through it. Now, that doesn't mean it's easy. But you know what you're supposed to do.

[00:04:57] Dr. Andy Hines: Now, whether you do it or not is another question, but Oh. When and when you see that happen, it's just a, it's a, it's just beautiful to watch. Hmm. 

[00:05:05] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Yeah. You're not floundering 

[00:05:06] Dr. Andy Hines: around. You're like, I know what we need to do, boy, it's gonna be hard, but we gotta do it. 

[00:05:11] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Yeah. 

[00:05:11] Dr. Andy Hines: And it's just a wonderful thing. 

[00:05:13] Dr. Wendy Slusser: And in retrospect, since I've learned a little bit more about your focus on this area, my father grew up as on the farm, and I think that farmers are futurists just by nature of survival.

[00:05:28] Dr. Wendy Slusser: So I think that we, many of us might be practicing this without really realizing it in our. Listeners stay on. 'cause we're going to hear more about the details behind that comment. 

[00:05:38] Dr. Andy Hines: Well, absolutely. We say everybody's a futurist. We just happen to bring more structure and methodology to it. Right? We all think ahead, so we just do it a little more systematically.

[00:05:49] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Yeah. So thinking about that when you. You pivoted and really got inspired by this history of the futures class. Was there a major that you could take that would incorporate that? 

[00:06:03] Dr. Andy Hines: No, there wasn't as an undergrad, and it's pretty rare in undergrad. It's mostly a course here or there, but I did look for graduate programs and at the time, Houston, Hawaii were the two in the US and even though Hawaii did have its appeal, I ended up settling on the Houston program and went down there and it was absolutely.

[00:06:20] Dr. Andy Hines: Just a life changing, wonderful experience. And I said one of my goals was when I graduated from the program one of these days, I wanna come back 'cause I had such a good time and know here I am. 

[00:06:31] Dr. Wendy Slusser: That was one of your parts of your future thinking. 

[00:06:34] Dr. Andy Hines: Absolute. We had, so we had this wonderful course, it was called Life Work Planning at the time.

[00:06:39] Dr. Andy Hines: I went through and it basically, you kind of did your career planning as an individual, and I wouldn't say I was exactly on, but pretty darn close. It gave me a nice direction. And so we've incorporated that thinking into our students, into the curriculum. Say, why not think about your own future? Almost like a personal strategic plan, right?

[00:06:57] Dr. Andy Hines: It makes good life sense. 

[00:06:59] Dr. Wendy Slusser: So true. Actually, my dad, every Sunday with the five kids would ask us what we wanted to do when we grew up. So again, his farmer like experiences was translated to all of us. What is so cool about your trajectory really is that you then worked in think tanks like corporations and academia, and what patterns did you notice early on and how different organizations approach the future?

[00:07:27] Dr. Andy Hines: The common denominator absolutely is almost everyone that does the work really likes it. They say, this is interesting, this is great stuff, but this is the bot, right? How do we implement this? And that has that became or has become the kind of the mantra, the mission of my life is start trying to think about how do we take these wonderful ideas about where we're going and how, you know, we, I think we can do that property well, but then help people actually, if you will, incorporate it into their actual.

[00:07:58] Dr. Andy Hines: Do it. And that's hard. And that that's a common element across every place that I've worked or every sector that I've worked with. And so this summer actually, I taught an elective. We developed and taught an elective with another professor Amina McBride, at at uh, we had it, we called it Activating the Future and tried to bring together everything that we had collectively learned about, if you will, best practices.

[00:08:22] Dr. Andy Hines: And how do you implement this stuff? How do you implement future thinking? And it's understandably hard. It's not that people are incompetent or un unwilling, it's just a lot of it is, we have so many priorities and you can imagine if you have a choice between something that's more future and more present, more, what do you do?

[00:08:41] Dr. Andy Hines: You pick the present, right? It's understandable. So we have to be very crafty, if you will, or clever about how do we position this understanding that people have competing priorities. That's our job to figure, help figure, help our clients figure that out. 

[00:08:57] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Hmm. So you touched on this a little bit. It's almost like how do you embed foresight into the organizational culture?

[00:09:06] Dr. Wendy Slusser: You said it's hard, but what's your secret sauce? 

