Strategic Foresight:

Linking Foresight & Strategy

Maree Conway
Purpose

 An overview of what foresight is about

and

 how it relates to strategy development in

organisations.

futures inspired strategy

Terminology

 Foresight: an often unconscious individual capacity to think

about the future.
 Strategic Foresight: an organisational foresight capacity.
 Futures: the broad academic field now developing globally;
interdisciplinary and inclusive in its approach.
 Futurists: those who work in futures, either as academics,
consultants (outside organisations) and as practitioners within
organisations.
 Scenario planning: a futures methodology.

futures inspired strategy

Terminology

 Foresight is the capacity to think systematically about the

future to inform today's decision making. It is a capacity that
we need to develop as individuals, as organisations, and as
a society.

 'Futures' refers both to the research, methods and tools

that are available for us to use to develop a foresight
capacity, and to the field in which futurists work.

futures inspired strategy

Terminology

 When we consciously use foresight in

organisational processes to inform strategy, we are
practising ‘strategic foresight’.

futures inspired strategy

Developing Strategy

 Challenges
 How to anticipate and interpret change in the external environment.
 How to leverage that change into ‘winning’ strategies.

 Knowledge Questions
 Do we have some sense of the different ways in which our
environment and our market might evolve over the next five years?
 Do we know which factors, or drivers of change, are most likely to
dominate how our industry will evolve?
 Do we know what our strategic and organisational responses would
be if a future were to unfold that was distinctly different from the one
anticipated by our current plan?
Adapted from Fahey, 2003

futures inspired strategy

The External Environment of
Universities
Social Environment
Driving
Forces Education
Environment Factors / Trends
Issues / Forces
Students
Suppliers Social
Educational
Technological
Organisation
Economic
Customers Ecological
Clients Political
…
Members of Competitors
Wider Society
Driving
Forces

futures inspired strategy

Adapted from K. van der Heijden
The Strategic Landscape
‘The Star’— The purpose of the organisation
Our enduring and • A “future-focused role image”
guiding social role • Not completed or “used up”

The strategic objective:

• A compelling, relevant future
‘The Mountain’— • BHAG—“Big Hairy Audacious Goal”
What we hope to • A concrete, specific goal
achieve • A challenge, but achievable

The strategic environment:

‘The Chessboard’— • Strategic implementation and tactics
Issues and challenges • Threats and opportunities
we are likely to face • Actions of other strategic actors
• Driving forces
• Mapped and understood using scenarios
The ‘self’
journeys across
the chessboard
‘The Self’— to the
mountain, Strategic identity:
Our values and which lies in the
medium term
• Current reality
attributes as a strategic future • Self-knowledge
player • Strengths and weaknesses
• Values
• Preferences and experience
futures inspired strategy
“Star, mountain, chessboard, self” image © 1999 Hardin Tibbs
 Strategic Foresight & Strategy

 Strategy is about the future, not the present.

 All our knowledge is about the past, but all our decisions
are about the future.

 But … future strategy is developed in the present.

 How do we integrate knowledge about the past, present and

future to make wise strategy today?

futures inspired strategy

Developing University Strategy

Council/
Foresight Executive Individuals

Strategic Thinking Options Council/Executive

Planning Workshops

Strategic Directions
Strategy Review and Decisions Statement
Decision Making
Council/Executive

Plans
Strategic Planning Strategies Performance Reporting
Faculties
University Planning
Workshops
Implementation
Results and
Feedback
futures inspired strategy
Strategy Framework

Strategic Thinking

Strategic Decision Making

Strategic Planning

Action Review

futures inspired strategy

Strategy Framework

Foresight Strategic Thinking

Strategic Decision Making

Strategic Planning

Action Review

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 Generic Foresight Model
Inputs things happening

Analysis “what seems to be happening?”

Foresight
Interpretation “what’s really happening?”

Prospection “what might happen?”

Outputs “what might we need to do?”

Copyright © 2000 Joseph Voros

“what will we do?”

“how will we do it?”
Strategy
futures inspired strategy
 A Foresight Framework
Strategic Environmental Scanning
Gathering
Information

Analysis Categorising
What seems to be happening?

Interpretation
Contextualising
Sense Making What’s really happening?

Prospection
Innovation
What could happen?
futures inspired strategy
A Foresight Framework
Strategic Environmental Scanning Gathering
Information

Competitor intelligence, competitive intelligence, business

intelligence, social intelligence. Focus on past, present and
future.
Methods: Delphi analysis, 4Q/11L Scanning Framework

Most scanning work undertaken today

focuses on the past and the present.

futures inspired strategy

A Foresight Framework

Current approaches at this level are largely quantitative in nature.

Analysis
Categorising
What seems to be happening?

Trend analysis, emerging issues analysis,

quantitative benchmarks, cross-impact analysis.

futures inspired strategy

 A Foresight Framework

Interpreting the analysis for the university’s context.

Making sense of the data.

