Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers Main Street 2040: The Emotional Work of Changing a City with Hauson Le | EP 152
Hauson Le cried in his first foresight session. A Disney executive's mentorship pulled him out of data analytics, and three six-hour sessions later he had found the thing he now says he would let go of entirely if it meant making a bigger impact. Today he builds foresight cultures inside American local government through the Alliance for Innovation, where the fires never stop and the pace of change keeps outrunning the pace of decision.
His core insight reframed how I think about resistance to change, mine included. Show leaders the facts and the methods, and they will agree it all matters. Then they will not move. In his words, not touching the heart leaves people saying yes, I see the path you laid out for me, and I just have too much at stake right now. So he runs a simulation that compresses years of disruption into fifteen minutes, until the room says this is exactly what it is like to work in local government now. We get into the culture that always wants to be the first to be second, why growth is the blind spot cities carry toward 2040, the AI risks city managers actually name, and what it would take for residents to stop describing their city as a vending machine and start describing it as home.
If you have ever laid out a clear path for a room that agreed with every word and then did nothing, this hour is for you.
=============================
This Week's Companion Issue
The companion Future Proof issue built on this conversation, Anxiety is Not Foresight, lands Thursday. It is Part 3 of a four-part series called Reading Yourself Like a System, and it takes Hauson's argument into the personal register: why worry creates such a convincing impression of preparation, and how to tell them apart.
Read on Substack: https://befutureproof.substack.com/
Read on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816
=============================
Chapters
0:00 Why Facts Alone Fail Leaders
0:24 Meet A Civic Futurist
4:40 Finding Agency Through Foresight
8:55 Why Local Government Is The Front Line
14:35 Anticipatory Government Versus Firefighting
20:55 The Growth Mindset Blind Spot
23:55 AI Risks Data Trust Thinking
31:10 Experiential Futures And Emotional Barriers
34:55 What A Future Ready City Feels Like
37:35 How To Get Involved
=============================
About Hauson Le
Hauson Le is a civic futurist with the Alliance for Innovation, where he delivers strategic foresight training, research, and capacity building across American local governments. Trained in the University of Houston's foresight program after an executive mentorship that pulled him out of data analytics, he is an award winner from the Association of Professional Futurists for his experiential futures work, and one of the few people building genuine futures capacity inside city government rather than writing about it from the outside.
Connect with Hauson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hausonle/
Alliance for Innovation: https://www.transformgov.org/
=============================
Go Deeper
📬 Future Proof, my weekly newsletter on foresight and leadership, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/future-proof-7303526412311842816 and in full on Substack: https://befutureproof.substack.com/
🌐 Join the Future Proof Community for conversations about the future: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/10084416
📖 SuperShifts, my book on the forces reshaping business and society: https://www.supershiftsbook.com/
👤 My website: https://www.stevenfisher.io/
My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenfisher/
=============================
Think Forward Everywhere
🎧 All episodes: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/
🍎 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515
🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO
▶️ YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLionR73qBCQmgCvEI9iFSS4gXPvQl5m3n
💼 Follow the show on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/think-forward-show
📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinkfwdshow
X: https://x.com/ThinkFwdShow
=============================
Presented By
PRESENTED BY THINK FORWARD NETWORK https://tfn.one/
SUPPORTED BY THE HUMAN FRONTIER INSTITUTE https://humanfrontier.org/
=============================
Sponsor This Episode
Interested in sponsoring Think Forward or partnering as an affiliate? Email [email protected] to reach a growing audience of leaders and futurists thinking seriously about what's next.
If residents described your city, or your organization, as a vending machine, what would it take for them to describe it as home instead? Tell me in the comments.
If you found something useful, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave a review so more people can find the show.
#ThinkForward #LocalGovernment #StrategicForesight
Human Frontier InstituteDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
ORDER SUPERSHIFTS! bit.ly/supershifts
🎧 Listen Now On:
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/think-forward-conversations-with-futurists-innovators-and-big-thinkers/id1736144515
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0IOn8PZCMMC04uixlATqoO
Web: https://thinkforward.buzzsprout.com/
Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.