Posts with the tag
“Scanning the Horizon”

Trends and Signals for Policy Makers

25th February 2025 by Rachel Wilkinson

Earlier this month, our Director of Programmes, Rachel Wilkinson, was invited to speak to EU policy makers to share the Centre’s work on strategic foresight, signals and trends. The European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) is an inter-institutional collaboration among the officials of the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of the EU, and the European External Action Service, with the support of the Committee of the Regions and of the European Economic and Social Committee. It monitors global trends and offers strategic foresight to the EU’s decision-makers. The meeting saw policy makers from across all EU institutions come together and learn about trends and discuss their possible implications.

The value of futures thinking  

Futures thinking can help us navigate uncertainty by revealing the interplay of dynamic trends, identifying risks, opportunities, and innovations, and creating a collective vision for the future. At the Centre, we have been promoting futures thinking to civil society organisations for many years. Scanning the Horizon is our established collaborative platform for trend scouting and analysis in the international civil society sector. It includes leading ICSOs, national CSO umbrella organisations, philanthropy, and futurists. Members utilise futures skills and methods to shape and adapt their strategies. From this community and other programmatic work on futures thinking, such as our toolkit for tomorrow, we have developed futures resources to support civil society. 

It is important for civil society to have a voice and be included in conversations with policy makers. At the Centre, we bring forward different perspectives and can share a global view of trends and signals. At the gathering of ESPAS, we had a unique opportunity to share our approach on futures thinking and the methods we use to develop futures thinking resources, such as trends mapping and signal spotting, through which we seek diverse inputs and ask critical questions to challenging our assumptions about the signals and trends we see emerging. 

Taking a participatory approach to futures thinking  

We take a participatory approach to our futures thinking. This allows for more inclusive and transformative futures to emerge, enabling out-of-the-box thinking with diverse input building upon our past experiences. By seeking a broader range of opinions and situations from a global perspective, we enable more inclusive and transformative futures to emerge. For policymakers, these wider perspectives ensure the implications on civil society organisations are better understood and more robust and future-proof policies are developed. 

Trends and Signals  

Our recent work highlights several key trends impacting the civic space. This includes Mis, Dis, and Mal information: AI-driven manipulation, erosion of trust in public institutions, and the rise of opinion engineering through social media. These trends can harm trust, democracy, and social cohesion, and CSOs need tools and strategies to address mitigating these effects. 

Our work on anticipating futures examined trends on civic space. Key trends in this area are the increase in global conflicts, crises of multilateralism, tech solutionism, the influence of corporations, securitisation, disinformation, demographic shifts, growing inequalities, and climate injustice. All these interlinking and overarching themes need to be addressed to strengthen civic space. How we react to these challenges is vital for maintaining social stability, promoting human rights, and upholding the rule of law within the EU and globally. 

CSOs and Futures Thinking 

In an increasingly uncertain world, CSOs must look beyond immediate challenges and consider the long-term possibilities that could shape their work. Strategic foresight and futures thinking enable CSOs to make better decisions today about tomorrow.
Rapid changes are adversely affecting CSOs and the communities we serve, making it essential to adopt a proactive and forward-thinking approach. By considering various possible futures and recognising key signals of change, CSOs can build resilience and agility. This strategic mindset not only enhances decision-making but also ensures that CSOs remain adaptable in an ever-evolving landscape.

For more information about our futures work and that of the ESPAS please see:  

      Rachel Wilkinson

      Programme Manager – Futures and Innovation

      International Civil Society Centre

      Rachel leads the Futures and Innovation programme at the Centre. She is responsible for managing the portfolio of projects and events as well as leading and developing the Scanning the Horizon strategic peer learning platform. Rachel has more than 15 years of experience working in the third sector, on a national and international level, working for various ICSOs in international development and human rights in both London and Berlin.

