The Foresight Sprint
Unlock your leadership and strategy teams by ensuring they have the tools they need to navigate an uncertain business environment.
The Problem
1
Leaders today face unprecedented market volatility, rapid technological disruption, and shifting customer expectations
2
Traditional strategic planning cycles are too slow and rigid to keep pace with emerging threats and opportunities
3
Teams lack structured processes to transform market insights into actionable strategic decisions
4
Organisational silos prevent the cross-functional collaboration needed to address complex business challenges
Why Now?
- Market conditions are changing faster than ever, with new categories and competitors emerging overnight.
- AI and other emerging technologies are creating both transformative opportunities and existential threats across industries.
- The cost of strategic missteps has never been higher, with companies losing market position in months rather than years.
- Teams that can rapidly sense, interpret, and respond to market signals gain substantial competitive advantages
The Foresight Sprint: What It's Designed to Create
A 6-8 weeks, team-driven accelerator that helps you:
Understand the movements in your industry
Identify emerging trends and competitive dynamics.
Map critical uncertainties
Identify the key variables that will shape your future operating environment.
Develop actionable scenarios
Create plausible futures that challenge assumptions and reveal strategic options.
Pressure-test your strategy
Evaluate current initiatives against multiple future scenarios.
Build organisational sensing capabilities
Establish systems to detect early signals of change in your market.
Sprint Activities & Pacing
Weekly check-ins
60-minute progress reviews with sprint leadership team
Week 1: Introduction to Foresight
Introduction to the sprint and the role of foresight in strategic decision-making
Week 2-3: Environmental Scanning
Structured research and expert interviews to identify key trends and uncertainties
Week 4: Scenario Development Workshop
Full-day collaborative session to construct plausible future states
Week 5: Strategy Implications Workshop
Half-day session to evaluate strategic options against scenarios
Week 6-7: Sensing System Design
Development of ongoing monitoring framework for key indicators
Week 8: Implementation Planning
Planning for implementation of the insights and decisions from the sprint
What You'll Walk Away With
A set of 3-4 robust scenarios that provide a framework for strategic decisions
Clear mapping of strategic risks and opportunities across possible futures
Prioritised list of no-regrets moves that make sense across all scenarios
Early detection system design to monitor key indicators and trigger points
Enhanced strategic dialogue among leadership team with shared language for discussing uncertainty
Practical tools and frameworks your team can continue using beyond the sprint
What We Need From You
- Dedicated sprint leader to coordinate internally
- 4-6 hours of participation from key executives over the course of the sprint
- Cross-functional team of 5-7 people with diverse perspectives on your business
- Access to relevant market research, strategic plans, and internal data
- Commitment to open and candid strategic dialogue
Who It's For
- Leadership teams facing significant strategic inflection points
- Organisations entering new markets or launching transformative initiatives
- Companies in industries experiencing rapid technological disruption
- Strategy and innovation teams responsible for future-proofing the business
- Executive teams seeking to build more adaptive planning capabilities
Why I Built This Sprint
After spending more than a decade helping global enterprises navigate rapid change, we realised that most companies weren't suffering from a lack of information—they were struggling to transform that information into coherent strategic action.
The Foresight Sprint was designed to bridge this gap, providing a structured yet adaptable framework that helps leadership teams develop a shared understanding of their evolving business environment and make more confident decisions in the face of uncertainty.
Optional Continuation
Most teams use this sprint as a starting point for building a more comprehensive strategic foresight capability within their organisation. But the sprint stands on its own. You don't need to commit to anything beyond the first 6-8 weeks.
Value Enhancers
Executive Alignment Session
Facilitated 2-hour workshop to build consensus on strategic priorities revealed during the sprint
Quarterly Scenario Refreshes
Regular updates to scenarios as new information emerges
Foresight Integration Workshop
Half-day session to embed foresight tools into existing planning processes
Signal Monitoring System
Technology-enabled dashboard for tracking early warning indicators
Strategic Narrative Development
Creation of compelling communications to align broader organisation around emerging strategy