1. Strategic Foresight: Linking Foresight & Strategy
Maree Conway

2. Purpose An overview of what foresight is about and
how it relates to strategy development in organisations.
futures inspired strategy

3. 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.
Before I start to debunk those thoughts, let me get some terminology in place.
futures inspired strategy

4. 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

5. Terminology
When we consciously use foresight in organisational processes to inform strategy, we are practising ‘strategic foresight’.
futures inspired strategy

6. Developing Strategy Challenges Knowledge Questions
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?
When we are developing strategy, we need to be able to address these challenges and answer these questions.
Does your organisation have ways to do this now? If you do, great, I need to talk with you, if you don’t, how can you introduce find ways to do this into your processes?
Most organisations have not yet recognised the need to develop strategic foresight as a core organisational capacity.
Adapted from Fahey, 2003
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7. The External Environment of Universities
Social Environment
Driving
Forces
Education
Environment
Factors / Trends Issues / Forces
Social
Technological
Economic
Ecological
Political …
Students
Suppliers
Educational
Organisation
Customers
Graphical detail of van der Heijden’s “transactional” and “contextual” environment, showing Games, Players, Competitors, Referrees and Context Setters, and STEEP… Driving Force factors.
Here it is translated into something that people in an educational institution would understand.
Clients
Competitors
Members of Wider Society
Driving
Forces
Adapted from K. van der Heijden
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8. The Strategic Landscape
‘The Star’—
Our enduring and guiding social role
The purpose of the organisation
• A “future-focused role image”
• Not completed or “used up”
The ‘self’ journeys across the chessboard to the mountain, which lies in the medium term future
The strategic objective:
• A compelling, relevant future
• BHAG—“Big Hairy Audacious Goal” • A concrete, specific goal
• A challenge, but achievable
‘The Mountain’—
What we hope to achieve
The strategic environment:
• Strategic implementation and tactics
• Threats and opportunities
• Actions of other strategic actors
• Driving forces
• Mapped and understood using scenarios
‘The Chessboard’— Issues and challenges we are likely to face
‘The Self’—
Our values and attributes as a strategic player
Strategic identity:
• Current reality
• Self-knowledge
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Values
• Preferences and experience
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“Star, mountain, chessboard, self” image © 1999 Hardin Tibbs

9. 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?
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10. Developing University Strategy
Council/
Executive
Foresight
Individuals
Council/Executive Planning Workshops
Strategic Thinking
Options
Strategic Directions Statement
Council/Executive
Strategy Review and Decision Making
Decisions
Plans
Performance Reporting
Faculties
University Planning Workshops
Strategic Planning
Strategies
Results and Feedback
Implementation
futures inspired strategy

11. Strategic Decision Making
Strategy Framework
Strategic Thinking
Strategic Decision Making
Strategic Planning
Strategy development occurs in three separate but interdependent stages: strategic thinking, strategic decision making and strategic planning.
Strategic thinking is where information is analysed and interpreted to make sense of it for an organisation. It is about generating options.
Strategic decision making is where the decisions are made about which strategy to pursue. Realistically, decision making occurs within the brain of a CEO or Vice-Chancellor.
Strategic planning is about implementation and doing, about action.
Action
Review
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12. Strategic Decision Making
Strategy Framework
Foresight
Strategic Thinking
Strategic Decision Making
Strategic Planning
Foresight informs the strategic thinking stage of strategy development.
Action
Review
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13. Generic Foresight Model
Inputs
things happening
Analysis
“what seems to be happening?”
Foresight
Interpretation
“what’s really happening?”
“what might happen?”
Prospection
“what might we need to do?”
Outputs
Re-iterate a slide they should have seen in the Seminar.
Copyright © 2000 Joseph Voros
“what will we do?”
“how will we do it?”
Strategy
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14. Strategic Environmental Scanning
A Foresight Framework
Strategic Environmental Scanning
Information
Gathering
Analysis
What seems to be happening?
Categorising
Interpretation
What’s really happening?
Contextualising
Sense Making
Foresight is a four level activity which incorporates much of what already happens today in strategy development, as well as a new step called prospection.
Prospection
What could happen?
Innovation
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15. Strategic Environmental Scanning
A Foresight Framework
Strategic Environmental Scanning
Information
Gathering
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.
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16. What seems to be happening?
A Foresight Framework
Current approaches at this level are largely quantitative in nature.
Analysis
What seems to be happening?
Categorising
Trend analysis, emerging issues analysis, quantitative benchmarks, cross-impact analysis.
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17. A Foresight Framework
Interpreting the analysis for the university’s context. Making sense of the data.
Interpretation
What’s really happening?
And what does it mean for the university?
Contextualising
Sense Making
Most strategy work stops at this step. Decisions are made once interpretation has occurred.
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18. 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
What could happen?
Innovation
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19. 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.
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20. 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.
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21. Building a Strategic Foresight Capacity
Individual foresight is:
unconscious
implicit
solitary
Strategic Foresight is:
conscious
explicit
collective
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22. Building a Strategic Foresight Capacity
Understand how successful organisations apply foresight to inform their organisational strategy.
eg Shell, GBN, CUB, SKb, DEST, Toyota
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23. 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.
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24. Institutional Time
1905
2005
2105
Present
Future
Past
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

25. Institutional Time
1908
2004
2108
Present
Future
Past
Strategy Decisions
So…in terms of strategy.
Strategy is about making decisions about future directions. If we accept that the past, present and future are interdependent, then strategy decisions need to take into account all three. But…strategy decisions now are based primarily on interpreting information about the past and present.
Strategy decisions now are based primarily on interpreting information about the past and present.
futures inspired strategy

26. Institutional Time
1908
2004
2108
Present
Future
Past
Strategy Decisions
What if we add in the future?
Strategy decisions today can be strengthened by interpreting information about the future.
futures inspired strategy

27. Institutional Time
1908
2004
2108
Present
Future
Past
Strategy Decisions
Strategic Hindsight
Strategic Foresight
So, we now have strategic hindsight, and strategic foresight.
Strategic perspectives and interpretation need to be applied with the benefit of both hindsight and foresight.
futures inspired strategy

28. 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
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29. 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
This slide is another way of depicting the knowledge dilemma. We might think we know a lot, but we don’t really. But, admitting that in an organisation is not always a wise choice.
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.
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30. 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.
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31. 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.
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32. 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?
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33. 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.
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34. 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.
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35. Foresight and Strategy
Schedule regular ‘thinking’ time.
Systematically develop and use strategic scanning to inform thinking.
Use a range of futures methods to structure output.
Make Strategy
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36. 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!
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