Bringing True Strategic Foresight Back to Business

Research has found that strategic foresight has a significant impact on an organisation’s bottom line – those who think about the future could be looking at up to 33% higher profitability and 200% higher market capitalisation within their industries.

1. Foresight has a trend problem — today’s trend hunting is largely a by-product of a linear, mechanistic, and extractive system that hopes to profit off of the “next big thing,” and is also mired in a hyper-masculine perspective of what’s important or what should be examined.


2. Foresight has a time problem — “This or that will happen in the next 1, 3,

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To meet these challenges and increase the impact of foresight work, we need to rethink our approach from the very beginning of a project.

• Foresight has an action problem (too quick to action before considering alternatives, possibilities and consequences due to our preference for short-termism, quick wins, productivity, efficiency, etc.)


• Foresight has a “past”problem (assuming that the future will always mirror the past and present, when both the nature of the future is changing and o

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Summary.

My observation is that leadership teams get caught in a cycle of addressing long-term risk with rigid, short-term solutions, and in the process they invite entropy. Teams that rely on traditional linear timelines get caught in a cycle of tactical responses to what feels like constant change being foisted upon them from outside forces. Over time, th... See more

The individual’s ability to cope with uncertainty

Organizations are created, powered, and led by people. To lead organizations well, we train people in disciplines such as marketing, finance, and leadership. But uncertainty presents a special challenge since few of us have received training in how to deal with it. As a result, although we may call ... See more