Strategic Foresight Comes Before Your Strategic Planning in 2026

Right now a lot of teams are locking in their planning dates for next year.  “Strategic” planning, budgeting, measurement, progress reviews, etc…

One of the things often forgotten in the calendaring process are foresight activities.  The time and resources needed for teams to conduct critical work on the mid- to long-term possibilities is often the thing that fails to make it onto everyone’s calendars.

This work – the foresight work – comes before the strategy debates.  It comes before the planning and the discussions about metrics and the politicking over resources.

Foresight comes before all that because before you decide on goals (which should come before the initiatives and budgeting and politicking), you need a better sense of what is truly possible for the future.  A better sense of how the many different forces reshaping the world could – and will – reshape your organization’s landscape.

Technology, economics, and politics.  Societal change and environmental transitions.  Local trends, national shifts, and global turbulence.  All of these interact.  In complex ways that require more than the slide deck of a marketing report to properly explore.  Together they create uncertainty, risks, and opportunities.

And those different uncertainties, risks, and opportunities will evolve over the next 1, 3, 5, and 10 years.  What does this mean?  It means your Threats and your Opportunities look different in three years, 5 years, and 10.  And that means that your Strengths and your Weaknesses will morph right along with that as the challenges change and as the tools and constraints you have to work with change.

Teams need to have these discussions about the future before they lock in goals, decide on strategy, and start prioritizing projects.

Implementation is critical if plans are to have any impact.  And the plans themselves need to be informed by foresight to properly focus and prepare the organization.

Your team’s foresight work doesn’t have to be complicated.  It doesn’t have to be long.  But it does need to be done, it needs to be done early in your process, and it needs to be done consistently.

Consider these simple options to include in your 2026 planning process:

• Original scenario forecasts developed specifically for your organization.

• A 2-day workshop for your team to develop their own original scenarios.

• A comprehensive foresight project that weaves together internal and external insights in a process that reframes and relaunches your team’s strategic conversation.

Each of these offers a way to jump start your organization’s foresight work in advance of the strategy debates and the activity planning.  Which you should choose depends on your calendar, bandwidth for planning next year, and budget.

Contact us today to determine which of these options would be the best fit for your strategic planning in 2026.