Public workshops are offered throughout the year, either as traditional face-to-face workshops or as webinars. Register to receive advance notice of future workshops and webinars here.
All workshops are designed around the theme 'what it is and how to do it'. Practical work focused around current issues of importance to participants is an integral part of workshop design.
Webinars provide an overview to the topic, and usually run for an hour; workshops can be run over half a day or day. Tailored workshops can also be designed to meet specific organisational needs. Webinar recordings will be available from this page.
Scroll down to find out more about workshops and webinars offered by Thinking Futures.
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What is this futures thing all about anyway?
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What is this futures thing all about anyway? is an introductory half-day workshop on futures ideas, principles and methods.
It is designed for those people who know nothing or little about futures work, and who want to find out more about how to use futures in their day-to-day work. The workshop provides an overview of the futures imperative, and how to integrate futures into everyday decision making. |
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Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it
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The ability of organisations to develop a strategic foresight capacity to identify, understand and respond to future uncertainties is a critical success factor for effective strategy. Strategic foresight is the ability to systematically explore the future to identify drivers of change and to consider potential outcomes to inform strategic decisions. Strategic thinking underpins the development of a strategic foresight capacity, and is the first step in the development of robust strategy.
This full day workshop provides participants with an overview of strategic thinking and an introduction to a number of futures tools to support that thinking. Participants will be introduced to environmental scanning, trend analysis and interpretation, and scenario thinking in an interactive and sequential process that provides practical experience of strategic thinking in action.
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to recognise and understand:
- the essential differences between strategic thinking, strategic decision making and strategic planning, and the different types of methods and logics appropriate at each stage,
- the nature of strategic foresight and how to build a foresight capacity in an organisation, and
- the ways in which futures tools can be used to enhance strategic thinking.
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Environmental Scanning: what it is and how to do it
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All organisations want and need to understand how to position themselves effectively for the future.
There is a sometimes overwhelming amount of information now available about what might happen in an organisation's future operating and competitive environments. How do you decide where to look, let alone know which trends are relevant and based on rigorous analysis, and which are more 'style without substance', and based on subjective speculation?
This workshop focuses on building an organisational environmental scanning system to enable organisations to identify the trends that you need to pay attention to now, those that you must monitor over time, and those that are not useful in terms of your strategy development.
This one day workshop discusses the undeniable rationale for a scanning system, how to establish an organisational scanning network, where to start looking for relevant information, what tools to use, and how to interpret and make sense of what you find. The final part of the workshop focuses on reporting and communicating what you find in ways that enhance organisational strategic thinking. By the end of the workshop, participants will have developed an action plan to develop an organisational scanning system.
Download the 2009 webinar recording
Register NOW for the 2010 webinar
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So you think you can plan? Strategic Planning: what it is and how to do it
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Writing strategic plans is now a part of working life. But, does your strategic plan help align action and the allocation of resources in your organisation?
It doesn't really matter how good you think your strategy is, if the plan which documents the action you want to take to achieve that strategy is poorly written. And, unless the plan is used to drive decision making at all levels of your organisation, it will just sit on the shelf.
This workshop covers the characteristics of good strategic plans, how to develop them, and how to use them to inform organisational decision making every day. It focuses on the first stage of strategy execution - communicating an organisation's strategy in written form. This workshop is restricted to a small number of participants to allow individualised advice to be given to each participant.
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