Foresight Meets Reality: Using Three Horizons to build a Gender-Responsive, Human Rights-Based, and LNOB Results-Oriented Theory of Change

1/2 A very useful exercise, and the 3H framework is indeed powerful! Well done for engaging with it!
I’m not fully convinced, though, that a Theory of Change and measurable results really “belong” in Horizon 3. :-)
The spirit of Three Horizons is not a gradual improvement trajectory. It helps us see when the world we live in (H1) is intrinsically faulty and calls for a strong shift rather than a better‑managed status quo. H3 is not a “nicer version of today” reached through a linear, incremental pathway. Its role is to name the tension between where we are now and an alternative, desirable future based on different assumptions and a different logic. It is about naming the gap and making the transformation evident, not about designing the pathway.

2/2 Between H1 and H3 there is not a neat sequence of steps but a messy space of competing logics, actors and ideas. In that in‑between space (H2), every innovation can either become “more of the same” (reinforcing H1) or contribute to an alternative. A truly alternative future may require letting go of the idea that all the changes we need are fully measurable and neatly governed in advance through a results framework.
RBM mostly belongs to Horizon 1. Feminist and transformative spaces require different ways to support change, and a constant awareness of the risk that important ideas and processes like this one (which live in H2, as spaces that shape the future) are captured and domesticated by H1 logics. I am sure that some of this surfaced in your work, and it would be fantastic to see more about the gaps and tensions, rather than mostly the progression

1/2 Thank you, Silva, for the reflections. Indeed, the original Three Horizons framework was never meant to imply a neat, linear pathway to a “better version” of today. Its strength lies in revealing the limits of H1 and pointing to the fundamentally different logic required for H3.

Where I extend the discussion is within the development and humanitarian space. Here, we are not only imagining alternative futures we are co‑creating and implementing strategies that shape them. In such dynamic and fragile environments, frameworks like 3H inevitably become both diagnostic and design lenses. The aim is not to turn 3H into a traditional planning tool but to use it to question our assumptions so we don’t reproduce the very systems we hope to transform.

Adapting the three Horizons to complex realities is essential. While it is not a linear roadmap, it pushes us to ask: Are our interventions opening space for transformation or reinforcing H1 or keeping people in H1.5 survival mode? Do our strategies address structural drivers of vulnerability or optimize the current system? What assumptions, power dynamics, and institutional dynamics must shift for real change?

2/2 On H3, ToC, and RBM, I agree that traditional RBM sits in H1 logics of predictability, control, and linearity. Yet abandoning measurement in H3 carries its own risks, especially in contexts where communities expect accountability and where power imbalances can easily be reproduced. 

My proposal is not to squeeze H3 into an H1 results framework, but to reimagine RBM and ToC so they can meaningfully engage with transformation. This includes tracking shifts in power, agency, norms, and relationships; unintended effects; directionality of change; enabling conditions; system behaviours; and early signals of transformation.

In this way, RBM becomes a learning and sense‑making practice, and ToC becomes a living hypothesis about how structural change may emerge. The value of using Three Horizons lies in surfacing tensions between immediate needs and long‑term change, the risk of innovations reverting to the status quo, and the limits of linear planning in complex systems. These tensions should strengthen not dilute the transformative intent of H3. 

1/2 Thanks so much for sharing this – there is a lot to chew on, and I really see the ambition in re‑imagining the tools. My experience, though, is that H1 has a remarkable capacity to colonise spaces that were meant for change and to re‑domesticate imagination; right now that pull back to “business as usual” feels even stronger than before.
I totally understand why people want “the plan”. But there is real power, for me, in using the Three Horizons process to hold the tension rather than to fully map the pathway. H2 is a battlefield: a space where we name frictions, contradictions and possibilities and keep them visible, without immediately turning them into a managed trajectory, while still thinking about how we might respond to emerging options as they surface.

I’m also wary of how easily H1 creeps in through language. Words like “results” or “measurement” are dangerous because they come with a whole logic attached. Maybe we need to experiment with other concepts: unpacking diverse achievements rather than just “checking results”, and talking about how we understand, gauge or sense change – not only how we “measure” it in supposedly objective, quantitative ways. Measurement is not the only, nor necessarily the main, route to accountability – especially in feminist and transformative spaces, where meaning‑making and reciprocity are themselves part of justice.
So I resonate deeply with your concerns about power and accountability, and I see why you want structure. I feel, instead, that we also need to resist the call to fixed pathways. On this we fully agree: the real value of 3H is precisely to keep those tensions visible so that H3’s transformative intent is not diluted – and, for me, that also means being careful about how far we “design” H3 into a results architecture. 
I remain interested in seeing where this process leads you! Please keep on sharing!