Context:

People have a tendency to believe that however things are now is how they will always be, and perhaps how they have always been.  Many of their assumptions maintain the status quo, blocking possibilities of doing things differently.  "Oh, she'll never shift," they may say, or among Quakers at times, "There won't be a change on that until there's been a few good Quaker funerals."  This belief itself prevents change from taking place. People may respond by aiming deliberately low for what they see as achievable instead of what they really want, questioning the value of collaboration, or being generally pessimistic.  Time Shifting is one way of opening up new possibilities.

Occasionally Time Shifting may also be helpful in confronting unwarranted optimism, e.g. "If we build it they will come."  By envisioning the future and how to get from here to there, that assumption too may be unpacked, to be replaced with realistic preparation.

Instructions & Variations:
Time Shift methods may engage the whole group together, or invite individual contemplation that then affects the whole group field. There is also a spectrum of structure from telling stories, to providing incomplete stories and inviting people to complete them, to asking people open-ended questions.

A more structured method such as Scenario Planning requires significant research to create credible possibilities distinct from the assumptions people have in the present.  The company that is currently the leading practioner of this method is Global Business Network. Their method involves identifying driving forces, then constructing stories about how these forces could interact to produce different outcomes.  For example, Michael Raynor worked with the Canadian Institute for Chartered Accountants to come up with four scenarios, based on positive and negative predictions of two factors (market volatility and key economic metrics such as housing and oil prices).

If you provide incomplete stories about the future or past, you can then invite people to respond by stepping into the gap between what is known and what might or might not happen. For example, you can explain a situation, and then offer several possible outcomes, asking people at each item whether or not they think that particular outcome will happen. In working with incomplete stories people become invested in learning more and exploring possibilities that expand existing horizons.

An open-ended exercise such as [INSERT TITLE] from the Work that Reconnects asks people to invent new possibilities by changing their point of view in time.  In that exercise, participants sit in two circles facing each other in pairs.  One circle imagines they are seven generations in the future, having survived the crises of the past era.  The other circle continues to think from a present-day perspective, and asks questions such as:

• “How are things different now?”
• “How did you meet the challenges?”
• “What helped you keep your resilience through so much loss, chaos and change?”
• “What did people learn from living through all that?”

If you ask a personal, future-looking question like, "How do you think your job life will change?" many people cannot leap directly to a novel or useful answer.  In contrast, asking “What happened in last five years that was surprising?” primes people to realize that quite dramatic changes have happened in the past and helps them have more expansive ideas about the future ("Based on the surprising things that happened in the past what could happen in next five years").  This principle is the basis of the Appreciative Inquiry, which deliberately investigates the best experiences of the past in order to create the most desirable future.