In this episode of The 2pt5 innovator podcast my guest is Marree Conway, a foresight and futures advisor and researcher from Australia.
We are talking about her approach to foresight and how to transfer a futures mindset and knowledge about methods and tools for foresight processes.
About ..
Dr. Maree Conway was first introduced to foresight in 1999. She has a background in the university field and has started University Futures in 2006. Following some iterations she developed her foresight business including books & courses.
“If the work, if the outputs of the scenario processes were to actually be used and be valuable in the organisation, if the thinking didn’t change, then the action wouldn’t change.“
Maree Conway
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Connect & find out more
- Website
- Researchgate
Mentioned in the episode & additional
- Maree’s Foresight courses
- Futures Conversation Framework
- Richard Slaughter’s blog
- Association of Professional Futurists
- World Future Studies Federation
- Maree’s Book
And now what?
Check out Maree’s courses, they offer a great introduction to foresight.
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Transcript
This manual transcript was created by podcasttranscribe.com
Klaus Reichert: My guest today is Maree Conway, a Foresight and Futures advisor and researcher from Australia.
Maree Conway: If the work, if the outputs of the scenario process were to actually be used in the value of the organization, if the thinking didn’t change, then the action wouldn’t change. That’s what I’m trying to achieve with the courses; it’s an accessible, easy-to-interact-with set of lessons that introduce people to this concept of foresight.
Klaus Reichert: Welcome to The 2pt.5 – Conversations Connecting Innovators. My name is Klaus. I’m an innovation coach in Baden-Württemberg, in the southwest of Germany. Innovators and creators from around the globe help each other by sharing highs and lows, the motivation and creative passions, as well as their favourite methods, tools and ideas. The name of the podcast comes from the 2.5% innovators from Rogers Diffusion of Innovations theory. Find more details, all the episodes and transcripts at the2pt5.net. Enjoy the show.
Klaus: Hello, Dr Conway. Hello, Maree. Welcome to the podcast.
Maree: Thank you. Thank you. It’s great to be here.
Klaus: It is morning here in Germany. Good afternoon to Australia. These different time zones always crack me up. I know these realities that we have in parallel, these different realities that we have in parallel with conversations across time zones is normal but it still amazes me. Your evening is starting now. My morning is closing right now. How was your day?
Maree: [laughs] Sorry. I just… What did I do today?
Klaus: [laughs] What did you do today?
Maree: Yeah, I’m trying to design another course. So I was starting work on that today, and, uh, that’s been…
Klaus: And that is one of the points I wanted to talk to you. Today, in our conversation, I wanted to look into your journey, building your methods and your business, which we will be talking about soon, and get a glimpse into starting with foresight methods, which you offer, for example, these courses you just talked about. Marie, you are a fellow Ph.D…
Maree: Yes. Just. [laughs]
Klaus: …and… [laughs] Just, yes. And from my own experience, I can say it’s a very long process, it can be very hard at times, but it’s also a very rewarding thing when you start with an idea or a concept or… and then work on that and get clarity to that idea and develop methods and stuff like that. So, much of what we will be talking about is based on your dissertation. And before we get into that, what did you do before you started your Ph.D.? What was the initial thing to start that?
Maree: I worked -long time ago- in universities or ended up as a planning director, in… here, in Melbourne. And while I was doing that, I was… I did my master’s in educational administration. Essentially, I’d only ever worked in universities until that point. So I was very interested, at that time, in the relationship between academics and managing. And I started a Ph.D. then, on that topic, but for a number of reasons, I didn’t continue. So I just started then to… Yeah, that was around the same time I was beginning to use foresight for the first time in my work in those universities. So I started to do that, and then I left the university sector to set up my business, and I did that in 2007, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since, although it’s gone through 3 of… well, it’s just kept changing all the time. It’s never been a.. like a linear business. It’s, you know, let’s go off here and explore that… I might do that, and I’ll do that work or won’t do that work so… But through all that, all that business building, I wanted to finish my Ph.D. on the university, because I care about its future. And so when I found futures, I had a totally different context for my Ph.D. that made me find a way to go back and do it. And as part of that Ph.D., I developed what I call the Futures Conversation Framework and then post-Ph.D., my business has taken another turn, and I’m focusing now on how we think and talk about the future, as opposed to the methods and the processes and the tools we use to actually use future thinking in practice. So I kind of… reborn my business, rebirthed my business [laughs] in a new direction, But the PhD gave me the opportunity to kind of bring together all those things that I’d been working with and learning as I was, since 2007, and they all informed this Futures Conversations Framework.