[00:09:10] Dr. Andy Hines: Well, now I, I, I really believe that one of the key things, so when I was working first as an outsider, and I kept getting that question, we love your work, but I said, I'm going inside. So I went into the, I spent 10 years inside corporations as a urist, the first at Kellogg's and Dow Chemical to kind of experience it for myself and go, all right, what are those?

[00:09:28] Dr. Andy Hines: I've learned very quickly now, I firmly believe that. Having a few organizations. Now, I'm not saying we need departments of foresight in big armies of internal futures, but we need a few and we need some folks. And what we are essentially are is like translators. You could be working with the outside, you can be doing it within and without.

[00:09:48] Dr. Andy Hines: But how do you kind of translate that message understanding like so much of it is understanding the culture that you're in, the organization that you're in, what's their particular situation and taking that foresight work and repurposing it, repackaging it in a useful way for that particular context. I mean, certainly there are some general principles, but there they're also, there's just a lot of particular circumstances that it's really hard as an outsider to just come into some place.

[00:10:15] Dr. Andy Hines: And kind of drop it in. Right. You need somebody in there who gets it and can take it to that next step. Mm-hmm. We call 'em the frogs, the inter, the frogs who could live in the sea of foresight, in the land of organizational politics. Right. The amphibians. And we need those frogs or amphibians to help, if you will, help translate that message.

[00:10:39] Dr. Wendy Slusser: It's interesting 'cause having been. Exposed to it through your work and others? You know, I've, I've been trying to market it within the context of an academic institution, and I find similar resistance, not resistance, but like competing priorities that keep sort of pushing it to the back burner. 

[00:10:58] Dr. Andy Hines: No doubt.

[00:10:59] Dr. Andy Hines: I mean, same here, right? I'll say being in the educational context. Yeah. Again, it's just everybody's and, and I think. I've been doing it for 35 years now, and I, I would say the last, I don't know, maybe the last three to five years, I've just noticed an extra, and maybe it's post pandemic, I don't know, but that extra sense of overwhelm, like people are just so, I get so many things to do, even though we've seen more interest in foresight.

[00:11:25] Dr. Andy Hines: It's just the plate is, the plates are so full. Right. And so I think we've been doing a lot more work around focusing, like saying, all right, we have lots of things we wanna do, but we've gotta be just really strategic about, out of all these great things, let's pick the ones that we, you know, if you will, that we think have, in terms of timing, makes sense in the, in the present moment, so to speak.

[00:11:47] Dr. Wendy Slusser: I agree with that approach because you can't take it on maybe to the larger extent of a big project, but focusing in on different subject areas and the fact that you organize this foundational method in the field appears to me to be something that. Makes it more accessible to people. And was that one of the motivations that you had when you launched that design for the future framework?

[00:12:17] Dr. Andy Hines: Absolutely. So now you know, my job now, and even when I was a, a consultant in an organization of futurist, a lot of it was teaching people, right? We're teaching people how to do. And learning. So how do you teach people? And I had observed from when I went through the program, we were taught a bunch of different methods, which was great and interesting, but then when they came and said, all right, do something, I'm like, ah, I don't know what to do.

[00:12:39] Dr. Andy Hines: There's too many choices. I, I said, you know what, if we can develop, if you will, a core set of basic principles, basic me methodological principles, that no matter what would give you that sort of starting point. And so it's like the most generic, the most, you know, that kind. And so developing that, we call it the framework, right?

[00:13:00] Dr. Andy Hines: That's the whole idea of the framing of a house. It's not the whole house, but it's the framework. And we used our colleagues, our networks, to kinda say, all right, what are those foundational pieces? And built a method around that. And in practice it's like, boom, that is it. I, I am. So you shouldn't be too sold in your own work, but it just in real experience, right?

[00:13:20] Dr. Andy Hines: Training new people and all that. Having that sort of foundation. And then as we say, then you can start getting, once you understand how to put things together, then you can start doing all the cool stuff, right? Mm-hmm. Don't do the cool stuff too soon before you understand what you're really doing, and I think that's one of our core messages.

[00:13:36] Dr. Andy Hines: Do your, if you will, eat your meat and potatoes before you have your dessert. That in essence, is the principle behind it. 

[00:13:43] Dr. Wendy Slusser: It almost sounds like learning to be a good baker or pastry chef, you get the foundational principles and then you can put your own twist to it. 

[00:13:52] Dr. Andy Hines: It maybe it takes some of the mystery out of the whole thing to say that we're not that different than everybody.

