foresights

The decisions leaders make today are shaped by what they understand about tomorrow. That's precisely why we built foresights—a dedicated space for sharing the ideas, trends, issues, and signals influencing the futures of leaders and their organisations.


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Informed Uncertainty: The Strategic Value of Expanding Options.

You should read this if… you are questioning the value of rigid strategic plans in a world that no longer behaves predictably. This article introduces informed uncertainty as a more effective strategic posture—one that accepts unpredictability and deliberately expands an organisation’s range of options rather than committing to a single, fragile path. It explains how embracing uncertainty, building optionality, and exploring multiple plausible futures increases strategic flexibility, resilience, and the ability to shape outcomes over time, shifting leadership from the illusion of certainty to making better decisions in conditions that cannot be fully known.

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What is Informed Uncertainty?

You should read this if… you are a leader seeking a clear way to understand what informed uncertainty actually means in practice, and why it matters for leadership and strategy today. This article defines informed uncertainty as the deliberate balance between what we know and what we cannot know, showing how foresight helps leaders navigate complexity, disruption, and interconnected change without relying on false certainty. It explains how embracing uncertainty—while remaining grounded in insight and evidence—enables more adaptive thinking, better judgement, and the ability to pivot with a portfolio of possibilities rather than committing to a single, fragile view of one future.

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Case Study: The Scenario Creation Process.

You should read this if… you are a CEO, executive or board member who wants a practical, repeatable way to explore uncertainty and strengthen strategy without relying on a single forecast. This article walks through the scenario creation process, showing how teams can systematically explore and analyse multiple plausible futures to test assumptions, surface risks and opportunities, and build more resilient strategies. It demonstrates how well‑constructed scenarios expand thinking, support better conversations at the leadership level, and equip organisations to navigate complexity by preparing for a range of futures rather than betting on one expected outcome.

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Case Study: How Scenario Planning Transformed a Council’s Operations Plan Review.

You should read this if… you are a leaders partway through a strategy cycle and want to pressure‑test your current operations plan against a rapidly changing future. This case study shows how scenario planning can be used mid‑strategy to pause, reflect, and recalibrate—helping leadership teams look beyond short‑term delivery and examine how emerging uncertainties and long‑term forces could affect today’s priorities. It demonstrates how using scenarios to review an operations plan surfaces hidden assumptions, strengthens alignment, and ensures near‑term actions remain robust and relevant across a range of plausible futures rather than being locked into a single, increasingly fragile view of what lies ahead.

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Five Reasons to Say "Futures" Instead of "the Future".

You should read this if… you want to break free from the assumption that there is a single, predictable “future” waiting to unfold. This article explains why we deliberately use the word futures—plural—to reflect the reality that multiple possible, plausible, and preferred futures exist, shaped by choices made in the present. It shows how shifting language from “the future” to “futures” changes how leaders think, helping them challenge linear assumptions, embrace uncertainty, and expand strategic options so decisions are better suited to a complex, fast‑changing world rather than anchored to one imagined outcome.

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Why Are Businesses Avoiding Talking About Radical Transformation?

You should read this if… you are a leader who senses that radical transformation is needed, yet notices how often organisations default to incremental change instead. This article explores why businesses avoid talking openly about radical transformation—highlighting factors such as risk aversion, fear of uncertainty, attachment to existing models, and the comfort of short‑term optimisation. It explains how futures thinking can help leaders create a safer, more constructive space to explore deep change by reframing uncertainty, expanding strategic options, and enabling organisations to engage with transformative possibilities before external shocks force change on their terms.

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The Power of Curiosity in the Business World.

You should read this if… you are a business leader who wants to understand why curiosity is more than a personal trait and is, in fact, a strategic capability for leadership. This article explores how curiosity enables leaders to better understand their industry, customers, and emerging change by encouraging questions, challenging assumptions, and remaining open to new ideas and approaches. It shows how cultivating curiosity helps organisations adapt in uncertain environments, improve decision‑making, and foster cultures where learning, innovation, and meaningful transformation can take root—giving leaders an edge in an ever‑changing business world.

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The Art of Foresight: Mapping Uncertainty and Opportunity.

