1: Formulating the Mess

1.1 Real Life is Messy

Before we can begin to design an ideal future, we must first confront reality as it currently exists.

In the real world, problems do not exist in isolation. You cannot extract one problem, solve it cleanly, and expect the rest of the environment to remain unchanged. Instead, we experience messes—complex, dynamic, entangled situations where our needs are not being met, or where our State-of-Being is actively under threat.

In Interactive Planning, this phase is called Formulating the Mess. Formulating the mess involves four distinct phases of preparation:

1. Systems Analysis: A detailed description of how the system currently operates and exactly how problematic situations actively interact. In this phase, we seek to understand the problem space. The actors, the processes, the environment, and the interactions between them.
2. Obstruction Analysis: Identification of the characteristics, properties, and constraints of the systems that obstruct its progress or prevent it from adapting.
3. Reference Projections: Projecting aspects of the future assuming no changes are made to current plans and its expected future environment remains the same. Unlike the reference scenario, this is not a narrative description of the future. Instead, it is a collection of projections/trends of specific aspects of the system's future focused on piece-meal/specific areas e.g. people, market, financial, environmental, etc. It is best when data driven to provide evidence of the trends
4. Reference Scenario: A Holistic/Systemic perspective that forms a synthesis of all reference projections into a consistent, coherent story or narrative description of the future. This description illustrates the likely consequences of the current trajectory, highlighting the likely outcomes if the current projections hold true.