[00:13:57] Dr. Andy Hines: I mean, we teach, you know, we have a different subject matter, but when you get down to how do you teach things, how do you apply things, why shouldn't we learn from best prep? And I would say one of the things that's been most helpful to me is in, in my journey is I kind of. Had to learn about organizational development, industrial psych, like all these things about, well, other people have struggled with, how do you implement chain borrowing from all these other fields and trying to learn, all right, what can we pull from them to help us do better?

[00:14:26] Dr. Andy Hines: So we are unique, but we also have a lot of common challenges with other fields. 

[00:14:31] Dr. Wendy Slusser: You mentioned that you, did you, you organized this framework? Within the context of your position, your experience in the real world, and then going, I guess, I mean I would say academia is also the real world, but in, in a different world.

[00:14:48] Dr. Wendy Slusser: And some of your method evolved through student use and alumni feedback. Can you point to any of those sort of key moments that helped frame it even more so? 

[00:15:00] Dr. Andy Hines: We were working with a client on we, we called it the Trash Project, the Future of Trash, but the polite name was Sustainable Waste Management, and we had presented to the client a list of what we call the key drivers of change.

[00:15:13] Dr. Andy Hines: So in terms, when you look at the future of this topic, what are the major forces of change? We had a long list. It was about 16 things. The client comes back to us and says, it's just a list of stuff, and they seem like they're all different and we're confused. You are not helping us here. And one of the students says, Hey, what about this tool called The Futures Triangle?

[00:15:32] Dr. Andy Hines: Okay. All right. So we were aware of it and we resorted the drivers into these three, basically, into these three buckets and represented it to the client. And I go, oh, we got it. And it was just, that was that wonderful experience where again, we have that common core and then when somebody says, Hey, what if we try this, we run the experiment and see if it worked.

[00:15:56] Dr. Andy Hines: Now that doesn't always work, but a lot of times, and it, and it comes from students a lot of times, right? It's not always from the wise old professor, right? And we do keep that spirit of experimentation, right? And then we're always trying to learn and that was just, and now, so then we started using that tool on a more regular basis, and that's multiply that manyfold.

[00:16:16] Dr. Andy Hines: And you have, how does, how do things evolve and change? Mm-hmm. That there comes. 

[00:16:21] Dr. Wendy Slusser: That's something that I gather also is that you might consider these futures at one point, but then you're gonna keep revisiting them every year or however frequent you need to. It's not gonna be 

[00:16:34] Dr. Andy Hines: set in stone. We would love to have regular eyes on the future or always say monitoring the future, and I think that is one of the great benefits that an organizational futures could bring.

[00:16:45] Dr. Andy Hines: They can do that job. 'cause it's very tough when you work with a client on a project, they will tend to go back to their regular jobs that maybe not keep up the due diligence. That's one of the things that, you know, as a field we've been trying to wrestle with for a while. Just because you have those stories of the future, you have to actually have to walk to say, which way is it actually going?

[00:17:05] Dr. Andy Hines: So the degree that we can be more systematic about that I think will be more effective. But again, that is a challenge 'cause it there it is very tempting to say project's done and I got other things to do. So that's one of those areas that I think we could improve on as we go forward. 

[00:17:21] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Yeah, it's a constant changing world, and it's faster and faster as Yeah.

[00:17:28] Dr. Wendy Slusser: So you mentioned that some people might be resistant to foresight. In some of your writing, you said that you can do some stealth or viral strategies for introducing foresight in a resistant culture. What would you recommend as some strategies that would work?

[00:17:44] Dr. Andy Hines: So the, the stealth approach is basically saying we're going to use the tools of foresight, but we're not necessarily gonna call them tools of foresight.

[00:17:53] Dr. Andy Hines: When I was starting out 30 years ago, a a lot of times if you said future to someone, up comes the image of Mistress Cleal or some kind of a fortune teller, right? So we would actually, I, when I was hired at one of my internal cases, I said, should I call myself a futurist? And he was like, well, I don't know.

[00:18:10] Dr. Andy Hines: Let's not. So I was called an ideation leader, which was, I think, sufficiently vague that no one really knew what I was supposed to do. And then I went about. Doing exactly what I was gonna do as a futurist, but we didn't say futurist tools. We didn't say forth. We just used them. And after a while, people started going, Hey, you're a futurist, aren't you?

