building a strategic foresight capacity

Building a Strategic Foresight Capacity

AAIR Forum, November 2007

Maree Conway

What epitaph do you want on your tombstone?

And why does it matter?

• The impact of human activities on the planet is unmistakable and profound.

A Civilisational Challenge

• The impact of human activities on organisations is unmistakable and profound.

An Organisational Challenge

Foresight

Everyone has an innate foresight capacity to think about the future. We do it everyday, but usually we don’t recognise it. To develop an individual foresight capacity, we first have to recognise that we have it, and that we need to use it.

Foresight

Foresight is the ability to take a forward view. It enables action to be taken today with reference to, and within the context of, the future.

Strategic foresight is the capacity that emerges in organisations when people whose foresight capacities are overt, work together to build strategic processes that take a long view.

Strategic Foresight

• We implicitly expect continuity.• We trust data, but not our intuition.• We don’t think holistically from a

systems perspective.• It is politically incorrect to suggest that

the future is not rosy.• We hold unquestioned assumptions

about the way we see the world.

• We have closed minds.

So why is this not the norm?

• What’s your work environment like at the moment?

But first…

Head down, bum up – so you miss what’s going on? Don’t have time to think?

Too many decisions to make, not enough time or information to make them properly?

• Too many are still unhappy with, or don’t trust, or don’t feel aligned to, their world of work. People say that their lives and organisations lack purpose, they don’t really trust leaders, and they feel their values – what’s really important to them in life – are too often at odds with what they do at work. They don’t feel listened to and don’t feel decisions are being made with the “long view”.

(Fabian Dattner)

Something’s Missing?

• “Managers who get caught in the trap of overwhelming demands become prisoners of routine. They do not have time to notice opportunities. Their habituated work prevents them from taking the first necessary step toward harnessing willpower: developing the capacity to dream an idea into existence and transforming it into a concrete existence.”

Heike Bruch & Sumantra Ghoshal, A Bias for Action: How Effective Managers Harness Their Willpower, Achieve Results, and Stop Wasting Time, HBSP, 2004

The Trap of Overwhelming Demands

• Most cases of overwhelming demands stem not from managers’ actual work situations but from how they deal with those situations:– you can never find time for the important

things– you feel under constant pressure– you think you are indispensible

The Trap of Overwhelming Demands

• Failing to influence demands, just reacting to them (not questioning whether they can be re-shaped).

• Am I busy with the right things?

The Trap of Overwhelming Demands

• Is it easier to be busy than set long term priorities?

• Managers who complain about having too little time often thrive on the sense of importance that busyness generates.

And…

• Quick fixes

• Short Term

• Language

• 24/7

• Tinkering with the machine, never considering whether you need a new one

• Unhealthy

Busyness Syndrome

• I’m too busy dealing with today to think about the future.– I can only focus on the urgent, not the

important.– I can only think about what’s on my desk, not

what’s going on out there.

The impact of the busyness syndrome

“You want me to think about what!!!”

The Result?

Our organisations will tend to be purposeless wastelands, populated by the perpetually busy and the inherently unhappy.

Stephen Johnson, What do you do for a living, 2007

• Tired• Disillusioned• Good people leave• Doing what’s

expected, nothing more

Tragic vs Triumphant

• Aligned to articulated belief system

• Motivating sense of purpose

• Core values supported by behaviour

• Tired• Disillusioned• Good people leave• Doing what’s

expected, nothing more

Tragic vs Triumphant

• Aligned to articulated belief system

• Motivating sense of purpose

• Core values supported by behaviour

External focus Internal focus

• Think long term.

• Take a long term view.

• Have moved beyond the busyness syndrome.

• Have a strategic foresight capacity.

Triumphant Organisations

Exercise 1

Developing Strategic Foresight

Development of Foresight

Individual Organisation Social

FROM TO TO

Development of Foresight

Individual Organisation Social

Consumed by busyness

Obsessed with the short term

Fixated on growth asstrategic driver

FROM TO TO

BUT…. BUT…. BUT….