Klaus: It started from a real problem, real questions you had at your work? You were looking for answers, let’s put it that way? Or better questions possibly? And from there you developed what you’re using today and what you are also working on, working with, today. That’s a long process, I understand, and sometimes good things take a long time and other things can take weird changes over time. I experienced that myself. When I did my Ph.D., I had several changes in the objective of the work. And I’m glad that there were these changes.
Maree: Yes. Yeah. Same happened to me.
Klaus: But now you have like a theoretical basis, you have a lot of work done in your Ph.D., you have sort of something to base your business on. And you said that universities is your thing, Futures is your thing, and you’re combining that in a way, also? I was wondering, is there anything else that is sort of driving you to think about the future, or futures, possible futures?
Maree: When I was at Swinburne University, trying to introduce foresight into the university’s planning system, I decided that I would order a course in foresight. That was because we were teaching foresight then, as well, at the university. And I thought, “Well, if I have to do this in practice, I should go learn what it’s all about.” So I said, “I would just do the first module in that course” and I sat in that… well, it was online, and by the end of that year, I was a different person [laughs]. I… at the end of the year we had to say what was the one thing we would take away from the course, and I immediately said -which is unusual for me, because I think before I speak, usually- but I said, “the thing that I’m walking away with is the notion, well, the concept, that we are all responsible for future generations in the present.” And that was kind of the trigger for me to begin thinking about what was this “futures” thing, and, as Richard Slaughter said -because he was running the course at the time- when you’re studying foresight, you have to work out what part of the global conversation you’re going to add to, where do you fit in the global conversation, and what new things will you bring to that conversation. So when I left and I started my own business, that’s what I… I always had those two things going around in my head. So it’s how can we think about futures in ways that allow us to create better futures by changing how we act in the present and at the same time ensuring that we do no harm to future generations, that the future is always in our conversations today, and that we always take future impact into account when we’re making decisions, And that’s taken different forms over the years, but I’ve come right back there [laughs] after, you know, after doing kind of what I call conventional consulting work: speaking and workshops and things like that. It’s kind of come right back to this focus on the quality and depth of our conversations about futures in all forms that are the core of how we begin to create new perspectives in the present that help us act in new ways to create new features.
Klaus: You are focusing very much on these conversations. You have like a concept of four conversations that your framework includes. Is a conversation always the start of a future? Or are there other starts also?
Maree: Well, I think the futures are only made real when you articulate them in some way. So, you know, when you speak about them or you draw them or you create Lego towns and cities [laughter] and creations, as you do sometimes, or you do a game or… you know, until you actually create something that stays up here in your head. So I think futures is inherently collaborative. But, as I talk about in the conversations work, that it starts with an individual recognising that the way they think about the future needs to shift, needs to expand and deepen and make it conscious. So that’s the start of somebody recognising that there is a new way to think about futures. But ultimately futures are created by people having conversations of some sort, some form. It doesn’t have to be verbal, but, you know, some form of interaction, an articulation of images.
Klaus: You have just talked about global conversations. Is that a point of view that might… that came from you being Australian and being, in my perception, so far away from everybody else?
Maree: [laughs] Yeah, possibly. [laughs] There’s quite… I mean, there’s quite a few people, you know, in Australia who used these approaches. When I first started working in the field, I joined the Association of Professional Futures and I joined the World Future Studies Federation. And I thought, “If I’m going to do this, then I need to be involved in the field as well,” that I’m not going to be able to have an impact of any sort unless I’m involved actively in the field. So that’s what I did, and that’s how… I mean, it’s a global community, and I think if you’re serious about this work and doing it effectively and learning from people who have gone before, which is the other thing, you have to be involved in this global conversation that goes on between futures people but also the global conversation about how to do futures work and how to demonstrate the value and the need for this kind of thinking and practice. In today’s world in particular.
Klaus: And learn from each other, also, on the way.
Maree: Absolutely. That’s critical, I learned so much… I’m still learning from these people. Even though, you know I can’t be in the same room as them, you know, the new search, and the online forums and things, and virtual conferences. You’re still learning from them.
Klaus: Yeah. So it’s good that we have Zoom and other things to work together. I think we have to define foresight for a moment, at least, because there might be a lot of people that don’t know what it is. What is your idea, your definition of foresight, of your work?