[00:18:30] Dr. Andy Hines: But we know who you're. But it was all in good fun because the tools will work. And that's the, the proof's gotta be in the pudding, right? You could have, unless this stuff works, nobody's gonna care anyway. But it, it was useful. So then, then that sort of paved the way to, to be able to talk about it out loud.

[00:18:47] Dr. Andy Hines: So I think that's the idea of when in doubt, just use the tools, get the results, and then we can get the credit later, maybe, so to speak. 

[00:18:56] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Yeah. As in a way that's jump starting, something that. Is about change. Identifying that it is a change

[00:19:03] Dr. Andy Hines: and, and I, another thing that I've learned along those lines very much in that spirit is, I always say, rather than introduce foresight with a big training program and doing a bunch, first thing is get a small group, do a project, get some results, show people so that when you do the training, you say, Hey, we did, here's what we did over here.

[00:19:23] Dr. Andy Hines: And actually use the work as a way to entice and excite people about it. 'cause you know, we've all got training and all these new things all the time and you kind of go, I don't really understand what this is. It might be cool, but I don't really know. I'd say let's build some excitement for it. So people are actually asking, Hey, what, how do I do that foresight stuff?

[00:19:41] Dr. Andy Hines: Try to build the demand that way. So I think that we kind of go a little bit backwards there and I, I think that that's a nice way to go for. For, again, nobody really knows what it is anyway, so you gotta show 'em. Here's what you got. Use it. 

[00:19:55] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Yeah. I like that strategy. When you worked with companies like Dow and Kellogg's, what was one of the foresight projects that surprised you and how it unfolded or in how it was received?

[00:20:08] Dr. Andy Hines: I'll mention one at Kellogg since it was my favorite one and it was on the future of natural foods. Now this is 1997. You gotta remember natural foods in, or think about 1997, natural foods were like, remember grape nuts? And like it was bad. It was mush pasted together. M. But you could see all the trends coming towards healthy, natural, didn't want all these long chemical names and this, so you could see the, and we said, well, we should be able to figure out the taste part.

[00:20:37] Dr. Andy Hines: We're pretty good at that. If we put those things together, this looks like a nice opportunity for us. And we did a really nice project and as that as happens, the sponsor got another job and it was about to fizzle and, and we said, you know what? We love this project so much. We, we look. Figuratively wondering and knocked on doors around the organization until we finally and people knew No.

[00:20:59] Dr. Andy Hines: Kind of politely, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And it's like, oh my God. It, it seemed like we're at the, practically the last door. And so it says, yeah, come on in. And then presented it to some leadership the next day. And then they, they said, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna do this. Thank you very much, and we appreciate your help.

[00:21:16] Dr. Andy Hines: And we were out of the loop. Now what's interesting about that is all the work we did, and we say this as futurists, that sometimes you're often, you're not gonna get any credit for it because when it actually happens years later, nobody remembers where it came from. So you can't be in this for the credit, you can't be in it for the glory.

[00:21:35] Dr. Andy Hines: You gotta be in it for the kind of the sanctity of the ideas. And so that's one of the, the, the lessons I learned is you don't, in a sense, you want somebody else to say, Hey, this is mine now. Even though it may hurt a little bit, if they own it, your odds of success are so much better. So that, that was when I learned that key lesson early on, 

[00:21:53] Dr. Wendy Slusser: I've noticed that as a leader, that's a very important quality, is not to take credit and bring it to life in that way.

[00:22:03] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Yeah. Yeah. So with your teaching this. The future. What do you see are the core skills or mindsets that students need to thrive as professional futurists today? 

[00:22:17] Dr. Andy Hines: There's certainly a lot of them, but I, I'm gonna pick one That's always been my favorite and when I, I've hired, I used to hire a lot of people. I still, I guess, hire students, but it's not, it's a little bit different.

[00:22:28] Dr. Andy Hines: When I would hire people, I would ask them basically a key question around, tell me something about the future of ai. Do they do their spiel? And I say, oh, I would be listening and think of something that, how it could turn out differently than what they said. I said, what if it goes this way instead? And if they correct me and say, you don't understand, it's gonna go this way.