You should read this if… you want to move your thinking from fearing uncertainty to using it as a strategic advantage. This article reframes foresight as a practical discipline for mapping uncertainty and opportunity by looking beyond prediction and instead exploring emerging change, trends, and multiple possible futures. It explains how embracing uncertainty—rather than trying to eliminate it—helps leaders make better decisions today, anticipate what might happen next, and position their organisations to respond with confidence and agility when change unfolds, turning disruption into a source of growth and long‑term success.

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Making the Right Choices for Your Business in a Rapidly Changing World.

You should read this if… you are in business and feeling jammed between responding to urgent, day‑to‑day pressures and preparing your organisation for what might come next. This article explores how leaders can make better business choices in a rapidly changing world by balancing short‑term risks with long‑term opportunity. It explains why anticipating change, adopting agile and flexible strategies, and taking a risk‑aware approach to decision‑making are essential when technology, markets, regulation, and customer expectations are all in flux. By applying foresight, leaders can move beyond reactive choices and make more confident, informed decisions that keep their organisations resilient and competitive amid ongoing uncertainty.

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Preview

The Future is Now: Anticipating Not Knowing.

To meet the challenges of tomorrow, we need to anticipate and prepare for the unknowns. This means understanding the systems and contexts that drive what is happening today in order to better understand what will happen next. It also requires a mindset shift towards embracing uncertainty instead of trying to eliminate it.

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What's the Difference Between Business Uncertainty and Risk?

You should read this if… you are a leader who wants to make better decisions by clearly distinguishing between what can be managed and what must be navigated. This article explains the difference between business risk and uncertainty, showing how risk involves known variables that can be analysed and mitigated, while uncertainty reflects unknown or unknowable conditions that cannot be reliably predicted. It argues that conflating the two leads to false confidence and fragile strategies, and that leaders who recognise uncertainty as a distinct challenge are better equipped to use foresight, expand options, and make more resilient decisions in complex and rapidly changing environments.

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6 Principles of Business Growth.

You should read this if… you are running a business and looking for a grounded, long‑term view of how sustainable business growth actually happens. This article outlines six core principles of business growth—universality, scalability, replicability, gradualism, optionality, and flexibility—arguing that growth is not driven by shortcuts or one‑off wins, but by systems and choices that can endure and adapt over time. It shows how applying these principles helps leaders design growth strategies that remain resilient in the face of uncertainty, avoid over‑extension, and create the conditions for steady, repeatable progress rather than fragile, short‑term gains.

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Strategic Foresight - a robust method for dealing with adaptive problems.

You should read this if… you are a CEO or board member grappling with change that cannot be solved through incremental fixes or existing expertise alone. This article explains why strategic foresight is a robust approach for addressing adaptive problems—challenges that require shifts in thinking, behaviour, and business models as the world changes. It shows how foresight helps leaders anticipate emerging change, distinguish adaptive from technical problems, and create the conditions for meaningful, long‑term adaptation rather than short‑term solutions. By applying strategic foresight, organisations can become more agile, better aligned with future operating contexts, and more capable of delivering sustained impact and growth amid ongoing uncertainty.

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Transforming your Business Model with Futures Intelligence.

You should read this if… you believe your current business model is no longer delivering the growth or resilience it once did. This article explores why business model transformation is often necessary as markets, technologies, funding models, and customer expectations evolve, and explains how futures intelligence can help leaders rethink how value is created and delivered. It shows how stepping back from “business as usual” and using foresight to explore emerging change enables organisations to identify new opportunities, challenge entrenched assumptions, and intentionally design the next phase of their business model—before external pressures force change on their terms

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Elephants, Swans and Jellyfish for planning.

You should watch this video if… you are interested in better ways to plan in the face of uncertainty, complexity, and uncomfortable realities. This article explores the concepts of Black Elephants, Black Swans, and Black Jellyfish as practical lenses for future‑informed planning—helping leaders distinguish between risks they see but avoid, shocks they don’t expect, and issues that appear manageable but can escalate unexpectedly. It shows how deliberately identifying and exploring all three concepts expands strategic thinking, supports more resilient and diversified plans, and strengthens an organisation’s ability to respond thoughtfully to disruption rather than being surprised by it.

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