Strategic Foresight

Obvious and complicated contexts assume that the universe is ordered, that you can see cause and effect relationships and there will be a right answer or answers.

Rather, it is what is termed a wicked problem, where no definition can be agreed between stakeholders and which cannot be completely ‘solved’.

The point is not to “pick one preferred future,” and hope for it to come to pass (or, even, work to create it—though there are some situations where acting to create a better future is a useful function of scenarios). Nor is the point to find the most probable future and adapt to it or “bet the company” on it. Rather, the point is to make strategic

The future is totally unknown – so some preparation is needed before you start the journey. For this journey to potential futures (as with most journeys to new places you don’t know yet), you need to expect the unexpected – which can be difficult.

In terms of Strategic Foresight, messes are obstacles in your path to a preferred future – the “what could stop you” influencing not just the future that you want to get to, but also how you get there.

A system has a purpose, even if it is changing and emerging or you can’t see what it is (or it isn’t a system)

Patterns are what you might notice if you look at all the events together.

an explorer of the unknown and as yet unseen.

When you don’t know the purpose of a system it is very hard to understand its behaviour and the impact of actions on the system.