[00:22:49] Dr. Andy Hines: I'd say, thank you very much. And you go into the the no pile. And if they listened to me and they said, huh, I hadn't thought of that. But that's interesting. They go into the next pile. Right? And that openness like that we say being not too sure. So one of the key and, and it's in a world, we're often told to be certain and pretend, and all this stuff is a futurist, it's actually a really great asset to say, I have these beliefs, I have these understanding, but I'm open to.

[00:23:18] Dr. Andy Hines: Some other ideas and other interpretations and alternative scenarios. It's foundational to what we do. And so that to me is one of those key characteristics when you see that you go, okay, this one's this. He or she is gonna be okay. 'cause they're willing to challenge their own assumptions and that's a tricky thing.

[00:23:39] Dr. Wendy Slusser: I like that it also shows some curiosity, which I find to pursue knowledge. Right. 

[00:23:46] Dr. Andy Hines: And what's interesting about the AI thing, right? That example is that person may have been right. You know what I mean? They may well have been correct, but if they aren't willing to challenge their own view, then you know they're not gonna be very good at this work.

[00:23:59] Dr. Andy Hines: That's really the difference there, right? It's not necessarily about IQ points, it's that ability to embrace challenge and embrace alternative ways of thinking. 

[00:24:10] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Bringing it back to the students again. You've worked with students across generations, so what shifts have you noticed in how younger cohorts like millennials or Gen Zs, think about the future?

[00:24:23] Dr. Andy Hines: This just came up last week and I would say, I mentioned that we just designed this new course for the, the summer on the activating the future, and instead of textbooks. We created, it was either the students either did a film review, a podcast review, or a video. Like we used all alternative media and afterwards we just got the feedback and everyone, oh, this was so great.

[00:24:47] Dr. Andy Hines: So that that shift, I'm a book guy and it kind of pains me a little bit that shift to the different media and just different ways of taking in information that is. That is a huge shift because it's sort of gradually you don't notice it. But when I think about my experience 35 years ago versus how we do it today, it is quite a bit different.

[00:25:08] Dr. Andy Hines: And whether one or the other, it's really just a matter of preference. Right. I like books, they like this. What's the difference, right? 

[00:25:14] Dr. Wendy Slusser: That's right. And when came about it was revolutionary as well, so Ah, yeah, it was kind of fun. In your youth happiness research, you found that young people were surprisingly practical about happiness.

[00:25:28] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Any other insights into that surprise? 

[00:25:31] Dr. Andy Hines: Sure. So that was back in the heyday of MTV when people were the kids. Then were trying to get onto the MTV Real Life show, like that was the thing. And they were really big to their credit, they were looking ahead, right? So we said the easy assumption would be, well, kids just want to be celebrities and they're lazy and you know, they just want fame and fortune, blah, blah, blah.

[00:25:51] Dr. Andy Hines: But then when you really talk to them, they would say, yeah, we do wanna get on the show, but we're gonna go to school and get a job. Because we know that they knew it. They knew they were playing a game, they weren't. Now, there's probably a few people that were fooled by it, but most of 'em knew it's a game you might get on, you might.

[00:26:07] Dr. Andy Hines: So I thought, ah, interesting. Don't judge a book by its cover. That was what we learned back then, and as I, I hadn't, I haven't really studied it. I do sense there's still that pragmatic sense, but I think it's showing up in a little different fashion today. I think we sense a, a bit of, i, I don't know if it's dis pragmatism, but also a little bit of disillusionment when looking at the future of.

[00:26:30] Dr. Andy Hines: Just the future, but like the future of work and 'cause a lot of our, not all of 'em, but a lot of our students are looking into their next career and they're saying, well, who, what could happen to my parents? They're working like crazy and they can get fired at will. And in this sense that, wow, this is, I don't feel, I don't, I don't feel a lot of trust in what I'm moving into.

[00:26:50] Dr. Andy Hines: So the pragmatism is, I am not gonna get over invested in that. And I am going to, if you will keep my, if you will, work life balance more intact because I, I'm not going all in and then getting the rug pulled off from under me. So there's still that pragmatism, uh, a sort of cautiousness about the world of, of work that I'm moving into, if that makes sense.

[00:27:13] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Mm-hmm. When Dr. Casey chose wood was. Retiring last December. He's the one who told me after I asked the question, how should we prepare the next generation for their future as leaders and family, family members and so forth. And he said they need to be prepared for managing change. And he also said for me to look.

[00:27:39] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Into this strategic foresight strategy, and that's what brought me on the My Journey. And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that question that I posed to him. How do you prepare the next generation of leaders and people who will have families and community members in a university setting? 

