The Practical Application of Foresight

Foresight is insight into how and why the future could be different from the present.  It is a process to create insight.  And that insight comes from identifying more of what is possible.

This means that a good foresight process produces more things to think about, not less.

From a participant group’s perspective, that results in more things to worry about and more things to sort and prioritize.  This can create frustration as groups think about applying their foresight discussions to the strategy development and planning efforts they will do next.

Foresight is part of the larger process of planning.  Foresight comes first, followed by strategy.  In this overarching process, the foresight element expands the “funnel” of ideas while the strategy element shrinks things down to clear direction and priority.  Foresight expands, strategy focuses.

In a foundational foresight process, such as 4 Steps to the Future, a key activity and output comes from scenario forecasting.  Multiple scenarios looking at differing, logical pathways the world could take.  But once a team creates these scenarios, how then do they actually apply insights (new foresight) to develop strategy and to inform planning?  How do they transition from the expanding funnel of foresight to the narrowing focus of strategy?

Leadership teams can accomplish this by using a simple framework like ROSIC, which provides a practical application of foresight. 

• Risks: list all of the new and emerging risks from the foresight work.  Assess these new risks and input them into your existing risk management process as “emerging risks.” 

• Opportunities: catalog all of the potential opportunities.  Separate the strategic from the tactical/operational.  Sort the strategic opportunities according to their potential Upside vs. Disruption.

• Strategy: identify scenario-specific strategies as well as robust strategies (good across scenarios).  Compare and score your current strategy against the robust strategies and the scenario-specific ones.

• Indicators: take the short list of early indicators for each scenario and wrap them straight into your ongoing foresight/environmental monitoring function.

• Contingencies: identify the short list of new situations that need to be addressed through your existing contingency planning and input them into that process.

Once this is done and you have the results in front of your team, conduct the following discussion:

• What supports maintaining our current direction?

• What suggests exploring new directions?

• Where’s our balance point between current and new?

Your team’s answer to this drives the strategy development and goal setting that follows.  By this point, your team should be gravitating towards certain directions, priorities, and opportunities that can be ironed out in your strategy development process.

It isn’t complicated, and it shouldn’t be.  Using this framework gives you a practical way to link the expanding foresight conversation with the clarifying strategy one.

As always, reach out to us today to discuss how we can get your team ramped up into its foresight work.