Maree: I used to just say it was a way of thinking about the future to inform decision making in the present, which it is. But now I focus much more on differentiating foresight as a cognitive capacity. So it’s a mental capacity that we all have, it’s a neurological capacity that we all have, that allows us to imagine ourselves in possible futures. And I differentiate the cognitive capacity that is foresight from how we use that capacity and apply it. So when people talk about foresight as being the use of trends and developing scenarios, that’s actually the application of our foresight capacities. It might be a fine, you know, point to make, but I think that’s part of it. The problem that we have in the terminology we feel that just explodes every time someone new comes into the field. Everyone makes up their own definitions of foresight. But fundamentally, foresight is a neurological capacity that we all have. It’s a cognitive process first, how we think about the future, and our brains allow us to expand that thinking if we’re aware of our foresight capacities. So for me, at the moment, that’s the most critical thing. If I can contribute one thing to the conversation, it would continue the work of other people around how can we surface and apply our foresight capacities in practice. So it’s more about that, than exactly what we do, you know, how we do it. It’s more about how we think about it before we do it. It’s the pre-step. So for me, foresight is a cognitive capacity that helps us imagine possible futures.
Klaus: Is that what you’re also working on, when you design a course, that you, sort of, prepare the field for foresight processes basically and make it possible so that everybody basically can use foresight in their lives, not just in their working lives?
Maree: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that’s… that was one of the aims… well, it is the aim. The first course is called the Basics of Foresight and it is really an introductory overview of how we can find our foresight capacity and then how we can begin to use it in practice. But I think that’s when people… it’s very easy to run a foresight process with… when you… scenarios, for example. There’s a fairly defined process for that, so it’s quite easy in a workshop situation to run that process and get outcomes. But what usually happens, if you haven’t integrated into your process design this need for people to have the mind shift, which is what Pierrette talked about when he was designing all these processes at Shell, was that there had to be a mindset, a mindset shift. [laughs] If the work, if the outputs of the scenario process were to actually be used and be valuable in the organisation. If the thinking didn’t change, then the action wouldn’t change. And so that’s what I’m trying to achieve with the courses, it’s an accessible, easy-to-interact-with set of lessons that introduce people to this concept of foresight and what it means, why it matters, how they can start to develop it. And then the second part of the course is now, once you become conscious of your foresight capacity, this is how you can begin to use it in your work and in your life.
Klaus: I like that a lot, because what you also do is you bring people some questions, tools and vocabulary for their individual use. But also, if you use the whole… if you take the course as a team, you have… you speak the same language afterwards, you have the same ideas you can discuss later on for your foresight work.
Maree: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And ultimately, once I have it, um… nest enough [laughs] and once I’ve added more videos -because then I want more videos- and kind of, you know, packaged it better, I guess, then I think that… yeah, one of the things on my list is to explore how to get to offer it as… for cohorts, so that… At the moment it’s online, it’s self-paced, independent study, but it also fits into that kind of cohort framework as well. We’re a group of people, we do it together and have the same language and have the same understanding of the concepts.
Klaus: Or have team trainings at the same time and stuff.
Klaus: Let’s talk about your business. You have worked in universities. You have had your own business. You worked on your Ph.D. All these things take time. It’s not very easy all the time. You sort of change the objective of your business after your Ph.D. And things get very messy over time when you do changes, when you start something new. Things are not clear all the time. Even if you have a good idea where you want to go to, there’s things on the way that… say road bumps, let’s put it that way. From my understanding is that you are a person that is very… that values value, that takes things seriously, also. How do you cope with these roadblocks on the way, with these bumps that sort of… maybe bring you new perspectives but also hinder you getting forward, when you start your business.
