The Foresight Partnership
Equip your organisation with a continuous, embedded strategic foresight capability designed to develop your internal strategic foresight capabilities.
The Problem
1
Strategic planning is an annual, reactive exercise that is disconnected from day-to-day operations.
2
Leaders lack dedicated systems and bandwidth to continually monitor for and respond to long-term trends and emerging opportunities.
3
Organisational silos and ingrained thinking prevent the kind of cross-functional, future-focused dialogue needed to maintain a competitive advantage.
4
Companies that fail to integrate foresight into their core processes risk being blindsided by disruption.
Why Now?
- The pace of technological change and market volatility requires a shift from static, annual planning to a more dynamic, continuous foresight process.
- Competitors are increasingly leveraging long-term planning and foresight to identify new markets and outmaneuver traditional players.
- By embedding foresight as a core capability, you can accelerate decision-making, improve strategic resilience, and proactively shape your future.
- Building this muscle takes time, and a sustained partnership provides the necessary structure and support to make foresight an ingrained part of your culture.
The Foresight Partner: What It's Designed to Unlock
A sustained 18+-month engagement that integrates strategic foresight into your organisation's core processes, helping you:
Build a Continuous Sensing System
Design and implement a robust system for ongoing horizon scanning, trend monitoring, and signal detection across your industry.
Develop Dynamic Scenarios
Regularly refresh and refine plausible future scenarios to test strategic assumptions and identify new opportunities.
Embed Foresight Into Planning
Integrate foresight tools and a future-oriented perspective into your existing strategic planning and budget cycles.
Enhance Executive Alignment
Foster a shared understanding of key uncertainties and a common language for discussing the future among your leadership team.
Cultivate a Culture of Foresight
Train key individuals and build a core team to cascade foresight capabilities throughout the organisation.
Accelerate Strategic Response
Create a proactive framework for rapidly interpreting new information and translating insights into agile strategic actions.
Partnership Structure: Key Milestones
The program is designed as a series of modules, with a focus on long-term skill and knowledge building, not just execution.
Depending on the needs of the organisation, the modules will be adapted in close collaboration with your team, but the structure below is a good starting point.
Months 1-3: Strategic Foundation
- Kick-off: Conduct interviews with key leaders to align on objectives and scope.
- Initial Scan: Complete a comprehensive environmental scan to identify initial trends, uncertainties, and emerging signals.
- Launch Workshop: Facilitate a multi-day workshop to develop initial scenarios and pressure-test current strategy (similar to the Foresight Sprint).
Months 4-9: Building the Core Capability
- Sensing System Design: Work with your team to design and implement a custom system for ongoing monitoring of key indicators.
- Regular Pulse Sessions: Facilitate quarterly or bi-monthly virtual sessions with your leadership team to review new signals and update scenarios.
- Foresight Training: Provide training and hands-on guidance to a core team that will act as internal foresight champions.
Months 10-18: Integration and Maturation
- Planning Integration: Advise on how to embed foresight insights into your annual planning and budget cycles.
- Scenario Refresh: Facilitate a mid-program workshop to refresh and refine scenarios based on new data and emerging trends.
- Long-Term Roadmap: Work with the executive team to create a long-term roadmap for maintaining and evolving the foresight capability beyond our partnership.
What You'll Walk Away With
A custom-designed sensing system for continuous monitoring of your strategic environment.
A core team of internal champions equipped with the skills and frameworks to sustain foresight efforts.
A living set of scenarios that are regularly updated to reflect new realities.
An integrated process for using foresight to inform strategic decisions, not just as a one-off exercise.
A culture of strategic agility and proactive thinking throughout your organisation.
On-demand advisory support for navigating urgent strategic challenges.
What We Need From You
- A dedicated internal champion to be our main point of contact.
- Commitment from the C-suite and leadership team for ongoing participation (lightweight but consistent).
- Access to relevant internal data, strategic plans, and subject matter experts.
- A shared willingness to challenge long-held assumptions and embrace strategic uncertainty.
Who It's For
- Companies that recognise the limitations of traditional strategic planning in a volatile world.
- Organisations facing a major inflection point, such as a changing business model or market disruption.
- Executive teams seeking to build a lasting competitive advantage by becoming more adaptive and resilient.
- Companies that want to move beyond one-off projects and embed strategic foresight as a core organisational capability.