Development of Foresight

Individual Organisation Social

Consumed by busyness

Obsessed with the short term

Fixated on growth asstrategic driver

IndividualForesight

Long term thinking – strategic foresight

Focus onSustainability as strategic driver

FROM TO TO

BUT…. BUT…. BUT….

NEED NEED NEED

Development of Foresight

Individual Organisation Social

FROM TO TO

Levels Indicators

Level 5 Social capacity for foresight as an emergent property

Long term thinking becomes a social norm

Level 4 Futures concepts and ideas enable a futures discourse to develop

Foresight routinely applied in most organisations

Level 3 Futures tools and methodologies increase analytical power

Widespread use of standard foresight tools and methods

Level 2 People in organisations begin to talk about and use futures processes, projects and structures in their work

Futures concepts and ideas become influential via discourse

Level 1 Raw capacities and perceptions of the human brain-mind system

Unreflective use of forward thinking in daily life of individuals

Levels Indicators

Level 5 Long term thinking becomes a social norm

Level 4 Foresight routinely applied in most organisations

Level 3 Widespread use of standard foresight tools and methods

Level 2 Futures concepts and ideas become influential via discourse

Level 1 Unreflective use of forward thinking in daily life of individuals

Overt recognition and use

Critical mass of people

Value add is clear

Benefit of change in society is clear

Development of Foresight

If you don’t care about the future, who will?

But…are we too late?

Party Pray Pioneer

• The most fundamental work in the 21st Century for all persons, organizations and whole societies is to become conscious architects and intentional co-creators of new ways of living that truly fit the unique conditions that are emerging in the 21st Century.

No…

Ruben NelsonForesight Canada

Strategic foresight...past, present and future

If you think strategic planning is the name of the game, think again!

• The organisational ‘home’ of strategic foresight.

• AKA futures thinking

• AKA Long term thinking

Strategic Thinking

Strategic Decision Making

• Documenting

• Doing

• Tracking

• Reporting

Strategic Planning

• Strategic plans that all look remarkably similar.

• A planning process that is greeted with groans rather than glee.

• Workshops where you can’t escape the work waiting back at the office rather than thinking strategically.

But…right now…

• Internal and external

• Important not urgent

• Long term not short term

• Sustainable not a quick fix

• Meaningful not a chore

• Authentic input not lip service

• Think differently…

What needs to change?

• What really matters?

• Align the internal with the external

• Build a shared view of the future

• Focus on the long term to strengthen decision making today

• And only then, write a good plan.

So, in strategy

The focus is people, not the plan.

• Strategy is only sustainable through people.

• Only people have a foresight capacity.

Because…

• Strategy without people is strategy without a future.

• Everybody has the innate capacity for foresight.

• But, in organisational planning processes, that capacity is often not tapped and gets buried by busy work.

Strategic Foresight

• We tend to rely on the foresight of our leaders, and assume (hope) that their foresight is adequate.

• Remember the wisdom of crowds.

Strategic Foresight

Big Picture

Today (now)

Big Picture

Today (now)

Big Picture

Today (now)

Big Picture

Today (now)

Long Picture

Future View

Big Picture

Today (now)

Long Picture

Future View

Uncertainties

Big Picture

Today (now)

Long Picture

Future View

Uncertainties

Red Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy

Big Picture

Today (now)

Long Picture

Future View

Uncertainties

Red Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy

Trends

Big Picture

Today (now)

Long Picture

Future View

Uncertainties

Red Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy

Trends

Values

Big Picture

Today (now)

Long Picture

Future View

Uncertainties

Red Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy

Trends

Values

Big Picture

Today (now)

Big Picture

Today (now)

Long Picture

Future View

Uncertainties

Red Ocean Strategy

Blue Ocean Strategy

Trends

Values

Futures ready strategy is flexible strategy that readies people in organisations to respond quickly and effectively to the challenges and uncertainties of the future.

