Futures ready strategy is flexible strategy that positions your organisation to respond quickly and effectively to the challenges and uncertainties of the future. It is strategy built on long term thinking.
Making strategic decisions today is about making strategy for the future. You are seeking to position your organisation so that it survives into the future. Traditional strategy processes use information about the past and the present since there is much data about these times. But, there are no future facts to use in the same way, so other approaches must be used to build robust and sustainable strategy.
To explore potential futures strategic environments, you need a strong strategic thinking capacity informed by rigorous environmental scanning that helps you identify external trends and drivers of change in the external environment that will have an impact of your organisation’s future. And, often forgotten, you need to tap into the ideas about the future held by people in your organisation.
Futures ready strategy is developed from enhanced, information rich and continuing analysis of the future that readies your organisation to be deal with the inevitable challenges and uncertainties that emerge in your operating environment over time. The aim is to create strategy informed by the future that is effective not only for today, but is flexible enough to deal with future challenges.
Why Futures Ready Strategy?
- Does your strategy really allow your organisation to be futures ready?
Is your strategy flexible enough to adapt to the challenges of the external environment – without have to start thinking about your strategy all over again?- Are your strategic plans used to inform your organisation’s decisions about action, effort and resource allocation?
- Does your organisation build good strategy, but not do so well on implementation?
If you answer ‘yes’ to even one of this questions, it might be time to take steps to make your strategy futures ready.
Futures ready strategy takes your organisation’s strategy development processes to the next level. Through the use of futures approaches like environmental scanning and scenario planning, people in organisations can begin to systematically explore their potential future operating environments to identify plausible strategic options and potential challenges. Most importantly, by considering what might happen and preparing for it, organisations are able to more effectively respond to rapid changes in their operating environments today and ensure they end up where they want to be, not as bit players in someone else’s future.
How to make your organisation Futures Ready?
- Download your free Futures Ready Strategy Getting Started Checklist. The checklist identifies the types of issues and challenges that you will need to consider if you want to use futures approaches in your organisation’s strategy development.
- You can attend a workshop or download webinar resources on environmental scanning, strategic thinking and strategic planning..
- You can download free Building Strategic Futures guides provided by Thinking Futures. Guides currently available are Using Futures Approaches and Environmental Scanning.
- Review your current planning framework and plans – do they really focus on moving your organisation into the future you want? Will your current plans ensure a sustainable future for your organisation?
Thinking Futures has a number of services that focus on building your organisation’s strategic foresight capacity, ranging from environmental scanning and strategic thinking to improving the quality of your plans. Integrating these approaches into your current strategy processes will build a long term thinking capacity to underpin your strategy development and implementation.
Finally, if you have any questions, or would just like to know more about futures and strategy, please do contact me. I’m always happy to help if I can.
Follow Maree