Contextualising Interpretation
Sense Making What’s really happening?
And what does it mean for the university?

Most strategy work stops at this step.

Decisions are made once interpretation has
occurred.
futures inspired strategy
A Foresight Framework

Focus on the future. Deriving a broader range of strategy

options from the analysis: what options are available to us in
the long-term? What might be the impact of those options in
the long-term? What will influence those options? What are
potential obstacles?
Scenarios, visioning etc.

Prospection
Innovation
What could happen?

futures inspired strategy

A Foresight Framework
Integrates a step to allow decision makers TIME

at the BEGINNING of the strategy process

to consider POTENTIAL future events

and POSSIBLE implications for strategy

rather than REACTING to future events which

might have already undermined that strategy by the
time those events become apparent. futures inspired strategy
Building a Strategic Foresight
Capacity

 All individuals have the capacity for foresight – we

use that capacity every day.

 The aim is to move that individual capacity to a

shared, organisational capacity.

futures inspired strategy

Building a Strategic Foresight
Capacity

 Individual foresight is:  Strategic Foresight is:

 unconscious  conscious
 implicit  explicit
 solitary  collective

futures inspired strategy

Building a Strategic Foresight
Capacity

 Understand how successful organisations apply

foresight to inform their organisational strategy.

eg Shell, GBN, CUB, SKb, DEST, Toyota

futures inspired strategy

Building a Strategic Foresight
Capacity

 Generates a challenge: strategic foresight takes

time to develop:
 mangers and leaders do not have much time,
 managers and leaders are rewarded for certainty, not
uncertainty.
 Need to demonstrate value of taking time out in the
short term to consider long term issues
 particularly when urgent imperatives in the ‘here and
now’ need to be dealt with.
futures inspired strategy
Institutional Time

1905 2005 2105

Past Present Future

Universities have a past, present and

future. All three times are interdependent.
One time cannot be considered in
isolation from the other two.

futures inspired strategy

Institutional Time

1908 2004 2108

Past Present Future

Strategy Decisions

Strategy decisions now are based primarily on

interpreting information about the past and present.

futures inspired strategy

Institutional Time

1908 2004 2108

Past Present Future

Strategy Decisions

Strategy decisions today can be strengthened by

interpreting information about the future.

futures inspired strategy

Institutional Time

1908 2004 2108

Past Present Future

Strategy Decisions

Strategic Hindsight Strategic Foresight

Strategic perspectives and interpretation need to

be applied with the benefit of both hindsight and
foresight.

futures inspired strategy

Why strategic foresight?

“The future does not just happen to us; we ourselves

create it by what we do and what we fail to do. It is
we who are making tomorrow what tomorrow will be.

For that reason, futurists think not so much in terms

of predicting the future, as in terms of trying to
decide more wisely what we want the future to be.”
Edward Cornish
President, World Future Society
futures inspired strategy
 Why Strategic Foresight?

All our knowledge is about the past, but all our

decisions are about the future.

What we don’t know we don’t know

What we know
we don’t know

What we think
we know
What we know

Most of what we need to know to make good decisions today is

outside our comprehension: we don’t even know it’s there.

futures inspired strategy

How do you ‘do’ Strategic
Foresight?

 Step 1
 Make a commitment to develop and use explicit futures
processes.
 Give permission for staff to take time out from the here
and now to think about the future.
 Encourage the use of a wide range of methods to
support strategic thinking.

futures inspired strategy

How do you ‘do’ Strategic
Foresight?
 Step 2
 Build a scanning framework – what do we need to know
more about? What do we need to keep an eye on over
time?
 Value multiple sources of information – quantitative,
qualitative, from staff, from experts, hard data,
possibilities…
 Value information that relates directly to strategy
implementation today and information that is a bit more
‘left field’ and seemingly unrelated.
 Scan the mainstream and the periphery.
futures inspired strategy
How do you ‘do’ Strategic
Foresight?

 Step 3
 Systematically and regularly review and interpret
scanning reports using a range of approaches –
 What does this mean?
 Is there anything we need to pay attention to now?

futures inspired strategy

How do you ‘do’ Strategic
Foresight?

 Step 4
 Have regular strategy events or processes to
collectively consider information that has been
gathered over time.

 Step 5
 Make strategy decisions, and review them regularly.
The world can change overnight.

futures inspired strategy

Foresight and Strategy

 Strategic Foresight is about thinking, not doing.

 Thinking helps the doing.

 But … only if time is committed to allow people to

think as well as do.

futures inspired strategy

Foresight and Strategy
Schedule regular
‘thinking’ time.

Systematically
develop and use
strategic scanning to
inform thinking.

Use a range of
Make Strategy futures methods to
structure output.

futures inspired strategy

Foresight and Strategy

 There may be no apparent link between foresight

work and day-to-day work.

 Assumption that tangible results are the only valid

results. Intangible results in terms of changes in
thinking are not readily measured.

The benefit of foresight is only apparent in

hindsight!
futures inspired strategy