• The outlines of the 21st-century management model are already clear. Decision-making will be more peer based; the tools of creativity will be widely distributed in organizations. Ideas will compete on an equal footing. Strategies will be built from the bottom up. Power will be a function of competence rather than of position. In terms of the future of management, we’re at the beginning of what will be a fairly long journey. You can see some of the pieces starting to come together, but we’re not there yet.”

It’s still changing…

Gary Hamel, The Future of Management, 2007

Exercise 2

Building a Strategic Foresight Capacity

AAIR Forum, November 2007

Maree Conway

Is this making sense?

How do you build futures ready strategy?

Using Futures Tools

• Strategic thinking is not random.

• It is directed towards a particular strategic space/decision that needs to be made…

• …or towards testing the validity of existing strategy in rapidly changing external environments.

It’s about strategic thinking…

It’s about strategic thinking…

Long term

Divergent

Incomplete information

Beyond linear

• Futures tools provide ways to think long term, to think strategically.

• In your work sheets (Exercise 3: Step 1), note down as we work through these tools how they might be useful for your organisation.

Futures Tools

• Different tools for different needs

• Different tools for different stages of strategy development

• How do you decide?

Using Futures Tools

• Discover– Scanning, emerging issues, staff views,

delphi, trend analysis, forecasting

• Think– Causal layered analysis, scenarios, visioning,

backcasting

• Embed– Strategy development processes and

practices, reporting, sharing, collaborating

Futures Tools

Generic Foresight Process

Copyright Joseph Voros, 2001

• Environmental Scanning– Trend Analysis – what’s going on out there?– Emerging Issues Analysis – what’s happening

at the edges

• Causal Layered Analysis – building shared views

• Scenario Planning – creating preferred futures

Dipping into Futures

• Overview of the process

• How to do it

• When to use it

Dipping into Futures

Exercise 3: Step 1

Environmental Scanning

Competitor Intelligenceunderstanding the nature of our competitors and their likely responses to change

Competitive Intelligenceunderstanding how our competitors interact with the business and market environment in which they operate

Business Intelligenceunderstanding the present and future environments with a focus on future competitive environments

Environmental Scanningdeveloping a broad understanding of the external environment

Social Intelligenceunderstanding how Australia uses its intelligence (knowledge industry and information networks) to meet its developmental challenges

Future Viewbuilding a long-term foresight view about the future of the planet

Long-term

TIMEHORIZON

Short-term

Narrow SCOPE OF INFORMATION GATHERING Broad

Adapted from Choo, Information Management for the Intelligent Organization, 1998

Where environmental scanning fits…

Organisation

Industry

Learning

Gaming

Funding

Engagement

Online

Sustainability

VocationalImperative

The External Environment??

Organisation

Global

Industry

Technology

Lifestyle

Values

Politics

Economy

Environment

Demographics &generational change

Learning

Gaming

Funding

Engagement

Online

Sustainability

VocationalImperative

The External Environment

Globalisation

Organisation

Global

Industry

Technology

Lifestyle

Values

Politics

Economy

Environment

Demographics &generational change

Learning

Gaming

Funding

Engagement

Online

Sustainability

VocationalImperative

The External Environment

GlobalisationWildcard

Wildcard

Wildcard

Wildcard

Trends And Emerging Issues

Emerging Issues

Trends

Mainstream

Time

Number of cases; degree of public awareness

Scientists, artists, radicals, mystics

Newspapers, magazines, websites, journals

Government Institutions

Few cases, local focus

Global, multiple dispersed cases, trends and megatrends

Adapted from the work of Graham Molitor and Wendy Schultz, and Everett Rogers

InnovatorsEarly adopters

Late Adopters

Late Majority

Laggards

Today

Look on the fringe

(weird and whacky!)

