Foresight Friday: Fiona Harkin, director of foresight

Every Friday, we offer an end-of-week wrap-up of the topics, issues, ideas and virals we’re all talking about. This week, director of foresight Fiona Harkin ventures into the ‘foresight zoo’.

: The Trend for Uncertainty – If uncertainty is a virus, then strategic foresight is the best way to inoculate your organisation against it. How? Well, this week I sat down with our co-founder and renowned futurist Martin Raymond to discuss. We know that businesses are struggling to plan for a rapidly shifting near future, let alone a longer-term future. And we also know that traditional trend forecasting models and trend cycles are either broken or being put to the test. The innovation curve is diffusing – and we have to work ahead of it (despite calls for more data and quantifiability).

: Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable – Martin’s stance is that we need to start getting uncomfortable: ‘We have to be more structured, more strategic, sequential – but also set approaches that deliberately test the edges of our zones of familiarity and comfort. You have data collection, you then have your insights that tell me a little bit about what’s going on, then I extrapolate that forward and I get a fairly simple, sanitised solution.’ But from his experience with clients, the formula is far more complex than this. ‘It isn’t something that’s linear and it requires that we proactively model the future. Either we’re passengers or pilots.’

: Know your Foresight Spirit Animal – We may live in no less uncertain times than before, but we are dealing with a fast pace of change. Martin was asked how larger brands can strategise with agility and balance planned budgets if the rate of change is so immediate. His response was typical of the kind of simplifying, cut-through analogy I’ve come to expect from Martin, as he pointed out how we have become far more aware of the unexpected – the so-called black swan events. But what about black elephants? Grey rhinos? And black jellyfish? These are not issues which, once acknowledged, are more relevant for short-term planning; the ones we hope will just go away (Trump); the things that sit around us that seem to be complex and disconnected (Covid, global recession, the manosphere, US right-wing electoral victory). When they come together, it’s like an almighty explosion. 

*You can view the conversation here or drop us a message at [email protected] and we’ll send you the full, free-to-access version.