by Much of my professional life has been motivated by the desire to help organizations make greater use of foresight. Early in my consulting career, working with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., I was surprised by how often our client loved our work, but did not know what to do with it internally. I spent almost a decade working inside two Fortune 500 companies in order to see for myself, and recently wrote my dissertation on the topic. At the recent APF Professional Development Seminar, I had a few minutes to summarize some “lessons learned” in applying foresight.
Lesson 1. Outsiders need insiders. Consulting futurists working from outside the organizations benefit from having a partnership with organizational futurists working inside – and vice versa. This partnership is critical as inside and outside perspectives together provide a wider view of the situation and increase the odds of the work being applied effectively.
Lesson 2. Foresight, as with any new capability, spreads from the periphery to the center . Foresight rarely starts from CEO mandate. “Someone” inside the organization, and it can come from almost anywhere, starts asking questions about the future and “infects” the organization with the foresight virus.
Lesson 3. Dive into the mosh pit with clients. The academic way of saying that is that foresight spreads through dialogue and the development of an internal discourse in a process of creating shared meaning. It’s not about the futurist conveying the wisdom that the organization “should” consume, but it’s about a negotiation process in which learning occurs (both ways), working toward mutual agreement.
Lesson 4. Resistance to change is normal. Can we stop complaining about resistance to change? From now, we get five slaps with a wet noodle if we get caught doing this. It is perfectly reasonable to prefer things stay the way they are, unless a more compelling proposition is offered – the burden is on us to make the more compelling proposition.
Lesson 5. Credibility is a big issue. It can be draining to always have to establish your credibility, but that is the context we are operating in, so we have to deal with it. Professional status could help.
Lesson 6. The work needs to get into the flow. One-off projects are good and helpful and get the message out there, but we need a way to keep the conversation going in-between. The work needs to be integrated into the organization’s regular work flows to have a lasting impact.
Lesson 7. Be prepared for the success discussion. We can wait for this question or proactively address it. I have offered simple outcomes framework that suggests working with futurists will help organizations learn about the future, make more informed decisions about the future, and catalyze future-oriented action. Whatever your story is, have it. My colleague Riel Miller, for instance, promises that clients will “ask better questions.”
Of course, you need not accept these lessons, but may respond in the spirit of working toward shared meaning 😉 Andy Hines
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