Maree: I do like to plan, so before I start anything, I usually think about it quite a bit. And I think I’ve got it organised. [laughter] But I think with my early business, I think I was still developing my foresight, my own foresight capacity and my own understanding of myself, as well as somebody who was running a business, and where I could add the most value. So from this conventional consultancy, the project, I veered away from public speaking because I really don’t like that. It’s not my not my comfort zone. [laughs] But that’s fine, that’s okay. And so I moved more into just workshops and things like that, and I wrote my first book. I thought I’d always wanted to write a book, and I thought, “Well, you know, I’ve got enough material now. I know enough [laughs] at the level that… you know, I know what I’m talking about. And so I wrote my first book, which was great. That’s what I really wanted to do. And not long after that -I was doing my Ph.D, at the same time that I wrote my book- so by the time I finished my book, my Ph.D. took over. And that process of doing that, the whole time I was doing my Ph.D., especially the last couple of years, I kept thinking, “I really don’t want to go back to workshops anymore. [laughs] I really… I really want to write again because I really like writing.” And strangely enough, Ph.D. reminded me how much I like writing. But it also changed my thinking about where I could have that impact, you know, where my contribution could be. And that was really about continuing to share my knowledge, because I’d always done that from the time I set my business up in 2007, one of the things I wrote down was that I would share my knowledge. I wouldn’t keep it to myself. And I wouldn’t position myself as one of the gurus of the field, or, you know, I wouldn’t aim to be this kind of… I can’t think of the right words… like this packaged personality [laughs] that you sometimes get. I didn’t want to be a star. I wanted to be somebody who helped others to learn about this stuff, to avoid them going through the process that I went through being thrown in the deep end. And so by the time I got to my end of my PhD, I had a pretty clear idea that I didn’t want to do workshops anymore. I wanted to write. I wanted to share my knowledge in new ways. And an online course seemed to be possibly the best way to do that for me. Yeah, if I wasn’t going to go out and talk about it -well, I can’t go out and talk about it in person at the moment- you know, I do webinars sometimes, but… yeah, I thought “Okay, the courses of what I’ll do and at the same time, I’ll start working on making the Foresight Conversations, the Futures Conversations Framework more practical because they connect, the courses and the framework connect. That’s how I’ll get the word out about it.
Klaus: Yes, and you’re also offering lots of stuff for free. And it’s not just stuff. It’s things that have lots of value, even offering some of that under the Creative Commons licence, which I like a lot. And when I look at your work, I mean, there’s books, there’s these courses, there’s conversations that you offer online which help you to develop your business, but which also help others to sort of progress. I think this is a very nice, very good mixture getting along and sort of have win-win situations that are real.
Maree: Mm.
Klaus: I like that helping aspect and that pragmatic aspect which I try to get into my work also, because there’s so much… Many people just need the… not just the theories but the concept that helped them to get the things done that they need to achieve.
Maree: Yeah, And I think one of the things I’ve always done is being available as well.
Klaus: Yes.
Maree: So if someone had a question, or you know, they could… lots of people still do that now, just email and say, “Can I interview you about this?” And you think “Okay, send me an email” [laughs] Send me an email! But also I think with the Futures Conversation Framework I tried something new in setting up this community where we had… where we’re having online meetings to help me make sense of this framework in practise. And that was new for me because I usually develop all this stuff on my own. But it’s been really valuable to do that. The input has been great, but the actual logistics of doing it have hit some obstacles along the way. and so it’s been interesting to have to kind of… you know… I mean, I’ve organised this group of people. I don’t have to… you know, give them something, [laughter] and we have… It has to be professional, you know. But, you know, I can’t continue to do it that way for a whole lot of reasons. I can’t continue to do it that way, so I have to pull back and restart again. And that was actually quite difficult. I’ve done it twice. [laughs] But I realised, you know, you get this sense that something is not working properly and something has to change. And so ultimately you come to the stage where you make the decision and you change and you move in a slightly different direction to… so that the logistics of that actually allow you to do what you want to do rather than getting your way. But I think that, as as Joseph Boris said in the course at Swinburne and just stayed with me all the time, is that when you’re doing this work, in workshops and things like that, you don’t push it too hard and don’t get stuck and just trust yourself and trust emergence that what needs to happen will emerge. So I’ve always [laughs] held that close and so far it’s working. But at the time when you’re readjusting and changing what you plan to do and what you told everybody else you were going to do, but now you’re changing it, um… yeah, it’s a bit uncomfortable, but that’s life.
Klaus: What I can tell you, from my perspective, is that I see that as… that’s life, yes, it’s also experimenting. It’s a very brave thing to do to sort of set on an idea that you have thought of long time, then start executing on that idea, finding out that it doesn’t work, or it produces different results or other results than expected, and then declare that as an experiment and change the way you go further. And it’s something that a scientist in a lab would do.
Maree: Yes, absolutely. My husband’s a scientist. [laughs] So yes, it’s a scientific approach that you experiment. And if it fails, you do something else.
Klaus: Mm-hm.
Maree: And if it doesn’t fail, you build on it. Yeah.
Klaus: You don’t have to be a Ph.D. to do something like that in your business, to do experimentation. You just have to have also the humility to do it and also the strength to sort of live the consequences, as you just said, that it might be perceived as something other than it is, an experiment.