[00:28:03] Dr. Andy Hines: So kind of ties back to that, that favorite course that I mentioned about life work planning and how we've integrated those principles into the curriculum.

[00:28:12] Dr. Andy Hines: We do say, look, the first half of your experience, just have fun. Just demose yourself. Don't make any decision yet, right? But in the second half, start to think about, all right, what am I gonna do with this? 'cause you don't wanna necessarily decide too soon, but get a feel for. Who am I? Where do I, how do I find my, you know, how do I situate myself in this field?

[00:28:31] Dr. Andy Hines: And then think about what you're gonna do with it. I have students work on projects and get practical experience. So I think the idea is to eat our own cooking. If we say that organizations ought a plan for the future, associate individuals, and to your point, take responsibility for yourself. You've gotta do it now, we'll help you, but it really is up to you as an individual to, if you will, take control of your future, so to speak.

[00:28:54] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Right. So you integrating, and you mentioned it earlier in this conversation, about how you can integrate this approach to your own life. Mm-hmm. And prepare for what we already know, which are signals that things are changing quickly. Yes. 

[00:29:11] Dr. Andy Hines: Yeah. And, and in fairness, I mean, I, that's easier said than done, right?

[00:29:15] Dr. Andy Hines: I mean, that is, and, and we will try to break it down and say, if you wanna become a speaker as an example, you've gotta, you've gotta go speak in the church basement. You've gotta do all that hard work so we don't sugar coat it and say there's some magic thing. But if you believe in something, right? How do we chart out a series a set of steps to get you into that direction?

[00:29:34] Dr. Andy Hines: And, and I think that's a really useful thing that we can do for students. If I think about what's changed, we're almost like. More like mentors or coaches these days, the teachers sometimes less emphasis on the lecture and all that kind of stuff. 

[00:29:46] Dr. Wendy Slusser: That's right. Well, there's a dean of undergraduate education at University of Washington UDub, who has been doing future work, and she posed a question to her committee of.

[00:30:04] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Faculty who? Faculty, the small committee who were doing the future work. What do you remember the most that was impactful for you during your undergraduate or graduate education? And not surprising. Everyone pointed to something that was outside of the classroom and it turns out it was mostly all these high impact activities that have been identified by the university.

[00:30:28] Dr. Wendy Slusser: A lot of leaders in university education, the capstones and the. Going abroad and learning another language and seeing culture or having a mentor, that experience and all these sort of more independent, uh, driven or community driven, like being out and doing service, learning, that kind of thing. So, goes along with what you're saying.

[00:30:52] Dr. Wendy Slusser: I'm thinking with your two decades of work in academia, what do you think the future of education itself looks like? 

[00:31:00] Dr. Andy Hines: We did actually do, uh, we've done a couple pieces related to that for, for actually other universities. That's seems interesting to me. If I had to boil down one point there, it's what I'd love to see in the, is this sort of a rere renewed depreciation for.

[00:31:18] Dr. Andy Hines: Small, boutique, novel, creative things. I mean, there's so much pressure to increase your numbers. You understand the pressure that the universities are under to deliver the numbers, so to speak, and that's made it hard for the smaller, boutiquey kinds of programs. All kinds of, not just ours, but all kinds of them to survive in this.

[00:31:39] Dr. Andy Hines: This in that kind of context. And it's almost seen as a liability as opposed to an asset. And I can imagine a future, an alternative future where difference is actually celebrated, right? Oh, we've got this unique thing and that's a good thing, right? And I think that's, that's a shift I'd really, I think would be so wonderful.

[00:31:59] Dr. Andy Hines: 'cause so many small things end up getting caught just because they is the imperatives, right? Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:05] Dr. Wendy Slusser: So along those lines then, how should we prepare students for the future that don't ex yet exist? 

[00:32:12] Dr. Andy Hines: We actually, my, so my predecessor, when he re retired, he's, he put together a foundation called Teach the Future, and he's been bringing that to basically, if you were a K through 12 person and you wanted to bring futures thinking in, here's a curriculum for how to do it.

[00:32:27] Dr. Andy Hines: So to me, that's. The long-term game, and we should be good at the long-term game since we're futurists, is we gotta get it into there earlier so that it doesn't take that serendipitous moment when you're 20, 30, 50, 60 when you go there it is. Can we get there? Uh, can we get there earlier? And one of our faculty actually teaches her day job is in teaching kids like, uh, in, uh, K through six, like that younger.