      Anticipate, listen patiently, and build a peer network – three lessons from Leading Together

      10th July 2023 by Miriam Niehaus

      For the first time in four years, the Centre convened its Leading Together conference in person again. Leading Together is our annual space for the global directors of the ICSO divisions of Human Resources, Policy/Advocacy, and Programmes. These groups have parallel peer group discussions as well as joint sessions over topics that concern them all. This year, the Scanning the Horizon community of futures-focused senior sector professionals also joined the group. We were thrilled to welcome participants on our home turf in Berlin and spend 48h learning, debating, and reflecting. The Centre team is busily following up on those 47+ items/ideas/insights generated during the event, and we would also like to share three insights that were key to us:

      1. Exercising that anticipatory muscle is challenging, liberating – and necessary 

      At Global Perspectives 2022, we heard and stressed how anticipatory capacity in (I)CSOs is a collective muscle we need to exercise constantly. We took this advice and focused peer and joint sessions on this topic: Discussions with Russell Reynolds on the role of leadership and using AI for the good of ICSOs as well as shaping the future through participatory strategy making were sessions where participants engaged with trends and how to “organise futures”. The Policy/Advocacy Directors discussed with David Griffiths, Associate Fellow at Chatham House the future of the Human Rights diplomacy.  

      We also really challenged participants with some freshly generated scenarios created in a collective exercise (ParEvo) the Centre has just concluded. Participants had to discuss and reflect on how civil society (organisations) might deal with and shape civil society space after a series of mega-tsunamis hit the world and severed all IT infrastructure.  While some scenarios stretched the goodwill of participants to further consider, the exercise was highlighted by many as important to encourage imagining futures differently. A series of mega-tsunamis will throw the world into disarray (not unlike a global pandemic) and might need primarily our crisis-response capacity. However, spending time on creating long-term visions for different futures can put us as civil society sector professionals in a different kind of driving seat versus racing to manage with futures narratives others – usually more powerful actors – are creating. 

       

      2. Taking time for nuance and learning advances us collectively 

      What was particularly enriching at this year’s conference was the participants’ willingness to engage in the substance of discussions and openness to critical challenges, and generally a learning mentality. We tried not to gloss over differences with buzzword definitions like “power shift” or “decolonising” but acknowledged the complexity of the matters we deal with and that we may get some things right and others wrong along the journey. Similarly, a joint discussion between the Programme and the Policy/Advocacy directors in exchange with AWID over anti-rights groups and the threat they pose to civic space was exemplary for constructive engagement: Participants brought so much nuance to the discussion and – it might sound like a cliché – embraced the diversity of viewpoints and created patience for understanding our individual or organisational contexts.  These high-quality discussions were incredibly enriching and displayed a high degree of collective responsibility for advancing as a sector.  

       

      3. Our organisations are shifting fundamentally – from strategy making to recruitment processes – and peer support may just help keep the head above water 

      A few years back someone said “’powershift’ is the water we all swim in”. This was certainly true for Leading Together. In so many sessions participants explored topics that come from our journeys to become organisations that are at least more power-aware or even mirror a decolonised, equitable and just society that we want to see. It was hugely encouraging to see the spread of organisational initiatives and the degree to which ambitions for change are permeating the organisations: to learn from the experience of WaterAid’s participatory strategy making journey, engage with Superrr Lab in what it takes to break western-centred views of futures making. In similar vein, Mission Talent and the cohort of Human Resources directors discussed the challenges and possibilities our changing sector holds to build more diverse organisations; the Programme Directors explored with Comic Relief what ways there are to work differently with bilateral donors to enable more equitable partnerships; and the Policy/Advocacy Directors are already experienced how shifting mandates of ICSOs hold increased expectations for their departments. Senior leaders from the ICSOs are demonstrating resolve and yet acknowledge that these are unchartered waters where peer exchange, inspiration and support is just what you need. 

      If you are also an ICSO senior leader and you want to learn more about our offer, do reach out. We already look forward to the next round of Leading Together in 2024 – online – and in-person in 2025!  

       

      Miriam Niehaus

      Head of Programmes

      International Civil Society Centre

      Miriam leads the Centre’s programmes. She started at the Centre as Executive Assistant in 2014 and then, as Project Manager, developed and implemented the Centre’s projects on civic space between 2016 and 2019. Prior to joining the Centre Miriam worked for VSO International and GIZ in the Palestinian Territories. She holds a BA in Islamic Studies and Social Anthropology from the University of Freiburg and an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies.

      What trends did we miss and why do we miss them?

      30th March 2023 by Paola Pierri, Rachel Wilkinson, Will Garrood

      Spotting emerging trends at an early stage is key for the international civil society sector to be able to adapt and respond to those trends before they could have a negative impact or in order to make the most of an emerging opportunity.  

