Strategic Foresight:

Most business analysts have little

experience or formal training in
Framing the key issues affecting your organization,
strategic foresight, but futurists can
offer clear and useful guidance in scanning the environment to see how trends may
“best practices.” Drawing on the
wisdom of leading futurists in both play out, and envisioning possible—and desirable
the consulting and academic arenas,
the following framework will help —outcomes are all part of the strategic-foresight
you successfully apply strategic fore-
sight in your organization. These are process. Incorporating this framework into your
the key ideas that one needs to think
about in doing strategic foresight in organizational culture can help you move forward
today’s challenging environment of
constant change and multiple bot- with clarity, creativity, and confidence.
tom lines.
The framework that emerges from
the experiences of professional futur-
ists focuses on what would be most By Andy Hines
critical to an organization’s success
in futuring: ©2006 World Future Society
• Framing: attitude, audience, 7910 Woodmont Avenue, Suite 450
work environment, rationale and Bethesda, MD 20814
purpose, objectives, and teams. U.S.A.
• Scanning: the system, history All rights reserved.
and context of the issue, and how to
scan for information regarding the
future of the issue.
• Forecasting: drivers and uncer-
tainties, tools, diverging and con-
verging approaches, and alterna-
tives.
• Visioning: implications of the
forecast, and envisioning designed
outcomes.
• Planning: strategy and options
for carrying out the vision.
• Acting: communicating the re-
sults, developing action agendas,
and institutionalizing strategic
thinking and intelligence systems.
These six phases of the strategic-
foresight process are not necessarily
arranged in step-by-step chronologi-
cal order, but rather in roughly the
order most commonly encountered
when we engage in a strategic-fore-
sight exercise. Some teams might go
immediately into Visioning after the
Framing phase, for instance, but Vi-
sioning more typically follows the
Forecasting phase.
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18 THE FUTURIST September-October 2006

The State of the Art
Framing: Organizing the
Issues at Hand
Framing helps analysts to scope
problems that require strategic fore-
sight. Investing the time to clearly
frame your objective and how to
address it will pay big dividends in
later phases of the strategic-foresight
process. Far too many strategic-fore-
sight activities—and business analy-
ses in general—end up addressing
and “solving” the wrong problem.
The organization then faces the
prospect of starting over, with less
confidence in the process, or simply
abandons it altogether.
The long-term future is naturally
fuzzy and uncertain, and it is hard to
address an issue as vague as “What
will ‘X’ technology look like in 10
years?” How deeply do you need to
go into describing it (how long
should your report be)? How many
alternative scenarios or images
should you generate? Unfortunately,
organizations and foresight teams
may be tempted to “get on with it”
and take action right away, thus
skipping over the essential framing
process.
That urge should be resisted.
Strategic foresight is different from
the typical business challenge. There
are no cut-and-dried, right-and-
wrong answers in strategic foresight,
and it is not always clear if the or-
ganization is on the right path as the
activity proceeds. Dealing with the
ambiguity inherent in strategic fore-
sight requires an attitude different
from simply providing the right data
or information.
Another way to keep the framing
process working effectively for the
organization undertaking strategic
foresight is to set specific objectives,
translating the rationale and purpose
into tangible outcomes. The process
of strategic foresight may be fuzzy,
but its outcomes should not be, or
bottom-line-oriented organizations
will reject it. The team undertaking a
strategic-foresight exercise should
understand precisely what their
analysis can and cannot deliver.
Resistance may also emerge from
participants who see the framing
step as redundant; in other cases, a
sensitive core issue might be touched
on that those involved in the process
would prefer to avoid rather than
confront. And participants may sim-
ply disagree with each other on the
objectives of the exercise; they’re
only human. This is when the team
leader needs to slow down, be more
careful, and resolve the disagree-
ments, or else they will come back to
undermine the process and the final
result later on.
Scanning: The Organizational
Context
Once the strategic-foresight team
is clear about its purpose and the is-
sue areas that need to be examined,
the boundaries and scope of an ac-
tivity, it begins to scan the internal
and external environment for infor-
mation and trends relating to the is-
sue at hand.
Internally, the team wants to learn
the organization’s experience with
THE FUTURIST
the issue. Externally, the team im-
merses itself in what’s going on out-
side regarding the issue. The goal is
to come up with a mix of basic or
fundamental driving forces that sug-
gest the most likely future. The envi-
ronmental-scanning process will also
reveal potential change-drivers that
may lead to alternative future out-
comes. In scanning parlance, this in-
volves identifying the macrotrends
that will form a baseline, or most-
likely, forecast, as well as “weak sig-
nals” of anything that might change
that probable future.
Techniques for environmental
scanning have improved in recent
years. Futurists working as consul-
tants in organizations can help the
strategic-foresight team members to
look beyond their own experiences
and fields of expertise, expanding
the breadth and depth of their scan-
ning to include a wider range of
sources and to probe deeper into
their potential implications. Auto-
mobile companies, for example, will
tend to monitor vehicle and trans-
portation trends. They will either ig-
nore or pay less attention to develop-
ments outside these areas. It is the
job of the analyst to engage the or-
ganization in seeing the value of
looking at a wider range of areas. A
September-October 2006 19
food trend toward portable foods,
for example, may suggest possibili-
ties for “dashboard dining.”
Strategic foresight thus differs
from competitive intelligence in that
it is less about finding a piece of in-
formation that no one else can find
—since information is so freely avail-
able—and more about understand-
ing and acting upon that information
more quickly and creatively than
competitors.
One tool for broadening and deep-
ening the scanning process is the
“system map.” Mapping the system
is like creating an organizational
chart, but one that also places the or-
ganization in the context of its exter-
nal environment. It outlines the
forces, factors, and stakeholders and
their relationships in light of the is-
sue being studied. Insight will often
come from thinking about things the
organization does not typically con-
sider and discovering relationships
or impacts that would otherwise
have escaped notice. The system
map is often a key reference piece,
and in many cases, analysts will
blow it up to wall-size and place it in
either a dedicated “war room” or a
place where those involved can rou-
tinely see it. An effective visual can
be very helpful in stimulating inter-
est and thinking.

