maree conway strategic foresight: linking foresight & strategy
TRANSCRIPT
Maree Conway
Strategic Foresight: Linking Foresight & Strategy
futures inspired strategy
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
Adapted from K. van der Heijden
Education Environment
Social Environment
Suppliers
Clients
Competitors
EducationalOrganisation
Driving Forces
Driving Forces
Factors / Trends Issues / ForcesSocial
Technological
Economic
Ecological
Political
…
Students
Customers
Members of Wider Society
futures inspired strategy
The ‘self’ journeys across the chessboard to the mountain, which lies in the medium term future
‘The Star’—Our enduring and guiding social role
‘The Mountain’—What we hope to achieve
‘The Chessboard’— Issues and challenges we are likely to face
‘The Self’—Our values and attributes as a strategic player
The purpose of the organisation• A “future-focused role image” • Not completed or “used up”
The strategic objective: • A compelling, relevant future• BHAG—“Big Hairy Audacious Goal” • A concrete, specific goal • A challenge, but achievable
The strategic environment: • Strategic implementation and tactics• Threats and opportunities• Actions of other strategic actors• Driving forces• Mapped and understood using scenarios
Strategic identity:• Current reality• Self-knowledge• Strengths and weaknesses• Values• Preferences and experience
“Star, mountain, chessboard, self” image © 1999 Hardin Tibbs
The Strategic Landscape
futures inspired strategy
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
Strategic Thinking
Strategy Review and Decision Making
Strategic Planning
Options
PlansPerformance Reporting
FacultiesUniversity Planning
Workshops
Decisions
Foresight
Strategic Directions Statement
Council/Executive
Strategies
IndividualsCouncil/
Executive
Council/Executive Planning Workshops
Results and Feedback
Implementation
futures inspired strategy
Strategy Framework
Strategic Thinking
Strategic Decision Making
Strategic Planning
Action Review
futures inspired strategy
Strategy Framework
Strategic Thinking
Strategic Decision Making
Strategic Planning
Action Review
Foresight
futures inspired strategy
Inputs
Strategy
Outputs
Analysis
Interpretation
“what might we need to do?”
“what will we do?”“how will we do it?”
“what’s really happening?”
“what seems to be happening?”
things happening
Foresight
“what might happen?” Prospection
Copyright © 2000 Joseph Voros
Generic Foresight Model
futures inspired strategy
Analysis
What seems to be happening?
A Foresight Framework
Strategic Environmental Scanning
Information
Interpretation
What’s really happening?
Prospection
What could happen?
Gathering
Categorising
ContextualisingSense Making
Innovation
futures inspired strategy
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.
futures inspired strategy
A Foresight Framework
Analysis
What seems to be happening?Categorising
Trend analysis, emerging issues analysis, quantitative benchmarks, cross-impact analysis.
Current approaches at this level are largely quantitative in nature.
futures inspired strategy
A Foresight Framework
InterpretationWhat’s really happening?
And what does it mean for the university?
ContextualisingSense Making
Interpreting the analysis for the university’s context. Making sense of the data.
Most strategy work stops at this step. Decisions are made once interpretation has
occurred.
futures inspired strategy
A Foresight Framework
Prospection
What could happen?Innovation
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.
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:
unconscious implicit solitary
Strategic Foresight is:
conscious explicit 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
Past
Present Future
20051905 2105
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
Past
Present Future
2004
Strategy Decisions
Strategy decisions now are based primarily on interpreting information about the past and present.
1908 2108
futures inspired strategy
Institutional Time
Past
Present Future
2004
Strategy Decisions
Strategy decisions today can be strengthened by interpreting information about the future.
1908 2108
futures inspired strategy
Institutional Time
Past
Present Future
2004
Strategy Decisions
Strategic perspectives and interpretation need to be applied with the benefit of both hindsight and foresight.
1908 2108
Strategic Hindsight Strategic 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 CornishPresident, World Future Society
futures inspired strategy
Why Strategic Foresight?
What we don’t know we don’t knowWhat we know we don’t 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.
All our knowledge is about the past, but all our decisions are about the future.
What we think we know
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
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.
How do you ‘do’ Strategic Foresight?
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
Systematically develop and use
strategic scanning to inform thinking.
Schedule regular ‘thinking’ time.
Use a range of futures methods to structure
output.Make Strategy
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!