Worldview issues will affect uptake at this stage – “I don’t believe that!”

Event

Trend(grouping of events)

Driver(moves trends in certain directions,

broad in scope and long term in nature)

Traffic jams

Increasing mobility

Function of cities

What is the counter trend? What is the wildcard?

• How do I see the world – what are my biases and blind spots?

• How will I filter the information? What will I trust and what will I reject?

• How will I analyse the information for my context?

• How will I report my findings so they are accepted as credible?

Environmental Scanning

• Must understand how we filter information and see the world before we can claim to be able to interpret that information.

• Our filters mean we miss things that might be important – because we just don’t see them.

In here

• Scan to inform the strategic decision or scan to be able to ask questions (Choo 1998)

• Use a scanning frame to filter information– STEEP– Integral

Out there

• Looking for trends, drivers and emerging issues related to strategic decision/space.

• Need to assess their likelihood and potential impact for that space, and consequent decisions to be made.

• And, need to consider how trends might impact each other (scenarios are good for this)

Environmental Scanning

• Extrapolations of the past and present, not future facts

• Counter-trends• Wildcards• Uncertain future

trajectories• What assumptions

underpin your thinking?

Using Trends

But don’t get lost in the data smog!

• Trends don’t tell you anything – someone has to interpret the trend for it to be meaningful.

• Otherwise you are engaged in trend spotting as opposed to trend analysis.

Using Trends

The more people involved in the interpretation process, the stronger the interpretation.

• ES is about mainstream trends.

• Emerging Issues is about what’s at the horizon, at the periphery.

• Realm of the weird and the whacky, so difficult to present with credibility.

Emerging Issues Analysis

• Starts with a shift in values/perspectives – need to search at the fringes

• Emergence – people start to talk about it, but a minority – easier to influence now

• Champion – look for the thought leaders and rebels

• Defining event – brings the issue to public attention – morphs into a trend/harder to shape

Emerging Issues Analysis

• Because emerging issues are weak, obscure, crazy, and fragile, good practical people usually ignore or ridicule them. Since these “useful” ideas are not part of their commonsense, people conclude they are nonsense.

• And this fact led me to formulate Dator’s Second Law of the Future. Namely, “Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous”.

Emerging Issues Analysis

Jim Dator, US Futurist

A global survey on emerging environmental issues United Nations Environment Program, Global Environmental Outlook, 2000

www.grida.no/geo2000/english/0224.htm

• What information is out there?

• Where do I look for it?

• What are the major driving forces?

• What big surprises are on the horizon?

• What might be significant for us that others don’t yet see?

• Where do I need to look to balance my blind spots?

ES – How To

• Map your relevant drivers/trends/issues

• Do a cross impact analysis

• Determine which ones are critical, mainstream or emerging

• Do more research

• Consider implications for your organisation

• Use that as input into prospection processes

ES – How to

• Make use of metascanning services (eg Shaping Tomorrow), Tomorrow Project, lots of others.

• Things to consider:– Who will scan (central or dispersed)– Storing your scanning hits– Making them accessible – Reporting findings (reports, emails,

presentations, meetings, newsletter)

ES – How To

• All the time.

• Continuous process

• Use to inform specific information needs, or to seek out information that is generally related to strategic needs.

Trends – When to Use

• All the time

• Continuous process

• Particularly useful for challenging long held assumptions about how things will be.

• Good for ‘what if’ questions.

Emerging Issues – When to use

• Choo, CW, Information Management for the Intelligent Organization, 1998.

• DEFRA’s Horizon Scanning Strategy for Science (2002) http://horizonscanning.defra.gov.uk

• UK Government Foresight Program’s Horizon Scanning Centre http://www.foresight.gov.uk/HORIZON_SCANNING_CENTRE/index.html

ES – Some Good References

Causal Layered Analysis

• Tapping into people’s assumptions and worldviews about an issue.

