The October issue of The Briefing | Foresight for Strategy

Intelligent strategy is best created with clear, deep thinking.

The kind of thinking that carefully considers longer-term interactions and consequences of change and the implications these shifts may have on the future prospects of an organisation.

Under conditions of rapid change - good thinking sadly becomes a victim to frantic reactionary responses that produce a lot of busy-ness, but very little directed forward momentum. Left unchecked - an organisation plagued by 'reactionary busy-ness' travels headlong into the realm of burnout.

The antidote to this is the purposeful and committed development of better futures thinking; the recognition of agency and the systematic exploration of important signals of change and the opportunities that they offer.

Good strategy takes a long, considered view. And an informed long view is developed best with an ongoing practice of foresight.

There is strong evidence from a robust 2018 study that indicates that “future-prepared” firms, defined as those with a corporate foresight practice, posted 33 percent higher profitability than the average company and 200 percent higher growth.

Every month we publish a scanning report, The Briefing, that captures shifts in six domains that is an excellent primer for the development of foresight competences within organisations. We present the monthly signals personally to teams, and provide a copy of it for reference purposes, and encourage it to be used as the foundation for further sense making and strategy design.

Action that delivers results starts with good thinking first. Good thinking happens when time and resources are set aside to consistently do it.

Get in touch with us if you would like to explore how we might be able to facilitate that process with you and also get your team access to these reports and a higher-level of futures consciousness.