Strategic Foresight: Learning from the Future

Strategic Foresight is of particular interest to me because I'm a provisional member of the Association of Professional Futurists and working on a professional certification in Strategic Foresight through the University of Houston. Lustig's book is a very good introduction to and overview of the futurist discipline. Here are just a few of my many highlights:Leadership is “engaging others…to co-create the future” (11).What is Strategic Foresight? It is not making predictions or fortune telling but “thinking ahead so you can act ahead…anticipate possible futures…forethought…a willingness to explore the future and jointly and collectively make sense of it” (17).Strategic Foresight begins with exploring "the stories you tell yourself (and others) about your past and present, and how these stories affect the way you perceive the future” (28).“One of the easiest ways to shift your thinking is to change the questions you ask” (30).Quoting Martin Seligman (whom I studying psychology with through a University of Pennsylvania online program): “An organism’s ability to improve its chances for survival lies in the future, not in the past” (47). Most metrics we use for this purpose are lagging vs. leading indicators.“The future is a moving target. And those who are prepared for multiple possibilities are those who will thrive” (55).Five qualities are needed for organizational change / transformation / renewal: Insight, Options, Machinery, Values, and Narrative.An Agile operating model is an example of “Machinery.”The most important of these is Narrative because it embodies everything else, regardless of the claims we make about everything else. “…it is imperative that your organizational Narrative is thoroughly researched and understood and that the underlying assumptions are identified and challenged” (59).Narrative is composed of words. “Language isn’t just a tool to describe reality, it creates our reality” (64).The most significant blockers to exploring future possibilities and change: Find the Flaw, Not Responsible, Us vs. Them, Either/Or, Scarcity.Another is “hedgehog” thinking: “a single discipline or expertise will be sufficient to solve a problem” (120). Or “a particular tool” or framework is sufficient (123).Recognize ambiguity and uncertainty gifts because “here lies the opportunity” (78).A good overview of Strategic Foresight tools includes:Personal and Organizational LifelineThree Horizons Framework: what is fading, what is transitioning, what is emerging--where these intersect is the Magic Triangle where we identify next small stepsEnvironmental ScanningMap MakingFutures WheelScenario PlanningAppreciative InquirySystems Thinking / Cynefin FrameworkCausal Layered AnalysisVERGE FrameworkFive stars--highly recommended!

One could re-title this book "Strategic Foresight & Inner Sight." As much as it has practical tools and exercises for strategic thinking, it also has tools and challenges for examining how you, the individual, think about and respond to the future. In fact, many of these tools can even be used to plan for one's individual future and success. The more I go back to it, the richer I find this book to be for challenging assumptions and building thinking skills.

Starting to read this book brought with it that dèjà vu feeling that I’d seen these words before. Perhaps not the exact words, but the intent, the meaning which I’d written about in  Foresight Infused Strategy: A How-To Guide for Using Foresight in Practice . Patricia and I have already commented on the similarities between our books, but there are significant differences too.We both wrote books based on our practice and experience, we both want foresight used routinely in organisations, we both think language is critical in the sense of creating reality and both books are practical in orientation and focused on people. Patricia’s is focused on leaders, mine on people doing strategy. Patricia talks about a foresight muscle; I talked about a foresight switch. I see the use of strategic foresight as the biggest gap in conventional strategy processes, and Patricia writes: The practice of Strategic Foresight is one of the most important, relevant and necessary practices that any leader can have and develop today (p4).The book starts with an overview of strategic foresight before setting the scene for using foresight then moves to understanding how we think about the past, present and future how the stories we create to make sense of that (this chapter includes some excellent ways for people to understand and prepare for their own future journey), exploring in more detail how we think about the future before spending time on assumptions, perceptions and paradigms that enable or constrain how we think about the future. We then move to chapters discussing some tools and approaches in more detail.Each chapter discusses specific tools and methods that covers the field from the familiar (horizon scanning) to the less often used (VERGE and Causal Layered Analysis), with case studies and exercises to provide practical examples. I particularly valued the discussion on Appreciative Inquiry and how to make it happen in practice. Indeed, there is am an impressive toolbox provided in the book for both those new to foresight and old hands – and plenty of information to help people use the tools in practice.The final chapter – Flexing your Foresight Muscles - pulls it all together in a clear discussion of how to be strategic foresight fit by strengthening and using your foresight muscles to navigate change, complexity and uncertainty to get to the future you want. A final review is provided about what is needed to start using foresight, reminding us of the comprehensive toolbox created by the approaches used in previous chapters.There were some new and remembered things for me: the concept of the foresight muscle was new and useful, the reminder about the value of mental time travel, the usefulness of the foxes, hedgehogs and eagles metaphor for using foresight, and the image of decoupling from your baggage of the past and the present to be able to face the future. It reminded me of the need to refresh my own toolbox.This is such a well written book, with clear discussion of concepts throughout. The wide range of tools and methods discussed in particularly valuable. It also one of the most accessible discussions I’ve read about using foresight in organisations and increases the range of books available to anyone interested in what foresight is and how to use it in practice.There’s much, much more in the book, too much to do justice to in this review. It’s full of ways to build and flex your foresight muscle, how to integrate foresight into your leadership practice, and how to start using it in practical ways. If you are interested in foresight and want to find out what it means, how to use it and how to become futures ready, it’s an essential read.

Recommended this book by a colleague to help with an assign.Well written introduction to the topic that provides a clear grasp of the key concepts.

A common boardroom feeling is that never before have we needed more hindsight sooner. Couple that with the increasingly common feeling that the tried and tested approaches to strategy formulation are no longer enough. They still work - as far as they go - but they need to be supplemented with additional tools for looking ahead further than has become the norm, and with more intellectual rigour. This book shows us a way of doing that.

As a practising Futurist and Strategic Foresight Consultant I find this text readily accessible and hugely valuable. Much of my work is now in the field of "Anticipatory Leadership", and I shall be referring clients from public, private and community to the work.

Good

The book does not elaborate much on the actual methods strategic foresight uses, and gives only a few examples of how it can be applied. I did not learn much from the book. While the author is a practitioner, the book is both thin on theory and on practice.