Adopting a Practical Foresight approach to opportunity scanning and risk management represents a major challenge for organizations just starting out on the journey. Fortunately, others have trod these paths before and found ways to overcome roadblocks in their path. Implementing a foresight program is very akin to introducing and maintaining any change management program. Here are some of the lessons learned from leading corporate practitioners in Europe:

Barriers to strategic foresight

• Top management not serious about using foresight as a strategic tool
• No motivation to think about the future; fat and happy culture
• Organizational silos and policies restrict dialogue
• Incentives to manage the future are missing
• Reward systems hostile to future thinking
• Limited attention of internal stakeholders
• Current decision-making processes
• Frequent career moves
• Lack of resources

Enablers of strategic foresight

• Create collaborative vision and culture
• Establish strategic foresight performance indicators
  
• Change reward systems
• Change budgetary, decision-making systems
• Introduce foresight tools to the process of decision making
• Train people in the use of the tools and expect them to use their new knowledge constantly
• Challenge poor thinking lacking in strategic foresight
• Use media formats and content that communicate the future
  
• Engage only with external partners focused on the future
• Be seen out and about where the future is
• Spend less time on the past and delegate more
• Take a future-focused leadership position in the industry
• Evaluate competitors' strategic foresight positioning versus the organization
• Involve all stakeholders
  

Source: The Road Ahead for Research on Strategic Foresight Insights from the 1st European Conference on Strategic Foresight, 2007

Like any organizational change program the key ingredients for success are management desire and will to create a future-focused culture and to have the leadership skills to carry it out. The leadership skills can be learned but the desire and will come from within. Have you got what it takes?

Next: Becoming a Futurist Back: Learning from the Past To: Shaping Tomorrow

Copyright: Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.