Maree: Yeah, yeah. I think… when I set out, I had it in my head, I had it as a prototype, but I didn’t really know what that meant. [laughs] But I think that’s… and this isn’t new, that that hole it’s the design thinking, saying things that you can’t… You have to test. You have to test instead of saying “This is the way we do in future studies”, we need to just say, “Well, we’ll try this and see if it works. And if it doesn’t work, we’ll take the best from it and try something else.” And I think, in my context anyway, that’s been working quite well. But in a work situation, I always tell people to do… to customise what they do to set their context and to start small because you don’t want to sort of proclaim foresight is the next big thing because we did that once at university and it doesn’t work. People get very annoyed by, you know, this proclamation that foresight is going to solve all their problems. But the other thing we’re using in organisations is you have to have a culture in organisations that allows that experimentation, testing, prototyping process to happen without… the failure is accepted and the change is accepted and that things can go… can veer off path. But there will be a new pathway as well. So I think the cultural side of organisations is also quite important. But yeah, for me, it was a totally new way of operating because I’m usually quite, you know, organised and planned, and that’s where I’m going, and that’s what I do. So I think my Ph.D. taught me that, [laughter] but that you can veer off the path and come back onto a new one, and it’s absolutely fine.
Klaus: Mm. You are in a very lucky position. You do the thing that you do basically for yourself. But what I admire a lot is that you have sort of started conversations with other people that give you the feedback that allow you to be sort of vulnerable and doing these experiments that sort of stick with you and give your questions and answers and feedback. And I think that’s a very, very smart thing to do. And it’s a global thing that you started.
Maree: Yes, yes. And it is people from all over the world. And I think what’s happened here from the 50 or 60 people originally involved, there’s a much smaller group now in the community, but it’s a wonderful group of people. I mean, I just… I enjoy our conversations and I think it’s a two way thing, that we’re learning from each other, even though I’ve got something that I want them to have a… I want people to have a look at and tell me what they think, it’s still an open conversation about how this will help. Ultimately, it’s about how we can help each other to use futures approaches better. Yeah.
Klaus: For me, a foresight process is part of an innovation process, and it is part of a… a required part, let’s put it that way, of an innovation process. And what I always see is that, sort of, some people think they are gurus, and they tell others how the future is going to be. And that’s never going to work, from my perspective. It’s always better to have a, sort of, basic training, basic understanding of the basic methods, and then have some tools, have some information, lots of information, let’s put it that way, and put that together in your own foresight process and in your own horizons that you develop and scenarios. They might not be as perfect, but they might be much closer to your own world. So I think that sets the basis for an innovation process. And you don’t have to do that all the time. But you do that once a year, once every two years. Then you’re good to go, I think, in the company, or on a personal level, also.
Maree: Yeah. Yeah. I agree.
Klaus: So what you’re going to do right now is… you’re sort of forming a portfolio of items that help to do foresight work. One is, for example, the book that you have on Amazon and the courses, the conversations you have online. What is the perspective or what is the… what do you plan to have, say, in two years with your courses? What will they do? What will be the functions or the themes of these courses?
Maree: Right now, I have the first one, The Basics of Foresight. The second one that I started work on today -finally- is on the Futures Conversation Framework, that will really be designed for practitioners or people who want to use foresight approaches in their work. And it will capture a whole lot of conversations that we need to have, but different types of conversations, but it will also provide people with the different sorts of methods that you can use and how to use them. It will have this, I guess, conceptual side around what foresight is, and how we develop it, and that kind of thing. But it will also ultimately be quite practical. And I’m working on that now, to a step-by-step or a process framework -I don’t quite know what to call it- to actually make this conceptual conversations framework practical and provide enough knowledge for people to be able to use this in practise in their organisations. So, you know, like I keep coming back to scenarios, but that’s the most well-known method. You know, there’s so much written about scenarios and so, so much information and courses you can do to build scenarios. So ultimately, I mean… I don’t want it to be a thinking mega. [laughs] I don’t want it to, kind of, you know, become the next big thing, because it won’t be. I think what I’m doing is building on what goes on in the field, and I’m re-framing it in a new way, in a different way, that brings together all the parts of the field that we already know about, but I’m putting them together in a new way, and what comes out at the other end is a different approach to doing futures.
Klaus: Okay, so it’s not just making things digestible, which are very complex, but you’re also adding a… let’s say, your personal touch by making things easy to use, for example, give that.. an extra perspective, and so on. So it is a development, also, of the field?
Maree: Yeah, I think so. I mean, again, I don’t go around saying, “Look what I’ve developed. I´m that great!” [laughs]
Klaus: [laughs] Well, maybe you should.