      Trends and early signals are not always easy to spot and futurists and strategists within ICSOs are always looking for new ways and methods to get better at anticipating future scenarios in order to make the sector more resilient. 

      Last Autumn during our Scanning the Horizon annual community meeting, Will Garrood from WaterAid ran an inspiring session to map, together with other key players and (I)CSOs, what trends we missed from 2022 and reflect together on why we missed them. 

      Scanning the Horizon is the only collaborative trend scouting and analysis platform in the civil society sector. Members include leading ICSOs, national CSO umbrella organisations, philanthropy and development consultancies. It is a cross-sector community of experts and practitioners that gets together to share insights, explore key trends and develop relevant strategies.  

      Here we are sharing our main learnings looking back at the trends we missed, and – more importantly – trying to unpack why we missed them.  

      What trends we missed 

      We were thinking a war was probably likely, but no one anticipated there would have been one in Europe! (a Participant) 

      In a group exercise we mapped a series of trends that by that time had become visible but that no one in the group had anticipated before. Below is a selection of the missed trends. 

      Conflict in Europe: this was something that no one in the group had anticipated as an imminent risk and that has profoundly impacted the sector, including through a diversion of funding towards supporting the local population after Ukraine’s invasion. 

      ‘Weaponisation’ of Energy: one of the after-effects of the war in Ukraine was that the use of energy sources and access to them became an additional ‘weapon’ used by Russia to put pressure on countries to not intervene in the conflict.  

      Cyber and Digital Security and cyber conflicts: (I)CSOs have generally a good awareness of the possible impact of digital advancements as well as digital threats to their work, for example in the ways in which digital tools and media could exacerbate misinformation/ disinformation and malinformation but the large rate of increased attacks and risk to cybersecurity and the huge leap in large-language AI models, such as ChatGPT took many by surprise. The Centre recently published a study sharing useful practical insights on how can (I)CSOs better protect the communities they serve and their own work against cyberattacks.  

      Why did or do we miss trends? 

      The second part of our exercise with the Scanning Community focused on why people and organisations had not seen these trends coming or underestimated them. This is an even more important question to ask because if we reflect and identify the reasons why people usually miss these trends, then we can at least attempt to not fall into these traps again. 

      Below is what we learnt. 

      • Trend Overload: for those who are not full-time futurists (and even for those who operate in this role full-time) keeping up with all the trends, publications, signals are not an easy task. ‘Trend overload’ might become a problem as we are not sure which one to consider and which one to prioritise. Getting trends scouting to become a regular exercise may help with that and learning to prioritise our sources for trends mapping and foresight will also help.  
      • Between Black Elephants and Black Swans: Some events are of course simply unpredictable (so-called Black Swans) but others are known and understood and yet not addressed. These phenomena are described as Black Elephants and they describe events that people tend to ignore, like global warming or the risk of more pandemics going forward. Ways to mitigate the impact of these Black Elephants are various, including calling these ‘elephants in the room’ by their name, celebrating the mitigation stories that help us remember that black elephants can still be avoided or breaking the silos of different organisational departments that stop important knowledge about trends and risk to circulate more widely.  
      Elephant and Swan in continuous line art drawing style.
      • Disconnect between communities and language: When many people in (I)CSOs, corporates and governments don’t share language and discussion spaces, this is likely to mean things are missed. It may also be about who in (I)CSOs is thinking about these issues. There may be areas where government-facing teams are talking about issues a lot, but it isn’t percolating into the wider organisation. We talked about Ukraine in the discussion, but China/Taiwan may be another useful example. 
      • Unconscious bias: when we observe the trends that are emerging we cannot avoid bringing with us our unconscious bias, the things that we assume to be true based on what happen in the past and that help us orienting ourselves in the future. Unconscious Bias (e.g. confirmation bias or affinity bias) are associations we all hold and that we might not be aware of but few techniques are available that can help are people to break their Bias habits. Opening up the future scanning exercise to a more diverse group and bring into our future thinking new and different perspectives might be another way to address this issue. To deal with unconscious bias we would need to make sure we get the right information first, but then we have to make sure we don’t discount it!  