[00:32:52] Dr. Andy Hines: And she's, when she brings in very simple future thinking, she says they love it. They're the natural futures thinkers. They go, they love the imagination and stuff. So I think that spirit is there and how do we, if you will, how do we get that, get that message to them earlier? I think that would be the, the thing that we're looking to do.

[00:33:11] Dr. Wendy Slusser: So start early 

[00:33:12] Dr. Andy Hines: again, basic principle, not just futurist, but with anything. That's right. Okay. And you started earlier. 

[00:33:17] Dr. Wendy Slusser: That's music to my ears. As a pediatrician, I, one of the many reasons I chose pediatrics is that you're, you can really make impacts on people's life. 

[00:33:27] Dr. Andy Hines: One of the things we did this, so we have an annual, we have our, we call it our spring gathering, our family reunion every spring.

[00:33:33] Dr. Andy Hines: We had our 50th year anniversary this year, so it was a big one, but one of the rooms we had, she brought in her student projects and posted them on the wall and people just, it was just. Like we had a gas with it because you could just see that just unbridled enthusiasm, but it was just, it was a wonderful thing.

[00:33:51] Dr. Andy Hines: I can see how that would really, that could really happen if we decided to do it. 

[00:33:56] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Really like that. There's some something that you're working on called Post Capitalists Imaginaries, which really explores what might come next. What inspired you to take on this question? What does it mean? What is the question that you're.

[00:34:12] Dr. Andy Hines: Sure. So what does the future look like after capitalism? So the basic idea is our capitalist system's been around for several centuries, and one might say it's done its job, but as you think about the emerging future, maybe the alignment isn't so good anymore. So it's time to start thinking about what might be next.

[00:34:32] Dr. Andy Hines: What are those alternatives? And I came to this because I think it was the second book I read about the future, way back to when I took that history of the Future class was called The Image of the Future. And the author in there basically says, one of the hallmarks of past successful civilizations with they had a common guiding image of the future.

[00:34:53] Dr. Andy Hines: And he was saying one of the problems of today is we don't have such a thing. And that stuck with me. And I always said one of these days, right? And now that I'm closer to the end, in the beginning I said, I'm gonna do this. And I started about 10, 12 years ago. Look at what would be a and, and. There again, it's a student that a student came and basically back in 2012 was really fired up about what's next after capitalism.

[00:35:18] Dr. Andy Hines: And we did a meeting, a spring meeting on it, and then I said, whoa, this is interesting, isn't it? And for since 2012, I started gathering and researching and finally it became the book. So the idea there was basically say, you know what, what? Where do we want to go? What's next? You've probably heard the quip that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, right?

[00:35:41] Dr. Andy Hines: It's so embedded that it's hard to imagine that we might go to something different. So what I tried to bring to that is what might it look like? And if I have a 62nd on what those images are there. So there's one image's called the Circular Commons, and it's the environmentally driven future, if you will.

[00:35:59] Dr. Andy Hines: The second we call it the Non-Workers Paradise about the post-work future. And the third we call tech led abundance, and it's about the tech-driven future and. I'm hoping having put these images together from available work that is already out there, these ideas are not new. They're out there. There's something for everybody there.

[00:36:18] Dr. Andy Hines: You're more environmentalist. You might like the circular commons one better, but the idea is that there are hopeful images out there, and it's time to start thinking about where do we want to go? What is our sense of direction as a society? 

[00:36:31] Dr. Wendy Slusser: That actually, in a way is what? Might be a way for us to live in these uncertain times, what you just described, because you're providing futures for many different people and where they could head and.

[00:36:48] Dr. Wendy Slusser: In a world that feels increasingly chaotic, how can foresight help people live with some clarity and intention? 

[00:36:55] Dr. Andy Hines: It really, it just ties together the threads that I think we've been talking about. When you have that sense of, here's where I wanna go. Now, even myself, I have put together these visions and I like all of them, and I, and I sense maybe my target is somewhere in the middle of that.

[00:37:10] Dr. Andy Hines: But it's that as I start to talk to other people who are thinking about these things, and we have these conversations, you have this beautiful enthusiasm that emerges when you say, all right, I'm working towards something. I'm moving in this direction, and there's just power in that movement. And I think that is what gives us that feeling of purpose, right?

