The Drive to Make Futures Thinking Pragmatic

I’ve writen a fair bit over the years about the need to move futures thinking out of a theoretical approach and into a more applied model.

Recently I’ve come off a 6 month project working with the Asian Productivity Organisation, an entity that brings together 20 member countries and their core government policy makers. The main focus of that project – how to make policy decisions that take into account emerging issues. This is, as the saying goes, ‘right in my wheelhouse’

Policy without future awareness is expecting the same kiond of unchanged future is likely. Future awareness without alignment to operational and policy decisions is just pie in the sky dreaming. Teaching these Government Ministers and Policy directors how to work through tieing both aspects together has seen plenty of ‘ah haaa’ moments and it’s been a dleight traveling to Tokyo, Manila, Bangkok and Colombo to work closely with these groups. The hosts were always generous, the multi country participants always engaged and the outcomes thus far have been surprisingly influential.

There’s more to come later this year too with Fiji hosting representatives from another 8 countries. Strategic Forsight is the pragmatic and applied approach to engaging with the emerging issues so that we can help shape the future towards the kind we want.