How Often Should Foresight Be Done?

A central issue in VFS’s work comes down to the question of, how often should foresight work be done?  You might expect our answer to be, “as often as possible,” but in fact, the answer depends.

There are – of course – several factors that play into determining how to answer the question for any one organization.  The nature of the operating environment, the organizational culture, and the personality of the senior leaders are just three that pop to the top of the list.

Ultimately, the way that this question gets answered for most organizations does come down to the personality, and thus, the preferences, of senior leadership.  Because for most busy executive teams (and yes, they will all state they are extremely busy), the question gets asked as: “how often do we have to do this?”

A shocking as this might be to read, a great number of leadership teams approach the issue of formal foresight work trying to scope the minimal amount of time and attention they feel they can spare for what they see as an activity peripheral to their “real” work, a luxury item on the executive to-do list.

In truth, strategic thinking, which is to say thinking about the big picture and the long-term, is not peripheral to a genuine senior leader’s role; it’s central to it.  And central to good strategic thinking is good foresight.

Coming back to the question of how often should foresight be done, we can take a simple approach and break this down into practical, concrete terms every team can picture.  So, let’s put this into perspective and start with 8 hours, the equivalent of a single workday.  Let’s imagine a leadership team – which is to say, the senior leadership team of an entire organization – has decided it can only afford a total of 1 workday’s-worth of attention to serious foresight discussions each year.

With only 8 hours “budgeted” to spend on foresight discussions for the entire year, how should a leadership team spend that time?

Noting once again that the answer to the central question comes down to a few different factors, we can keep this simple and list out a few clear options.

1. Once a year: a single, 8-hour session.  This is the choice for a leadership team that agrees foresight is important, and is willing to spend some time on it, and they either feel that their high pace of operations or the slower pace of change in the operating environment mean they can only afford to stop once a year to talk – at length – about the mid- to long-term future.

2. Twice a year: two half-day sessions.  This is the choice for teams that, either because of operational tempo or the pace of change in the environment, feel more comfortable stopping a couple of times a year to have a structured check-in and discussion.

3. Quarterly: four two-hour sessions.  This is the choice for teams that appreciate more frequent – and lighter – opportunities to assess a fast-changing environment, share insights, and discuss impacts to plans and implementation.

These options reflect the obvious ways for a team to divide up eight hours over the course of a year, which in the end, is not a lot of time for a senior leadership team to devote to serious long-term thinking for their organization.

But the exercise of imagining a bucket of time for the year – whether that’s eight hours or twenty-four – and considering how to allocate those hours across the year in a structured fashion is a good exercise for teams considering making foresight a regular part of their calendar.

While few organizations are in a position to conduct months-long foresight projects with multiple, multi-day workshops every year, all organizations can and should set aside at least 8 hours each year to structured, serious conversations about the mid- to long-term future.  Especially in our present period of high change and high volatility, foresight work should be done more often, with a lighter footprint.

As always: foresight work doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to be consistent, and frequent.

Reach out to us today to discuss how we can facilitate your team’s ongoing strategic conversation.