Forecasting: “What Will Be”

May Not Be
Forecasting involves creating alter-
native futures. Most organizations, if
not challenged, will tend to believe
the future is going to be pretty much
like the past. This belief is often
based on an array of unexamined as-
sumptions and biases toward an im-
age of the future that reflects the sta-
tus quo or only incremental changes.
The strategic-foresight team should
seriously address the possibility that
things may not continue as they
have.
The future is inherently unknow-
able, and efforts to get it exactly
right are futile. Instead, the strategic-
foresight process uses the forecasting
phase to envision alternative futures
for the organization to consider. The
result will not only reduce the likeli-
hood and magnitude of surprise, but
also enable the organization to suc-
cessfully navigate through whatever
future does emerge.
Futurists are frequently asked to
produce a “correct” future—that is,
to predict exactly what will happen.
Though a single, clear prediction of
the future would obviously be easier
to deal with, the organization will be
better served if it understands and
prepares for a range of possibilities.
Forecasting alternative futures does
not mean developing detailed plans
for every contingency, however.
Rather, it means monitoring the ex-
ternal environment for signs (guide-
posts, or leading indicators) pointing
toward the realization of one or
more alternatives.
The forecasting phase leads to a
useful set of alternative futures. The
exercise itself is useful because it
prompts the organization to chal-
lenge existing assumptions about the
future, to consider “what if” possi-
bilities, and to plan and act differ-
ently. An alternative forecast that
eventually turns out to be “wrong”
can still be useful if it prompted the
organization to take the future seri-
ously and prepare for previously un-
considered possibilities.
The forecasting process includes
identifying the key change-drivers
and uncertainties affecting the issues
that the strategic-forecasting team is
targeting. What is really driving
change into the future? How certain
are we about the probabilities of
those specific changes? Some drivers
are fairly well understood. The aging
baby boomers, for example, are go-
ing to continue to age, and they

