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The Herman Trend Alert
November 11, 2020 The Value of Thinking Like a Futurist As a professional futurist, I work with clients to be more profitableÊby knowing what is coming. My clients use foresight to make better decisions, innovate, and reduce risk. In fact, I wrote an op-ed, as yet unpublished about how using professional futurists could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, if governments had listened. Future-thinking, award-winning authors like Laurie Garrett who wrote the book The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 1994), forecasted this and other pandemics. Called "A Stich in Time," a new study from the RSA, the United Kingdom's Royal Society for Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce, highlights the value of foresight, futures thinking, and innovation in policymaking. This Herman Trend Alert offers selected insights from the 12 core takeaways in this very impressive futures work. Advice for Organizations Organizations must consider the long-term impact of their short-term actions; in spite of being fueled by our capitalist economic incentives, this consideration is not common practice in many cultures, industries and sectors. Second, to overcome resistance and add maximum value to the organization, foresight must be integrated into every aspect of the culture. The more that foresight tools and methodologies are incorporated into each point in the strategic lifecycle, the better the policy- and decision-making process. Finally, evaluation of foresight methods is not necessarily an exact science and connecting specific benefits is often difficult---though this fact should not deter executives from viewing foresight as an important supplement to strategic and decision-making processes. Futureproofing can create value in the form of resilience. The organizations that continue to strive to be relevant and supportive of possible futures are more adaptive and resilient. Guidance for Policymakers To derive value from futures and foresight approaches, policymakers must navigate a number of paradoxes. These challenges include the short-termism of the political or product life cycles and the potential long-term implications of policy decisions. They must overcome an exclusively short-term mindset and rather consider both near-term and long-term impacts and implications. Embrace futures as a discipline and foresight as a competency to support longer term, holistic, and systemic thinking. Systems thinking is vital to futures thinking---which must be multidisciplinary. Futures thinking is supportive to policymakers, decision-makers, activists, advisors and/or consultants. The crucial questions for policymakers are 'whose future is it?' and 'who has the power to decide about that future?'
Suggestions for Society
A Truly Robust Study To read the entire RSA study, visit here.
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To read this Herman Trend Alert on the web: https://hermangroup.com/alert/archive_3-29-2023.html.
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