• Accepting diversity of opinion, and surfacing that opinion.

• Building a shared view of a way forward.

Causal Layered Analysis

• Can be challenging.

• Requires people to be open to other perspectives.

• Can require compromise.

Causal Layered Analysis

Litany

Social Causes

Worldviews

Myth/Metaphor

What is visible and accepted, easily articulated, not questioned

What is beneath the surface that drives the litany, often contested when articulated.

• Litany – what’s being said and by whom?

• Drivers – what’s driving the litany?

• Worldviews – whose worldview is dominant? Who is being ‘othered’?

• Myth/Metaphor/Story – what underpins the worldview?

Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) Step 1 - Understanding

CLA Steps

• The layers are causally linked. A change in approach in one layer affects all other layers.

• No layer is more privileged – each layer represents what has been surfaced about a particular way of seeing the issue.

• What future do we want?• What stories and myths

describe that future?• What values do we want to

underpin that future?• How do we start to create

that future?– How?– Who?– What?

• What can we do now?

CLA Step 2 - Rebuilding

• When you have strong, diverse views about an issue that is preventing you from making a needed change.

• When there are elements of hostility in interactions about an issue.

• When you need to develop a shared view of an issue.

CLA – when to use

• Sohail Inayatullah, www.metafuture.org

• The CLA Reader (edited by Sohail Inayatullah)– Serafino de Simone – “Causal Layered

Analysis: a cookbook approach”

CLA - References

Scenario Planning

• Explore potential futures for your organisation• Test strategy• Risk management• Build new strategy• Find the blue ocean• Build a shared view of the future operating

environment and what needs to be monitored

Scenario Planning

Scenario Planning – TypesScenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Inductive

Scenario 1 Scenario 2

Scenario 3 Scenario 4

Deductive

Official Future

Alternative scenario

Incremental

Vision

Normative

Adapted from Ged Davis, Scenarios as a tool for the 21st century, Shell International, 2002

Basic Scenario ProcessStage 1: OrientInterviewsFocal issue

Stage 2: ExploreCritical uncertaintiesPre-determined elements

Stage 3: SynthesizeScenario frameworkScenarios

Stage 4: ActImplicationsStrategic agenda

Stage 5: MonitorLeading indicatorsMonitoring system

Adapted from GBN 2004

Basic Scenario Process

Stage 2: ExploreCritical uncertaintiesPre-determined elements

Stage 3: SynthesizeScenario frameworkScenarios

Stage 4: ActImplicationsStrategic agenda

Stage 5: MonitorLeading indicatorsMonitoring system

Adapted from GBN 2004

Stage 1: OrientInterviewsFocal issue

Define the decision. Involve people.

Basic Scenario ProcessStage 1: OrientInterviewsFocal issue

Stage 2: ExploreCritical uncertaintiesPre-determined elements

Stage 3: SynthesizeScenario frameworkScenarios

Stage 4: ActImplicationsStrategic agenda

Stage 5: MonitorLeading indicatorsMonitoring system

Adapted from GBN 2004

Use your trends and emerging issues analysis here.

Basic Scenario ProcessStage 1: OrientInterviewsFocal issue

Stage 2: ExploreCritical uncertaintiesPre-determined elements

Stage 3: SynthesizeScenario framework and scenarios

Stage 4: ActImplicationsStrategic agenda

Stage 5: MonitorLeading indicatorsMonitoring system

Adapted from GBN 2004

Processes that involve people to build a shared view of the future; use CLA here.

Basic Scenario ProcessStage 1: OrientInterviewsFocal issue

Stage 2: ExploreCritical uncertaintiesPre-determined elements

Stage 3: SynthesizeScenario frameworkScenarios

Stage 4: ActImplicationsStrategic agenda

Stage 5: MonitorLeading indicatorsMonitoring system

Adapted from GBN 2004

Consider options. Make decisions and document them in plans.

