Strategic Foresight and Warning Models for Institutional Planning

Introduction: The Need for Strategic Foresight

People and organizations need a strategic foresight plan and warning model to establish a framework for strategic success. This framework may incorporate many factors, including a strategic vision for the future that stipulates what a person or organization is doing. Essentially, this defines why institutions exist, and each member involved in the organization should be able to identify with the vision because strategic foresight and warning models are fundamentally a people's process (Bolt 2005). A scenario plan provides a mechanism through which people, institutions, or organizations can better cope with uncertainties. The constant diversity in the environment and dynamics that are difficult to predict necessitate this process.

Many traditional forms of management tend to concentrate on individual aspects of the uncertain environment and are therefore doomed to fail (Schwartz 1996). This creates the need for development of complex systems to deal with environmental uncertainties. It is also very difficult to come up with precise decisions in the event of an unforeseen problem; therefore, institutions, organizations, and people need to unlearn the idea that there is only one predictable future. Instead, they ought to come up with options that help in calculating how influencing factors will be formed (Schwartz 1996).

In the past, institutions focused primarily on liquidity and short-term success with little emphasis on the long-term implications of important decisions. The post-war period of the 1970s, characterized by oil crises, made organizations realize that they could no longer afford to focus exclusively on short-term objectives. They discovered that they had to factor in necessary structures for future success as well. The sooner world institutions identify models for future success and effectively develop them, the greater their success is bound to be in the future (Wilber 2001). A strategic forecast and oversight model is therefore a prerequisite for success in a turbulent environmental scenario characterized by uncertainties.

Steps to Building a Successful Model

The main focus of a strategic foresight and warning model is to support institutional decisions. This process is specific to particular enterprises or technologies. Questions could be asked under the model—for example, for a technology, what solution mechanisms should be adopted? Or for a product, what requirements would it need to meet? These factors lie squarely at the center of the scenario management process. Before an institution embarks on formulation of a scenario view, the current environment should be effectively analyzed (Slaughter 2004). Conventional management tools could be used in this first phase, such as strength or weakness profiles. Portfolio management could also be used in the analysis of the environment. In a state example, the technological environment will have to be analyzed if a country wants to come up with security policies, because technology dictates the level of development of various military weapons. This analysis is the base upon which the scenario foresight and warning plan will be built.

The scenario field is then analyzed according to different decision-making processes. A number of issues may be addressed by the model depending on the nature of the institution. For a state or country, the scenario plan would probably be mapped in terms of security, global warming, or trade policies. This process can be supported through various methods including brainstorming or brain writing. Caution should be made regarding influencing factors from the general environment. Only those factors that are key to influencing the specific field—for example, national security—should be considered. If too many factors are considered, the model might become blurred and lose its analytical focus.

At this point, the actual scenario is formulated. An insight should be made by the body involved regarding the future position it expects to take. The time horizon in the future should also be described by the institution. For example, a country would expect to be free from the effects of environmental degradation through fossil fuel use by adopting "green energy" by the year 2030. Institutions should then come up with possible projection means to enable them to realize the goal. They should be able to come up with not only one but multiple plausible images that would enable the scenario plan to take advantage of opportunities that may exist in the environment (World Economic Forum 2010).

Scenarios are depictions of possible future situations and rely on projections that would enable the future goal to be attained. The scenario blocks should be based on consistent scenario analysis. The projections should then be analyzed in a matrix to evaluate their correlation and ability to influence each other to attain the desired outcomes. Projections that show inconsistencies should be eliminated at this point, reducing the possible projections to a few plausible contributors that will aid in attaining the objectives. Cluster analysis could then be used to assign the projections to possible facets of importance to the institutions, such as security. However, each cluster experiences some loss of information when projections are bundled together. These pre-scenarios should be able to be analyzed differently. Projections that are consistent with a scenario cluster are used in the definition of each cluster. For instance, airline policies might directly affect the security situation of a country and therefore would be clustered under the security cluster.

Scenario Transfer and Strategic Outcomes

The use of scenarios in institutions like the state stems from the influence they have on governance. As states train to use the scenario planning model, they become accustomed to recognizing which events are unfolding. This helps in avoiding unpleasant surprises by knowing how to handle various situations. For example, the warning by FBI agents on growing Al Qaeda activities would have helped America avert the September 11th attacks if decision-makers knew how to act on the information provided. After careful analysis of the scenario, institutions should be able to come up with effective strategic foresight and warning models. Possible outcomes that govern the strategies to be formulated include the following:

This approach relies on the fact that various environmental elements can be forecasted. In light of this theory, strategic bodies do not have to wait for forthcoming eventualities; they would act according to expected results.

In this type of strategy, institutions would probably be reacting to environmental changes. Uncertainty could be tolerated in this case, and the next step would be to cope with the new situation.

This would entail acceptance that various elements in the organization are unpredictable, and the best method the organization or institutions could use would be to act ahead of time so that they may exploit the situation before it occurs. This is also achieved through shaping the environment in a certain way to avoid occurrences of unwanted events. Organizations or institutions could purposefully influence the environment to bring about desirable changes that would have otherwise never occurred or would have happened at a later date (Henderson 1996).

Arguments for Strategic Foresight Models

Scenario planning usually starts in slow, gradual steps but picks up to become core pillars of various institutions, including businesses, organizations, and governmental bodies. Strategic forecast and warning have various functions:

Important decisions regarding policy-making can be effectively aided by strategic foresight management to come up with viable decisions or programs that could steer a country into future prosperity (Hammond 1998).

Factors regarding future developments can be effectively structured with the creation of scenarios. Potential recipients of such information include government decision-making organs, including the Department of Defense and Department of Commerce, as well as institutional managers of organizations (Hammond 1998).

The process of creating scenarios would make strategic organs in the government think objectively about the future. Scenario building would therefore act as a catalyst for future-oriented thinking (Hammond 1998).

The creation of future scenario blocks acts as a knowledge base for future governments. This usually does not always equate to instant decisions for successive governments regarding certain national issues, but the body of knowledge is always made available to decision-making organs when the real need arises. Scenario forecast can therefore be termed a way of building stocks of knowledge for future considerations (Hammond 1998).