What We Do
We provide consultancy and support to help you develop plans that can withstand the impacts of change and the wide range of potential futures. We will show you how to identify and understand the issues most likely to create challenges or open up opportunities, and help you develop robust strategies to adapt to them.
Custom Solutions for Your Needs
We offer bespoke services tailored to your needs, budget, and timeline. Whether you require a long-term engagement or a single half-day session, we work closely with you to find the right approach, ensuring effective solutions for your unique challenges.
Drivers of Change
Although the future is inherently uncertain, we have identified a number of major drivers of change that will have a significant effect. The speed at which these drivers develop and the scale of their impact remain uncertain. However, a good foresight project should begin by considering the effect of these drivers on the subject in question. Combined with horizon scanning and expert interviews, these drivers can then be tailored to provide the structure for scenario analysis.
SAMI have produced a summary of twelve key drivers of change that we believe to be important for futures thinking:
For each of these drivers we examine the effect it is having now, in the medium-term and by 2030. We also explore the factors that might push in the opposite direction, critical uncertainties and wild cards – low probability events that could disrupt the trend. All of this is supported by a range of references.
A set of twelve drivers of change that we have analysed provides a start-point for the examination of the future for your organisation.
Linking these with tailored Horizon Scanning and interviews/focus groups enables you to identify critical factors that are both important and uncertain.
Scenario Planning
One of the most commonly used forecasting tools is scenario planning.
Scenarios are explorations of the future, not predictions. They will be realistic and include both risks and opportunities. Their main benefit lies in testing strategies and creating contingency plans. Participating in scenario creation activities is in itself beneficial for the people involved, helping them to consider a wider range of outcomes.
There are several methods for creating scripts. SAMI will determine which one is most suitable for each project. Among the most popular approaches are:
“Cone of plausibility”: taking a baseline forecast and flexing various assumptions to produce a range of outcomes.
“Scenario cross”: identifying two independent drivers of change that are uncertain and important, thereby creating 4 potential futures.
3D scenarios: taking three drivers and combining them to produce a range of futures – more complex but richer perspectives.
Morphological – 4+ axes; deal with greater complexity.
Strategic Planning
Many organisations regard Strategic Planning as simply a form of financial planning. At SAMI, we help clients develop “robust decisions in uncertain times”, so our approach is to develop plans that adapt to changing circumstances.
Once we have built scenarios of the future, we turn to developing strategies or policies that respond to them. First we establish common themes between the scenarios and strategies that perform well in all the scenarios. These form a “base case” strategy. The future is likely to contain elements of each scenario in a combination that cannot be anticipated. It is therefore important to test policies against a range of scenarios to see how effective they are. This process is often called “wind-tunnelling”.
Testing different strategies or policies against each of these to establish their effectiveness and robustness.
Turning insights into actionable “Adaptive” plans – base case and contingency plans
Building ongoing cycles of horizon scanning and decision-making.
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Training
SAMI has a track record of running highly rated strategic futures courses on behalf of the Horizon Scanning Centre and Civil Service Learning.
We run a range of workshop-style courses on futures thinking tools and techniques. From a half-day overview course to give you a taste of what you can do, through practical hands-on courses designed to give participants the experience of using the tools, to an in-depth residential “Bootcamp”. We have also recently developed a more advanced course for Horizon Scanners called “From Scanning to Action” to help you get greater engagement with your scanning work.
We also offer bespoke or “off-the-peg” courses to in-house teams, where the content of the exercises can be tailored to the specific environment of the organisation. Typically these courses would be in workshop format over two days, but can readily be adapted to meet clients’ needs.
Short workshops on risk literacy in the Boardroom, dealing with uncertainty and overcoming cognitive bias that help Board members operate more effectively. Our latest course is called “Unseen risk – why boards often fail to see the obvious”.
Running bespoke in-house courses for strategy teams and leadership teams.
Offering open courses for individuals wanting to get up to speed on strategic foresights.
Building knowledge transfer into our consultancy projects.
Cohort
The SAMI “Futures Cohort” is a group for sharing foresight experiences between our clients and contacts. Being part of the cohort provides you with an opportunity to join with a small group of clients from other organisations to form an online group, where participants support each other over time in developing futures skills. We believe that sharing experiences will help you to embed futures thinking in your organisations and as a result be better positioned for the future uncertainties, so that you are able to respond quickly to take advantage of opportunities and minimise risks.
Sessions are held every two months over Zoom. They are based around an “Action Learning” approach in which the group share their experiences of applying various futures techniques, and organisational issues around embedding futures thinking in the planning cycle. Sometimes a session will feature a presentation by SAMI experts on specific topics.
Topics we have covered include:
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What are the key drivers of change?
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How do we identify weak signals.
The Cohort group provides a safe and supportive environment to discuss your challenges with fellow professionals who face or have faced similar issues when putting futures thinking into practice.
A programme for sharing foresight experiences between our clients and contacts
A mix of presentations by SAMI experts and an “Action Learning” approach, sharing experiences of applying futures techniques, and organisational issues in the planning cycle
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How do we get engagement in Futures Thinking?