Sensing The Third Horizon
Seeing, feeling and Funding Alternative Futures.
“Resourcing is paramount to give life to, and grow, the new patterns. It is fuel to the fire; oxygen to the lungs.”
Right now we are in the in-between. That moment when the lights go out and there is a pause of darkness while our eyes adjust. Before outlines appear, then shapes, then detail. In this uncertain moment of darkness, instead of turning away or reaching to switch the light back on, what if we trusted that there are other ways of seeing?
To do so, how do we seek out, sense and recognise the outlines of these alternative futures? How do we feel our way into that space differently? And how might those with wealth, and those making decisions about where financial capital flows, find the courage, inspiration and compulsion to move resources to nurture a better next.
Surfacing the additional aspects and conditions vital to the work of systemic transformation.
Drawing on our interviews with practitioners and the original creators of the frameworks, we asked: what other elements would we make more explicit in some important systems change frameworks? Taking the Three Horizons, the Berkana Two Loops, and Deep Transitions, we considered the conditions and capacities that might be layered on, amplified, or made more explicit. We recognised a shared quality of directionality — each framework has movement and change embedded in its logic. This sense of becoming is an important prerequisite for the new to emerge, and invites a new set of verbs: in moving from one horizon, loop, or transition to another, what do we need to be more explicitly enacting or paying greater attention to?
In answer, we propose a key of 13 elements, each describing a capacity or condition required for deep systems transformation.
They hold both an inner and outer call to action — capacities wealth stewards and decisions makers need to cultivate in their own work, and capacities they should be looking to fund in the field. Practicing these is an invitation to live into the work, and to grow new facilities for sensing the Third Horizon.
Below the table, we’ve added some of the named elements to selected frameworks. We do so by honouring the originals while holding them lightly. Most were created more than a decade ago, and while they still hold true, practice in the wider field has surfaced greater awareness of the conditions and capacities required for deep, systemic shifts. Relevant across all of them is a more explicit naming of the feedback loops between inner and outer realities. How do we retrain our nervous systems, embody the conditions we hope to grow? And an invitation to attend to where shadows live in the work — so what's emerging isn't quietly shaped by what it came to replace.
