March 2017 - Parks & Recreation - 20

Member to Member
Staying Ahead of the Curve
Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District's Future Trends Team
By Keith Hobson and Katherine Stokke

ike most innovations, the creation of the Future Trends Team within the Tualatin Hills Park & Recreation District (THPRD) was generated by several
recognized organizational needs. We were looking to encourage growth and
development among staff recognized as strategic thinkers. We wanted to cultivate an environment of being a learning organization that supports innovation. And,
we recognized that we operate in an environment of continuous change and we should
identify long-term trends driving this change. By identifying the trends, we believed
we could get ahead of the change rather than just react to it. Out of these recognized
needs, THPRD developed an internal think tank of futurists in training, and the team
continues to evolve much like the trends it researches.
How We Work
Keith Hobson, THPRD director of Business & Facilities, had the idea to assemble the Future Trends Team in October
2011. In forming this team, he identified
staff who he believed had the necessary
creativity and strategic thinking. While
he strove to get members from departments throughout the district, his first
priority was members who could positively contribute to the team's charge (to
step back from day-to-day operations and
identify impacts of " mega trends " for the
next 10 to 20 years) and who had capacity to take on an intensive new commitment. The team ranges from nine to 12
members, and as some participants cycle
off the roster during the annual summer
hiatus, new recruits join to ensure fresh
blood and allow greater opportunity
for insights from the team to take hold
throughout the organization.
This cross-functional team thrives
on diverse viewpoints, encouraging a
healthy dose of skepticism by assigning an official devil's advocate at each
meeting to help prevent groupthink and
continually challenge us to stretch our
assumptions. Other key meeting roles
include an " agenda cop " to help keep

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discussions productive and a scribe to record them for future reference.
We identified and organized research
around the following macro trends:
* Globalization
* Generations and demographics
* Climate change
* Energy
* Technology
* Organizational structure and leadership
* Dissemination of information
and connectivity
* Infrastructure
Why the Team Works
We have researched the importance for
organizations to stay nimble and flexible
in a constantly changing world, and we
apply the same principle to our team. By
taking a hard look at bumps in the road,
we maintain the core elements that make
our team work (humor is a must in each
meeting) while tweaking or replacing
those that do not (too many small groups
doing different readings does not make
for fruitful discussion).
One challenge is covering agenda
topics while still allowing tangents to
spark creative thoughts. A seemingly throwaway comment once triggered

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a real change when a member joked
that THPRD's annual all-staff meeting
should feature presentations about staff
failures instead of the usual staff successes. After a lighthearted moment, the
potential of such an idea sank in. After
all, we had researched organizations that
embraced failure as a path to innovation.
As a result, Staff Innovation presentations debuted at the next annual meeting,
and, to this day, they still replace the old
success stories on the agenda.
In our quest to maintain a 20-year
perspective, another hard-learned lesson is the importance of not getting too
operational. We emphasize this for two
reasons. First, we wanted to encourage
innovation within the normal management structure of the district and did not
want the responsibility for operational
innovation to be outsourced to our team.
Second, and more important, the time
horizon for future trend analysis is 20
years and beyond, and allowing operational thinking into our discussions limited us and shortened our time horizon.
Research and discussions may spark an
idea for members to pursue in their departments, but the emphasis lies in envisioning what the future may mean for
society and the world at a high level.
Benefits of an Internal Think Tank
Future Trends Team participation requires research and helps members
sharpen their critical thinking skills.
This type of intellectual discipline encourages evidence-based decision-making, even outside of team activities. For
example, our early discussions of generational trends and rapidly changing

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