Basic Scenario ProcessStage 1: OrientInterviewsFocal issue

Stage 2: ExploreCritical uncertaintiesPre-determined elements

Stage 3: SynthesizeScenario frameworkScenarios

Stage 4: ActImplicationsStrategic agenda

Stage 5: MonitorLeading indicatorsMonitoring system

Adapted from GBN 2004

Track progress and early warning signals.

• The problem you are dealing with is not central to your

organisational strategy and/or your problem and solution are clear.

• The outcome is largely predetermined due to internal or external

forces.

• The leadership wants to maintain the status quo.

• There is too much urgency to step back for a reflective and

creative conversation.

• Your desired outcomes are poorly aligned with your dedicated

resources.

Scenario Planning – When Not to Use

GBN, What if: the art of scenario thinking for non-profits, 2004

• You are dealing with a strategic issue and the solution is unclear.

• You are working in a highly uncertain environment.

• There is leadership support for the scenario thinking process.

• Your organisation is open to change and dialogue.

• You can attract the resources necessary for a successful initiative.

Scenario Planning – When to Use

GBN, What if: the art of scenario thinking for non-profits, 2004

• Two classics:

• Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View

• Kees vander Heijden, Scenario Planning: The Art of Strategic Conversation.

Scenario Planning - References

Exercise 3: Step 2

Bringing it altogether:Strategic Foresight

• Strategic foresight is not a mainstream term in tertiary education.

• Decision makers will need to be educated about its purpose, its nature and its benefits.

Strategic Foresight

Strategic Decision Makers

• Strategic Foresight takes time to support and develop.

• Strategic Foresight is buried by organisational group think, so specific processes need to be put in place to nurture it.

Strategic Foresight

• It’s also buried by the busyness syndrome.

• If you want to change the way you do strategy in your organisation, you have to move beyond busyness.

• This takes time.

Strategic Foresight

• Strategic Foresight can’t be measured using traditional metrics (the value of foresight is only apparent in hindsight).

• And, value will need to be defined.

Strategic Foresight

• Possible value:– better plans (shorter, clearer, accepted and used)– measuring what matters, not what you have the data

for– beyond data driven decision making (people)– improving the quality of information and thinking that

goes into strategic decision making– innovation – new products/ideas (blue ocean)– better understanding of the external environment and

how it might develop

Strategic Foresight

• Quick assessment of the issue• Which key questions need answering? • What's over the horizon? • What's really going on? • How might the future unfold? • What are others doing? • Where are we now? • How could we respond? • What shall we do? • How might we do it?

• What do we do right now?   

Ask Simple Questions

Shaping Tomorrow, 2007

• Take the future into account when making decisions about the future. It is possible.

Strategic Foresight

• Institutions need to ensure that their activities are:– relevant to the market– financially viable– organisationally sustainable– high quality

• And…meaningful to staff?

What’s the point?

But…are we too late?

Party Pray Pioneer

If you don’t care about the future of your organisation, who will?

Back to Work

• Using futures thinking and tools improves our decision-making and our lives, on a personal, organisation, and community/social and global level … but, building the future into strategy development and implementation requires…. an enlightened CEO and upper management that sees the need for this sort of thinking. This, unfortunately, remains the small minority of situations.

Andy Hines, 2002

• Are you busy with the right things?

• Are your values at work?

• Are you trapped in the data smog?

• Are you being a good ancestor?

What can you do?

Exercise 4: Back to Work

• Knowledge Base of Futures Studies, Foresight International (http://www.foresightinternational.com.au)

• University Futures (http://www.universityfutures.org)

• Peter Bishop and Andy Hines, Thinking About the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight

• Presentation will be available at: http://www.slideshare.net/mkconway

General References

If you don’t care about the future, who will?

Your challenge

Questions?More information:http://www.thinkingfutures.netmaree.conway@thinkingfutures.netTel: 03 90169506Skype: mkconway1