Trend Whisperer Tools

I am sick of the ominous use of trend reports as advertising tools. Every year, reports of all kinds are published worldwide to tell us what to buy, what to eat, how to dress, where to travel, which virtual world to visit, which apps to use, and so on.

This use of trend reports as Betterware catalogs irritates me. In my article Love Letter and Breakup to Trend Reports, I explain my reasons if you want to know all the gossip.

Trend reports help speculate about the future, but the organizations that commission these studies often do not know how to apply their findings. That’s understandable: trends need other tools to act as hinges to make them talk, and not everyone knows that. So, here are some recommendations to fill this gap.

As a first step, let’s distinguish trends from hype and fashions. Imagine a freeway with three lanes, each one with a different speed:

• Hype is the euphoria surrounding a product, service, experience, or issue. It moves very fast.
• Fashion is a socio-cultural phenomenon that consists of the temporary adoption of consumer goods or ideas. It is slightly slower than hype but also fades and reappears later with slight modifications.
• A trend is a pattern of upward or downward change that involves a behavioral and idiosyncratic transformation with concrete manifestations (Dragt, 2024), so it is more complex and slower than hype and fashion.

For these tools to work, you need to have trends obtained robustly and not as the result of a fluke. Better still, learn to analyze trends so you don’t have to pay ridiculous amounts for reports produced in dubious ways. For that, I recommend these books:

Kjaer, A. L. (2014). The trend management toolkit: A practical guide to the future. Palgrave Macmillan.

Dragt, E. (2024). How to research trends (Revised Edition): Move beyond trendwatching to kickstart innovation. BIS Publishers.

Once you have a list of trends, that is, patterns of change relating to a sector or industry, which tools can you use to have possible strategies whispered to you?

The Future Triangle. For many years, I resisted using this resource created by Sohail Inayatullah because it seemed too hippie for me. Still, my students greatly appreciated and used it, so I was convinced of its usefulness (thanks to my students for insisting!).

This tool is based on the assumption that the plausible future (one that is product of the laws of physics and common sense) is the result of the interaction between the pull of the future (the vision or desire of the person or organization), the push of the present (the patterns of change that shape our daily lives and our choices), and the weight of history (the values of the organization and all the things that people and organizations believe, with all their magical, irrational and sometimes aberrant baggage).

In workshops with different audiences, I have tried to include specific trends in the push of the present, and this allows participants to focus on the issues they know best, i.e., the pull of the future and the weight of history; thus, it is possible to formulate a plausible future scenario that can lead to other better or worse scenarios, and then agree on actions that will bring us closer to the most desirable version of the future.

It should be noted that the Triangle is part of the Six Pillars of Inayatullah’s Method, so it should be used in context and not as an end in itself; however, as a game for family gatherings and for shining in society, it is also helpful and entertaining! You should try it.

The SWOT matrix. Sadly, this is one of the Western world’s most misused and misrepresented strategic tools. Albert Humphrey would not rest in peace if he saw you filling in this fabulous matrix with the first thing that occurred to you in one of your brainstorming sessions with lots of pizza and little research.

For the Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, and Threats matrix to work correctly, you must fill it with specific, previously researched milestones and technically supported patterns of change, i.e., trends. The milestones and trends that are not related to your organization or you go into the exogenous elements (threats and opportunities), and the milestones and trends that are related to the system go into the endogenous elements (strengths and weaknesses); with this result, you can build a CAME matrix or create alternative scenarios. Learn how to use SWOT correctly, and let Humphrey rest in peace once and for all.

The Uncertainty Matrix. This beautiful tool from Jay Ogilvy and Peter Schwartz allows the creation of a 2x2 matrix filled with scenarios developed based on two variables. These variables can each be a trend, which, when formulated as pairs of opposites, allow us to set parameters for the scenarios.

Once you have defined the most desirable scenario, you can design a strategy to implement it or avoid the undesirable scenario.

If you prefer more complex archetype-based scenarios involving more than two trends, try the Manoa model as an alternative.

The Possibility Wheel. This recently published tool by Patricia Lustig and Gill Ringland (2024) allows you to develop responses to a specific challenge based on the threats and forces of change (trends) identified in the system you want to improve.

The wheel works with trends as an input to mobilize ideation: you place a key question in the center, then add a concentric circle where you address the driving forces and threats considered priorities for the issue you are working on. Lustig and Ringland provide a list of threats and forces you can draw from, but if you have done your trend analysis, you could start from your findings.

The next concentric circle analyzes the implications of these patterns of change, and finally, the last circle provides possible answers to the question. Here is an example of what I am working on, and in the book, you will find clearly explained examples.

In short, trends do not speak for themselves. They need to be supplemented with whisperer tools to make sense. Without this plug-in, they can function as narratives that alert you to possible threats or opportunities (or as suggestions to buy things if you subscribe to trends as advertising). Still, it may be difficult for you to turn them into actions.

Which other whisperer tools are you familiar with?