My horizons

The scope of our activities and thoughts can viewed at many different levels. This can be visualised as a series of extending horizons. 

The number of horizons, and the names we give them, can be cut and re-cut in different ways. The main feature is ever increasing extension.

The illustration below is a rendering of one of my sets of horizons. It is based on the 'dimension' of my work, which is for the UK National Health Service (NHS)

Because this model is based on healthcare, I have stopped at the horizon of the World. Even with Elon Musk's best, and most grandiose aspirations to make mankind a multi-planetary species, I do not expect there to be interplanetary healthcare within my working lifetime. If I were to look at other dimensions, my horizons might go beyond the confines of The Earth, to infinity and beyond.

I could construct entirely different schemas for different dimensions of interest, such as natural history, music or politics. For example, here is a model of my horizons for bird photography

I could produce many similar horizon models for differing dimensions of interest.

Sometimes, a model such as this is described as a series of  'onion skins'. This analogy is reasonable, although it does not stand close botanical inspection. Better comparisons might be made to a 'Russian doll' or even to the colours on a 'gob stopper'.

Having a model of horizons is not an end in itself. It only has meaning if we do something with it.

A module I am doing as part of a course leads me to consider a number of questions and issues across successive horizons.

For example, if I want to reflect on the nature of competition,  digital maturity, or the likely impact of an innovative digital disruption, I will have a different transaction depending on the horizon  I choose.

Cutting across any of these horizons, potentially, is the dimension of time. We can look forwards, or backwards, or stay, largely, in the present. 

Take, for example, the horizon of me, in my work context:

Often, I may be distracted by the present and very immediate future. Day to day this is quite likely in a busy, stressful job. If I stand back, I might look back over the time in my current role, or my time with my current employer. I might look further back at previous jobs or right back to the early days of my education. Equally, I could look forward a few weeks, months or years, imagining future states.

The horizon of my team is likely to be somewhat different

Technically,  this present team has only existed since June 2020, although I have known and worked with all the members of the team for much longer. Similarly, given the NHS penchant for reconfiguring, I would be surprised if this same team still existed in two years.  The time horizons are by nature much more short term, and generally looking forward rather than back.

Similar considerations apply at the horizon of my organisation

This current NHS organisation has only exited, legally,  since  October 2019. I would be surprised if it  still existed in October 2024.

 

It could be argued that de facto organisations are much more persistent than the legal entities which encapsulate them.  The official shape of the organisations change but there are very resilient constituent cultures, and organisational units, which persist through many nominal changes. New NHS organisations do not start with a clean state, they inherit the assets, ways of working, problems and quirks of their precursors.

Crossing a time dimension with any relevant horizon model produces many different loci in which to dwell, to reflect,  to plan. Our day to day state will tend to push us, by default,  into a limited number of these. It would be very risky to spend an hour thinking about the history of the NHS when your report to the Board is due in 6o minutes.

 

But there is value in looking in the compartments outside of our immediate horizons and time zones. What we need is a  trigger,  or structure,  which enables us to do this. Sometimes perspective can make us calmer - yes our activity has dropped this month, but it does the same every year - don't panic!