The OECD has launched its new Strategic Foresight Toolkit. This features a five-step foresight process, designed to help policy makers evaluate the future-readiness of long-term strategies and policies.
Unlike the Government Office for Science Futures Toolkit, re-written and re-designed by SAMI Consulting last year, that takes the reader through the details of over a dozen different tools, the OECD version is a partly worked example of a futures project. It provides its own proposals for policies rather than engaging people in developing their own.
The OECD five-module process is shown below:
This is akin to one of the “pathways” in the GO-Science Futures Toolkit, but it is more directive.
Under “Explore disruptions”, the document reports on some horizon scanning work carried out by one particular team. They identify 25 “disruptions”, grouped into the usual STEEP categories, though with Green Technology pulled out as a separate group.
They also highlight similar work done by a few other organisations (also misleadingly called “Toolkits”). In fact, there are dozens of sets of such trends, disruptions and weak signals produced by governments, consultancies and others, many of which are focused on specific subject areas. It is reasonable to start a futures project with previously identified trends, but also essential to tailor it to the policy area at hand.
The report goes beyond identifying “disruptions”, however. Like most such lists it gives a description of the disruption (eg “HOTHOUSE EARTH Crossing climate tipping points fuels an environmental catastrophe”), emerging evidence and major uncertainties. It then goes further, describing possible futures, “Policy options in the future in the event of this disruption” and “Policy options today to be better prepared for this possible disruption” – in other words, beyond being a toolkit and instead becoming a policy advisor. For example in Hothouse Earth a policy option today is “Strengthen nationally determined contributions (NDCs) by 2025.” Clearly this is a political, value judgement and must remain in the realm of politicians.
Some novel disruptions include:
“climate despair” - Climate change exacerbates a global mental health crisis;
“cruelty-free society”: Societies call for animals and ecosystems to be considered active policy stakeholders
“cyber slowdown”: The dark side of digitalisation (cyberattacks) leads to an economic downturn
“well-being economies”: Taking a more holistic view of societal success
“green tech failure”: Tech shortfalls necessitate larger behavioural shifts
“tech titans”: Private companies displace government
The descriptions of the 25 disruptors, and an impressive list of associated references, takes up most of the Report. There is very little commentary on the other four modules.
Module 2, “Imagine Interactions”, suggests a cross-impacting exercise examining the possible interactions between pairs of disruptions. The aim is to open up the imagination to a wider range of possible futures.
In Module 3, participants are asked to create scenarios. This is a particularly weak section, especially for such a vital phase of the process, giving no indication of how best to go about this – “weave the various disruptions together into a coherent and plausible narratives about the future.” The Go-Science Futures Toolkit explains the scenario cross method in detail, and discusses other approaches as well.
In Module 4, participants develop an action plan for each specific scenario. Then finally in Module 5, comes recommend policies. Here the aim is to develop recommendations for action steps that can be taken today and are scenario-agnostic. It also suggests an approach similar to what we would call Policy Stress-Testing or Wind-Tunnelling for selecting a preferred approach, supported by contingency plans.
The report does include Facilitation Guides for each of the modules which do give some better guidance, and include timed workshop agendas and facilitator scripts. There are also five “case studies” of futures thinking in different countries.
The overall 5-step process is sensible enough, but despite the facilitation guides, the description of the later stages may not be helpful enough to enable newcomers to futures work to succeed. The range of “disruptors” is a good enough example of its kind, but oversteps its remit by making policy recommendations, when underlying goals and motivations have not been explored – there are many implicit assumptions in there as to what is “good”.
This highlights a key point about successful futures work – engagement. Writing a report on disruptors and making recommendations as to what should be done tends not to lead into action. It is similar to the experience one has after asking ChatGPT about the future – it all feels flat and colourless because it doesn’t relate to your own experience. The most likely outcome is that the report sits on a shelf, with the view that “the future is sorted”.
For futures work to have an impact policy-makers need to participate actively in most of the phases:
They need to define a “scoping question” – what exactly do we want to explore about the future? This will depend on a clear understanding of current issues and objectives.
Their judgement of what is really important and what is uncertain should direct the driver mapping and selection of issues to include in the scenarios
To really get into alternative futures (scenarios), policy-makers need to “inhabit” the different worlds, for example building “day in the life” stories
Only those with an understanding of the organisation can properly design interventions, and it is they who need to come to grips with the trade-offs and risks involved.
The 5-step process also assumes that once you have been through them all then that is the end. In fact of course the potential shapes of the future are constantly changing and so monitoring and revising is an ongoing exercise. That’s what makes it such an interesting and rewarding activity.
Written by Huw Williams, SAMI Principal
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily of SAMI Consulting.
Achieve more by understanding what the future may bring. We bring skills developed over thirty years of international and national projects to create actionable, transformative strategy. Futures, foresight and scenario planning to make robust decisions in uncertain times. Find out more at www.samiconsulting.co.uk
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