Foresight Insights
A Few Lessons Along the Way
There is a great interest in generating strategic foresight. Such foresight is crucial for organizations to achieve future success and sustainability. Recent templates have focussed on the role of foresight tools under different circumstances. These typically unproblematically divide the ‘future’ into four categories like ‘a clear enough future’, ‘alternative futures with probabilities’, ‘a limited, bounded set of plausible futures’ or ‘an unlimited, unbounded set of possible futures’. They also suggest how such futures can be modelled using tools like Delphi, stochastic modelling, trend audits or foresight radars.
From my 30 plus years of experience in helping organisations develop foresight, I think it is necessary to challenge these approaches and ideas. I set out ten lessons that I have learned from my experience.
One, whilst foresight tools help, it’s not the tools per say that are important. Insights emerge not from tool use but rather from how participant activities, processes and interactions are structured with or without these tools to generate foresight.
Two, foresight emerges when participants redefine the past in the present to understand what is currently unfolding into the future. At any moment in time the past may not always be visible or properly understood. Additionally, over time new interpretations of the past can develop as new understanding emerge.
Three, it is important to understand, recognise, acknowledge that there are limitations in current thinking and beliefs that limit potential for foresight. Individuals are unlikely to understand their beliefs and the blind spots that these create.
Four, because of limitations in thinking, it is important to provide a safe entry point (the surprise free scenario) to highlight these limitations. Acknowledgement of these limitations allow participants to then challenge dominant mindsets. Without this, all foresight approaches including scenarios will fail to land.
Five, scenario stories are not fiction or speculation about ‘futures’ but help to provide a clearer understanding of what’s happening in the here-and-now viz-a-viz the past and the future.
Six, the scenarios set is important, not any individual scenario, as focus on individual scenarios are likely to driven by current understandings of favourable outcomes in the future.
Seven, as reality is never still, foresight too needs to evolve and this requires individuals to have an open, agile and flexible mindset while making decisions. Otherwise, business-as-usual thinking will continue.
Eight, strategic foresight generated should help individuals to imagine, project and talk their organisations into existence in the future.
Nine, managing language skilfully to reduce ambiguity and misconceptions between individuals is key to foresight generation. It is also central for building consensus that can lead to future success.
Ten, creativity in language use enables and facilitates the development foresight and the identification of potentialities.
2-day scenario practical workshop
In this programme participants will experience two iterations of the scenario process. First iteration is designed to experience and familiarise individuals with the steps in the scenario process. This will be the first half of day 1. The remainder of the workshop will be either a dedicated organisational scenario exercise, or a scenario exercise with mixed participants who will consider a complex contemporary issue and develop a set of scenarios set in a future date.
5-day strategy and scenario practical workshop
In this programme participants will experience developing scenarios for ‘the client’, developing ‘the client’s’ business idea, and exploring the implications of the set of scenarios for the ‘the client’s’ business idea. From this understanding, responses to the insights are designed to help the ‘client’ manage its future strategically. After the introduction to the 5-day workshop participants select ‘the client’ and this organisation will be central to the rest of the workshop. Participants will be briefed on the process of interviewing the ‘client’ to understand their assumptions, perceived threats and opportunities, and these will form the ‘scenario agenda’. Next will be the development of the scenarios, in some significant detail. Participants will then analyse the set of scenarios to make explicit strategic and scenario insights. Using these insights participants will develop ideas to help build an approach to manage the future strategically. The workshop will be designed to accommodate either a dedicated organisational scenario exercise, or a scenario exercise with mixed participants who will discuss and agree on ‘the client’.
2-day facilitation workshop
In this programme participants will explore a range of issues involved with facilitating groups. These issues include managing the dynamics of group workshops, understanding facilitator fundamentals, building sustainable agreements, and reflection on the workshop. Managing the dynamics of group explores the process of starting with recognition of divergence in thinking between individuals and the process of moving towards convergence in thinking. Understanding facilitator fundamentals includes issues such as listening skills, facilitating open discussions and debates, opening-up and exploring complex issues, clarifying ideas, and dealing with difficult dynamics.
Building sustainable agreements includes exploring and understanding multiple perspectives on issues, accommodating diversity of thinking, building common ground, and reframing the situation to develop new insights.