Aside from dealing with various social, economic, political, and environmental issues with the communities they serve, social development and justice leaders also have to contend with challenges facing the sector itself, including dwindling financial resources, reversal of previous gains, and intensifying intimidation and harassment from power holders. Leaders have to continue to learn, grow, and adapt new skills to power their passion for creating transformative change.
Foresight leadership is not about prediction or being in control of what might happen, but it is critical in managing and addressing changing realities. And our world is changing – and fast. This is the capacity to anticipate change and risks, innovate impactful strategies, and envision multiple scenarios and a long-term vision. It is not just a new buzzword that needs to be on somebody’s resume but an integral aspect of leading in the sector. To better comprehend what foresight leadership is and how it can help us turn today’s challenges into tomorrow’s opportunities, let us look at ten critical skills it involves.
Scanning weak signals and trends. This skill is necessary because change is happening at an accelerated pace, not just in technology, but in varying social, political, environmental, and humanitarian contexts. Ensuring that one is up to speed on what is going on in and around an organization’s focus area could make or break programs and projects, and prevent negatively impacting vulnerable populations. Missing weak signals could leave an organization ill-prepared for sudden shifts. To ensure effective scanning of relevant weak signals and trends, a framework is necessary. PESTLE, which stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental factors, or STEEPLE, with the additional E standing for Ethical factors, guarantee fewer blindspots in scanning signals and drivers of change.
Imagining multiple futures. There are infinite future possibilities. However, organizations often focus on the best possible or worst possible scenarios. This kind of thinking limits options and could lead to responses that only fit such scenarios. A leader should have the capacity to ask “what might happen if…” and imagine multiple responses to that question. While imagining multiple futures is practiced intensively in humanitarian situations, in social development and social justice sectors, a couple of scenarios, often extremes, suffice. This rigid thinking could lead to path dependence and attachment to a single outcome, which often undermines the organization’s capacity to respond to sudden shifts and changes. Developing multiple scenarios also allows organizations to deviate from dominant narratives and create various iterations of preferred futures.
Crafting longer-term visions. While short-term planning is important, developing and working towards a transformative longer-term vision distinguishes a foresight leader from a conventional one. One-year, two-year, or five-year plans guide organizations to achieving short term, often palliative solutions. Two-year plans and goals are necessary for an organization’s operation, but long-term radical visions are essential to an organization’s soul. A leader should be able to weave together the hopes and aspirations of their community to craft a clear vision, what TFSX calls the Big V, that goes beyond a well-written vision statement. It is a vision that inspires, animates, and guides. It is a vision that calls one to act for positive change.
Anticipating risks and challenges. With foresight, a leader better anticipates potential risks and disruptions. The long-term viability of an organization rests on the capacity to respond rapidly instead of scrambling to react. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, in his book Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, discusses the concept of antifragility, which entails not just preparing for disruptions but building systems that encourage resilience and thriving in uncertainty. The capacity to anticipate risks allows organizations to determine potential vulnerabilities, prepare contingencies, and even develop systems that could flourish. In humanitarian practice, anticipatory action ensures that vulnerable sectors are not only coping but thriving, and thus able to buffer potential impacts of imminent disasters.
Developing proactive strategies. Current concerns in social development require urgent, everyday activism. Without careful consideration, responding to issues without addressing root causes and possible long-term outcomes could result in a vicious cycle. The tyranny of the present could trap organizations in this cycle of reactivity and short-termism. Wicked problems such as the climate crisis, patriarchy, and economic inequality stem from historical injustices and are structural and intersectional in nature. As such, proactive strategies have to be holistic, long-term, and sustainable, addressing issues at multiple levels. Proactive strategies deviate from the rigidity of conventional strategic plans and can be developed by stepping back from the urgency of day to day operations and designing intentional processes for foresight to emerge.
Utilizing creativity and innovation. While it is important to be prepared for risks and disruptions, it is also necessary to reimagine an issue. Asking novel, sometimes even ‘wrong’ questions could lead to new insights. Deviating from the ‘usual suspects’ of solutions to age-old problems can lead to innovative, alternative models. Creativity and innovation enable organizations to depart from the loop of reacting to problems in the same ways, transform ways of working, and create better impact. These skills can be developed through serious games, brainstorming sessions, and innovation labs.
Embodying resilience and adaptability. Robust organizations are flexible ones. Through a continuous practice of learning, relearning, and unlearning, organizations build their brave accountability, resilience, and adaptive capacity. Developing resilience requires stress-testing of strategies, having the capacity to pivot as needed, and detaching from outdated and ineffective tactics and strategies. It also means welcoming change instead of fighting it and finding opportunities where others see challenges.
Leveraging participation and collaboration. Renowned futurist Sohail Inayatullah often asks of foresight processes, who is not in the room? Foresight conversations need authentic participation and collaboration with the most vulnerable and most affected. They are experts in their own experience and could provide invaluable insights that could have been missed if their perspective were not considered. Without participation and collaboration, there is no diversity in perspectives. This could lead to blind spots, or worse, groupthink. Including collaborators from unconventional perspectives makes robust results. Most importantly, authentic participation is about making the most affected lead in decision-making. This is what living democracy is all about.
Embracing complexity and uncertainty. The social development and social justice sector is not immune to the VUCA world that is going through the polycrisis. If anything, it is more concerned and affected by it than other sectors. It is not easy to embrace complexity and uncertainty. Most organizations try to avoid both, attempt to control the situation, or ignore both altogether. The polycrisis is complex. To embrace this complexity means working at the systems level to replace broken, oppressive systems with healthy radical systems. It means relying on partnerships and collective intelligence, prioritizing and accepting plurality instead of pursuing a single solution or path. Leaders need to reframe uncertainty as opportunity to innovate and grow. As there is no way to control everything; situational awareness beats overplanning.
Embedding justice from design to decisions. From designing programs to making major decisions, fairness and equity must be at the heart of foresight leadership. At United Edge, we often say that foresight must be informed by justice and justice must be informed by foresight. It is the only way of making social justice and development work relevant and impactful. In leading social change organizations, good intentions are not enough. We use the Justice Based Approach that integrates five pillars: everyday activism, radical systems, living democracy, alternative models, and brave accountability in analyzing socio-economic, political, and environmental issues and ensuring inclusion, equity, and fairness in addressing them.
Social development and social justice leaders need to learn and nurture these skills to steer their organizations and communities towards transformative change. Each of these foresight leadership skills are equally important and complement each other, and when applied together, could lead to better outcomes.
Shiela R Castillo is a social development professional and futurist passionate about social justice, the environment, animal rights, and future-forward solutions to wicked problems. As United Edge Foresight Director, she leads the Strategic Foresight Workshop for Social Justice Leaders.
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