Maree: No, no, no. That’s not me at all. Look, I’m getting older. People on the podcast can’t see I’ve got great hair, [laughs] but I’ve been in the field for over 20 years, so I need… at this point in my life, it’s not about doing foresight, you know, all the time, and being out there and doing foresight, it’s more… for me… I don’t know. It’s me. It’s the type of person I am. But I’ve been reflecting on this. This field has changed my life. It did change my life and I want to leave it something. [laughs] Something that’s useful, something that’s practical, something that people can use to engage with this way of thinking and doing. And hopefully, have some of that same sort of shift in their lives as well, Because it changed… yeah, it changed how I think, it made my thinking much more expansive, much more accepting, and it made me conscious of, you know, the different perspectives there are in the world about everything and that nobody is right all the time. So I think in that kind of thinking about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it, it was really saying, “What do I want to leave the field with? Where do I want to make my mark?” Because there’s no point doing this work… [laughs] I think everyone would think that they want to make their mark somewhere in what we’re doing. And so that’s the space I’m in, at the moment. You know, what can I leave the field that is useful.
Klaus: I see. And I think what you’re doing is also you’re reducing it to the max, in a way, and doing something minimal with… from taking stuff from where there’s a lot of things, making it easily understandable and usable is a very, very difficult thing. What… are you kind of a minimal person? Is that something that is in your lifestyle?
Maree: Um… sort of. I like to synthesise things I discover. I’m quite good at taking disparate information and finding the patterns across it. And I think that’s what I did in my Ph.D. And I think that’s what I’ve always done, without knowing it, for a long time, that I can actually bring that wide range of information together and make it usable and understandable in a new way. I think I’m quite minimal in terms of my language in what I write and do, because I really don’t like, um… jargon. [laughs] -although every field has its jargon- but big words for big words’ sake don’t make any sense to me. But I think it’s… how can you develop something that’s useful and accessible? I think that’s really what it is, I think, that if we, in the field, really want our work to have impact in society then it has to be accessible, it has to be accessible to people from outside the field. And right now, I mean, it is accessible when you go through a formal process, but there’s other ways to make it accessible as well. And right now that’s happening. People are coming up with whole different ways of democratising futures and foresight. And I think that’s the pathway we should all be on, making it accessible. Yeah.
Klaus: I’ve seen that with, like, canvas approaches for all sorts of things in life, and they have changed, basically business consulting. The canvas posters and the canvas methods have given people the tools to do lots of things themselves after understanding the basic principles. That doesn’t mean that that gets them instant results, but it sort of spreads the idea of working on specific things over some time and putting effort and creativity into it will get you somewhere. Maybe not as far as with a good business consultant or coach, but it will progress whatever you’re working on. And I think… and I like that idea. It changed my type of work, but I like that a lot because it brings more attention to things and, yeah, lets people work on things that are important to them.
Maree: Yeah, I think it’s cumulative as well. If you start working in a new way, it might seem odd at the beginning, but the more you do it, you know, the more you use the business canvas or whatever canvas, whatever type of candidates you’re using, it does start to change many things. I think that’s, in a neurological sense, forcing yourself [laughs] to do something new and to repeat it over time will change how you think. So, yeah, I agree. I think it’s… finding a new way to do something that you’ve already always done is a good thing. So we’ve done strategic planning for far too long, and maybe, you know, here’s a different way I can provide you to do a different sort of strategic planning that’s actually more futures-focused and more beneficial if you keep doing this over time.
Klaus: I really like the way our conversation went. In the beginning, you said you don’t know if you fit in that line of guests…
Maree: [laughs]
Klaus: …of the podcast, but I think you do, very, very much. And I’m really happy about our conversation. Maree, I think that was a fascinating glimpse at the way you run and develop your business that you develop your courses that develop digital products, let’s put it that way. We will have all the links of the things that we talked about on the episode website. The link will be in the show notes. I’m following your work. I really enjoy these courses. Good luck with working on the next course.
Maree: Thank you. Thank you very much. And yes, thank you for the conversation. It was great.
Klaus: Well, thank you for taking the time. Goodbye.
Maree: Bye bye.Klaus: Thank you for listening to The 2pt5 – Conversations Connecting Innovators. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. The transcript of this episode and additional information is also available. The link is in the show notes. My name is Klaus. I’m an innovation coach in Baden Württemberg, in the southwest of Germany. This is The 2pt5.
