Using Three Horizons to understand and create change

Drawing on the Three Horizons framework, in our March Insight Series session, Dr Truzaar Dordi explored what it means to be a “changemaker” — someone who can bridge the gap between abstract potential and concrete impact — in times of uncertainty.

This blog post is based on Truzaar’s presentation at the Horizons Institute’s Insight Series in March 2026. Here, you can find some highlights, as well as a recording of his presentation.

[embed]

The knowledge-action gap

How can we be better leaders, especially during points of significant turmoil? The message, for researchers, is always the same: understand things deeply; communicate them clearly; get the right qualifications; build the right expertise; present your case and the world will respond.

But the assumption that providing enough evidence will inevitably produce action — another policy scenario, another devastating climate report — has proven insufficient. Not just in sustainability, but in every domain where complex systems resist change.

What if the gap isn’t in what we know, but our capacity to engender change?

In a world saturated with insight, I argue, people are no longer looking for the smartest take. They’re looking for people that can drive impactful change. And for many of us, the issue isn’t a lack of what that future could be, but a failure of execution: research cited but never implemented, strategies announced but not translated to daily decisions. People nod, they agree, and then carry on.

Three Horizons as navigational practice

To address this, I introduced the Three Horizons framework — not simply as a planning tool, but as a practice for building agency in uncertain times.

Three curves, over time, Capturing the challenges of the present, imagining the world we want to create collectively, and defining what we need to do to help us achieve our desired future.

Horizon One is the world as it currently operates: dominant institutions, assumptions, incentive structures, and ways of working. Importantly, Horizon One isn’t bad in this story — it holds much that is worth conserving: knowledge, relationships, infrastructure, and institutional wisdom.

But these systems were built during periods of deep stability. Our existing structures are increasingly losing their fit for purpose, and consequently our policies and priorities aren’t designed to get us to where we need to go into the future.

Visual representation of the Three Horizons Framework

Imagining a viable future

Horizon Three is the future that is trying to emerge. This isn’t a forecast. We’re not trying to predict what the future may look like. It’s a vision of what we want, something that we actively want to create.

This is where our deepest values live. The reason we entered our work in the first place. And the beauty of this is that Horizon Three exists today: in fragments, in pilot projects, in exceptional teams, and in moments where everything just works the way it should.

The transition space

Horizon Two is the transition space. This is where we spend most of our working lives; where we strategize, we prioritize, we experiment. This is where change happens.

It’s also where competing interests collide; where systemic inertia is strongest, and where, more often than not, change stalls.

Creating something new

Using the analogy of a chrysalis, I emphasise that transformative change doesn’t simply come from optimising today. What emerges from the chrysalis is not a faster, fitter caterpillar, but something fundamentally different.

The challenge is creating the conditions for that emergence.

Embodying leadership

What if we took the outward practice of the three horizons and applied inward? Not only a tool for strategizing for transformation, but a practice we apply within ourselves as leaders.

It starts with vision. What actually matters to you? Not your job description, but what fuels you, what gets you out of bed? We draw on the concept of embodied leadership: looking at leadership not just from a place of doing, but from a place of being.

Your purpose, I argue, is your regenerative fuel source.

Coming back to the present, what do we need? Presence — purposeful reflection about the space that we work in.

The distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges we work within and the practice of suspending judgement and in alignment with the future we want — anchored in curiosity, compassion, and courage rather than judgement, cynicism, and fear.

And finally, how do we sustain the work of transition? Examining not only what drives change forward, but what restrains it — and creating the conditions where people can take the interpersonal risks transformation demands: proposing something untested, admitting they were wrong, challenging a norm.

Everyone already lives in multiple horizons; navigating current constraints while imagining something better and trying, each day, to bridge the two.

The invitation isn’t to become someone different, but to recognise the capacity you’re already building — with clarity about what matters, honesty about where you are, and resilience to stay in the transition.

You can find more information about our Insight Series on our Medium collection, and can find upcoming sessions on our Eventbrite page. If you’d like to find more resources and information on the Three Horizons framework, visit H3Uni.org