Driving Impact in Strategy
An excerpt from The Guide to Natural® Foresight Framework:
While commonly used in business planning and development efforts, Strategic Foresight differs from strategic planning, which relies largely on spreadsheet based models to extrapolate historical performance into a linear future plan. Our mechanical view of organizational development has taught us that we must choose one “official future” from among many possibilities, and tie our fortunes to that one decision. Beyond their inability to accurately forecast the future, these traditional models are dangerous when they proclaim one definitive future, effectively blinding leaders to all threats and opportunities outside their narrow view. In our current environment, we must hold tight to our vision and mission, but we cannot stubbornly cling to the strategies that reinforce our “official future.”
As landscapes and ideas change, so must our plans and approaches. And with change taking place at the speed of light, the never-ending process of updating or creating new strategies is disheartening at best, and devastating at worst. Strategy must also move far beyond formal analysis and hard data. Foresight helps us look outside of our industry, broaden our view of external issues, and develop robust, flexible, and creative visions of organizational direction.
Strategic Foresight and, in particular, scenario planning, act as an immune system within our organization, allowing us to create multifaceted strategies that are effective no matter which future emerges. “Multifaceted Strategy” is a process by which we include multiple alternative futures in every one of our decisions, making our strategy and actions agile, elastic, adaptive, and transformative.
Access a full and complimentary copy of “The Guide to the Nature Foresight® Framework” here.