20 THE FUTURIST September-October 2006

must be reckoned with. They should
be considered in constructing any al-
ternative future where demographics
are important. Other forces, how-
ever, are far less certain. Will nano-
technology provide breakthroughs in
materials science? It’s difficult to
know, and a materials organization
would do well to consider how this
force plays out strongly, even though
it is not certain to do so.
One goal in the forecasting phase
is to use creative problem solving
and futures thinking to generate as
many different ideas as possible,
even if they seem to come from left
field. The goal here is quantity rather
than quality. From there, the team
narrows down the huge list of ideas
to be included in the alternative fu-
tures, based on agreed-upon criteria,
such as importance and likelihood.
How many alternatives should
there be? There is no ideal number.
One is too few, and more than six is
probably too many. Different organi-
zations will have different capabili-
ties and preferences. More important
than the number is that each alterna-
tive future described should be dis-
tinct in order to challenge as many
assumptions as possible.
Visioning: From Possibilities
To the Preferred Future
The goal of strategic foresight is to
make better, more-informed deci-
sions in the present. Forecasting lays
out a range of potential futures to
consider so that the organization can
act effectively now. The visioning
phase focuses attention back on the
present, because now we must ask,
“So what?” Given the future possi-
bilities outlined, what does the or-
ganization want (or need) to do?
Failure to ask this question dimin-
ishes the activity to just an interest-
ing intellectual exercise, and few or-
ganizations have time or patience for
much of that. Like any organiza-
tional activity, strategic foresight
must demonstrate a link to the mis-
sion, purpose, effectiveness, per-
formance, and bottom line. Since the
payoff for strategic foresight comes
down the road, it’s important to
have clear maps showing the path-
way to that payoff: We can get there
from here.
The starting point on the map is
the connection between the alterna-
tive futures and the organization
itself. What does it mean to the or-
ganization if the alternatives were to
occur?
Though the visioning phase needs
to stay practical, it is important to
also “think big.” Now the organiza-
tion should express its hopes,
dreams, and aspirations about the
future. What is the preferred future?
Because this question now arises in
an atmosphere well grounded in the
reality constructed throughout the
foresight process, it is not mere wish-
ful thinking. It is preferable to err on
the side of being overly ambitious at
this point, as the next phase, plan-
ning, concerns itself with how to
bring that vision into being, and can
scale back or fine-tune the vision.
Planning: Building the Bridge
Planning is the bridge between the
vision and action, the “strategy” por-
tion of the strategic-foresight team’s
work. The specific sets of tactics and
strategies that are outlined will be tai-
lored to the individual organization.
The goal of the planning phase is to
help the organization translate the
vision and alternative future possibil-
ities into strategy, and just as there are
alternative futures, there are alterna-
tive ways of achieving them.
Compare what can happen—the
alternative futures—with what the
organization would like to see hap-
pen—the vision. How wide is the
gap between these futures? Although
the gap may seem insurmountable in
some cases, the planning phase em-
powers the organization to develop
better-informed decisions, which
include the decision not to act when
the timing is wrong or make changes
when they are not appropriate.
By developing strategic options
and multiple contingency plans, the
organization will be equipped to
manage the uncertainty of the
future. The challenge here is to avoid
the temptation to focus exclusively
on the “best” option and ignore the
rest. After spending time dealing in
possibilities and uncertainties, deci-
sion makers may feel a natural de-
sire to “get down to business,” but
considering a range of options does
THE FUTURIST
not mean inaction. It means having a
robust, flexible approach to the
future that the organization hopes to
achieve.
The Acting Phase
Organizations reluctant to devote
precious resources today to a some-
times uncertain future payoff must
be able to see their goals clearly. The
acting phase thus is largely about
communication, making the abstract
progressively more concrete: What is
to be done, who will do it, how, and
when?
The acting phase of strategic fore-
sight taps into the routines and
processes of the organization. One of
the traps of foresight is to do it only
once, failing to leverage the learning
and capabilities developed during
that first strategic-foresight exercise
to make the next futuring activity
more fluid and productive. An on-
going capability can become an im-
portant asset for the organization.
Strategic foresight can become a fun-
damental part of a learning organi-
zation, which is essential to success
in today’s fast-changing environ-
ment.
All results—positive or negative—
of any initiative need to be fed back
into the process in order to improve
it the next time. By “next time,”
however, we really mean “ongoing.”
Foresight should be part of the fabric
of the organization, and strategic
thinking should be internalized into
the entire institution. It is mission
critical for any organization’s future.
About the Author
Andy Hines is director of
consulting at Social Tech-
nologies, teaches futures
studies at the University of
Houston, and has worked as
a full-time futurist for two
major U.S. corporations.
E-mail andy.hines@socialtechnologies.com.
This article draws from Guidelines for
Excellence in Strategic Foresight by Andy
Hines and Peter Bishop (forthcoming). An-
other, more detailed version of this essay
appears in Creating Global Strategies for
Humanity’s Future, the World Future Society’s
2006 conference volume, which may be
ordered online at www.wfs.org/vol2006.htm.
Commentaries begin on page 22.
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