When it comes to planning, looking at what's in the rearview mirror is not enough. You need to look ahead through the windshield at the road ahead.

You can use the process of identifying Black Elephants, Swans and Jellyfish in your planning to drive new thinking, support diverse plans, build responsive systems and stretch your planning paradigms into longer time horizons.

For-purpose CEOs and Boards will need to consider some big challenges as they plan for the next 5 to 10 years.

The best response to the turbulence and uncertainty being faced by the not-for-profit sector is to focus on delivering long-term value. This means having a 5 to 10 view of how the world is changing and how your organisation will respond to, exploit, or mitigate these changes. This is not about the prediction of the future, a futile activity, but rather about being ready for what might happen next.

Here’s two frames to help you with your planning and decision making:

Plans=knowledge+assumptions,

and

performance=Plans(reality)

In a competitive world, an organisation's success is determined by its ability to stay ahead of others and adapt to the needs of its stakeholders and the fast-changing world it operates in.

Build a lasting future for your business with foresight-driven planning. Discover how tools, data, and aligned actions can help you stay agile and achieve long-term goals.

Forward thinking leaders need to develop the ability to scan for signals, issues and trends that are developing now and create a view on how they might play across a range of futures.

It can be easy to believe that tomorrow will be like today—that customers will have the same demands, that businesses will operate in the same way, or that Governments will make similar decisions. These beliefs are comforting, in part because they suggest that nothing fundamental will change in our futures. But if we believe these things about futures, then we are limiting those who come after us to live in a world that is less than what it could be.

Forward-thinking CEOs and Boards are using foresight to plan for tomorrow. They're looking 5,10,20 years into the future to see what might happen. By doing this, they're able to make today's decisions with more confidence and greater reliability.

Which futures will appear? There are many different variations of futures emerging. It may sound far fetched… but robots may dance.

The Futures Triangle is a tool developed by Dr Sohail Inayatullah in 2008 that not-for-profit CEOs and Boards can use to create a frame from within which to view the current forces at work on their organisation's planning and decision making for impact and future growth. It's a great place to start a foresight project as it can bring to life the different forces at play.

Discover why you should use foresight in your planning and decision making for impact and future growth.

Did you know that employees are the weak link in cyber defences and often the entry point for cyber-attacks?

The reality is employees undervalue the importance of cyber security. They have a low level of vigilance. They don’t see it as a personal problem.

You need to be able to have the flexibility in your ideas, but also in how you get things done. There are lots of benefits that come with this approach including greater customer engagement, increased revenue streams and improved operational efficiency. This ability to make quick adjustments means that organisations can respond more quickly to changing market conditions or customer needs. This means you can adapt, compete and succeed in a market that is more dynamic than ever before.

At insight & foresight we define foresight as the skill of looking forward to preparing for what might happen next. This is not about predicting the future with but rather using proven foresight tools and skills to explore a range of plausible, possible, probable, and preferred futures so we can better understand what could happen and…

CEOs and Boards who stay curious about what's around the corner can find numerous ways to deliver impact and future growth. You can resist becoming paralysed by fear, allowing your actions to be driven by opportunity rather than uncertainty. Here’s 7 ways to help you stay curious…

Before not-for-profit CEOs and Boards decide what to do to deliver growth its best to start with a refresher on how businesses grow. Business growth can occur in two categories; Organic growth and inorganic growth. Understanding which is which can help your decision making….

A critical question that we must get used to dealing with is how we produce plans, make decisions and grow our organisations in the face of futures full of …

Artificial Intelligence is important because it has the potential to significantly improve processes, create new ways of …