[00:37:30] Dr. Andy Hines: If we have a sense of the change we're making or where we're going, it gives us the energy to get up and go. So I think, and when you feel that passion, right, that, that's when you know, aha, I'm on it. I got it. 'cause I have to do this right? Because it, it just feels right. 

[00:37:47] Dr. Wendy Slusser: You've just said something that is a theme in our work, which is eudaimonia living a life of meaning and purpose.

[00:37:56] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Is exactly what you described there. 

[00:37:58] Dr. Andy Hines: Yeah, I came across that concept in the research. I am totally online aligned with that. Love it. 

[00:38:04] Dr. Wendy Slusser: We have people nominate other people on campus to receive that award, and they aren't necessarily famous people, students, staff, faculty, community members. And we then honor a more maybe well-known person just to get the word out about Udai.

[00:38:21] Dr. Wendy Slusser: We honor Quincy Jones number of years ago. Yeah. 

[00:38:26] Dr. Andy Hines: Well, when you see someone that has it, it's just a, it's great to behold, isn't it? 

[00:38:30] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Sure is. Anyone can have it, right? 

[00:38:33] Dr. Andy Hines: Anyone can have it. You see, oh, they got it going on. 

[00:38:36] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Exactly. And as someone who spends so much time thinking about uncertainty, what practices help you stay grounded?

[00:38:45] Dr. Wendy Slusser: I 

[00:38:46] Dr. Andy Hines: think it's really important in the world of lofty big visions and ideas to get out and pull the weeds, cut the grass, chop the wood. I don't know, I don't really chop wood 'cause I'm in Houston, but ride the bike and just get to me. Just get grounded. In that sort of the real basics of daily life and not get out from behind the screen and connect with nature, connect with real life.

[00:39:09] Dr. Andy Hines: So I do like to balance those two things. Mm-hmm. And I feel it does make you like, you feel like a more complete person. 

[00:39:17] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Yeah, I love that we support biophilia, ah, everything living terrific. And we'll definitely be sharing all your resources that you have on your website and books and so forth so people can read more if they're interested.

[00:39:38] Dr. Wendy Slusser: So that will be a real treat for many people I think. Well, thank you very much. And so just to end this, what does it mean for you to live well, 

[00:39:49] Dr. Andy Hines: live with that sense of purpose, and it doesn't have to be high achievement. It doesn't have to be striving to be the best or any, it's just like I know. I know where I want to go.

[00:40:02] Dr. Andy Hines: I'm comfortable with where I'm and I, and I'm just going after it. Right. So to speak. And, and it could be, it could be that my, my purpose is to just be in harmony with my surroundings and just live. I could be at, and one of the, one of the things that struck me is I remember seeing a talk by a, a mon. A Buddhist monk many years ago, and he talked about just the pleasure of sweeping the walkway and just being whatever you're doing, just being in that place and in that moment.

[00:40:29] Dr. Andy Hines: And I just thought, it doesn't have to be, I don't have to change the world with my upper capitalism, but. Going about my business, am I, do I feel like I'm living in that moment and I'm appreciating that moment. So I think that's probably, probably not so elegantly said, but something along those lines.

[00:40:45] Dr. Andy Hines: Like I have that sense of purpose, whatever it is, and it's just, it permeates my whole being. 

[00:40:52] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Thank you so much. That's a great way to end this, this conversation of the future, the huge grant. Future to bring it down to a basic chore of sweeping the floor. That's in my future as well. 

[00:41:07] Dr. Andy Hines: Yeah, there we go. So 

[00:41:08] Dr. Wendy Slusser: thank you so much.

[00:41:10] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Really great Andy, to have spent this hour with you and I really admire all the work you do and I look forward to learning more. Well, 

[00:41:18] Dr. Andy Hines: thank you so much for having me. It was great fun.

[00:41:26] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Thank you for joining us for this insightful conversation with Dr. Andy Hines. His reflections on the importance of foresight, the challenges of implementing future thinking and organizations, and the need for a sense of purpose in navigating uncertainty have been truly enlightening. We hope you found this discussion as inspiring as we did.

[00:41:48] Dr. Wendy Slusser: Remember, living well means being prepared for the future and finding meaning in our journey. Until next time, take care. Stay curious and live well.