      The unpredictability of global trends and the challenges of mapping and noticing the new trends emerging makes it very difficult for civil society organisations, in particular those with an international remit, to better use the future in order to deal with the present. Coupled with the busyness of everyday workload it seems increasingly difficult to take the time to pause and think through where organisations are potentially vulnerable or how to be more prepared and proactive to make the most of future trends and opportunities. However, it is incredibly important for civil society organisations to be planning for the long-term and taking the time to ensure we are fit for purpose and able to meet the challenges and embrace new innovations in our work. This will help (I)CSOs to respond rapidly when these events do happen as they will not be starting from scratch. 

      At the Centre we are collaborating with our members and other partners to develop a stronger future literacy in the sector and work together in mapping as well as anticipating the emerging trends. The Scanning the Horizon Community brings together peers from across multiple sectors to share learning and expertise and collectively learn and trial new future methodologies. If you are working on foresight in your organisation and would like to know more about the Community feel free to contact us we would like to hear from you.  

      Paola Pierri

      University of the Arts Bern

      Paola is Professor of Social Design at the University of the Arts Bern where she specialises in Design and Anthropology of Technologies. She advises the Centre as an Associate on its Futures and Innovation pillar (which Paola has also co-led until August 2023). She brings to the Centre her expertise on design research and future oriented methodologies, including her research on the impact of emerging technologies on the civic space and on our democracies. Paola was previously Director of Research at Democratic Society and a Research Fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute, researching on issue of Digital Inequalities.

      Rachel Wilkinson

      Programme Manager – Futures and Innovation

      International Civil Society Centre

      Rachel leads the Futures and Innovation programme at the Centre. She is responsible for managing the portfolio of projects and events as well as leading and developing the Scanning the Horizon strategic peer learning platform. Rachel has more than 15 years of experience working in the third sector, on a national and international level, working for various ICSOs in international development and human rights in both London and Berlin.

      Will Garrood

      Strategy and Transformation Director

      WaterAid

      Will is the Strategy and Transformation Director for WaterAid. Previously, Will held strategic and policy roles at the BBC and Ofcom and trained at LEK, a strategy consultancy. He holds degrees from the University of Oxford and King's College London.

      New – 2023 events and programme flyer, find out what’s on and what we are doing

      2nd January 2023 by Adriana Sahagún Martínez

      You can download the flyer below to find out about what we plan to do this year and how you can get involved.

      Adriana Sahagún Martínez

      Communications Manager

      International Civil Society Centre

      Adriana is responsible for developing and implementing the Centre’s communication strategy. Prior to joining the Centre, Adriana worked at ShareTheMeal, an initiative of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), where she developed and implemented multiple global marketing campaigns. Before that, she worked for six years in the private sector, where she held various positions in Corporate Social Responsibility and Integrated Marketing Communications.

      Discover the ‘Anticipating Futures for Civil Society Operating Space’ report 

      10th November 2022 by Eva Gondor

      This report contributes to the Centre’s multi-year initiative Anticipating Futures for Civil Society Operating Space to strengthen the anticipatory capacities and future readiness of civil society professionals who are working to defend civic and civil society operating space. It is intended to provide a basis for further activities, especially in identifying gaps that require collective sector commitment. 

      The report is the outcome of an exercise to map the current landscape: the issues impacting civic space, the strengths and weaknesses of civil society organisations’ (CSOs) responses and their reflections. 

      Download Report

      Eva Gondor

      Senior Project Manager

      International Civil Society Centre

      Eva leads on the Centre's civic space work - the Solidarity Action Network (SANE) aimed at strengthening resilience of and solidarity among civil society actors, and the International Civic Forum (ICF), our annual civic space platform to network and identify opportunities for collaboration. Prior to joining the Centre she worked at the Robert Bosch Stiftung (Foundation) in Stuttgart where she managed the foundation’s projects focusing on civil society and governance in Turkey, the Western Balkans, and North Africa.

      Podcast: Leading Strategy as a Journey of Not Knowing

      17th May 2022 by Elizabeth Parsons

      In this episode, we speak with Philip Goodwin, Chief Executive Officer of Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), the leading global international development organisation working through volunteers to empower communities in some of the world’s poorest and most overlooked regions.

      Philip talks with Vicky Tongue, the Centre’s Head of Futures and Innovation, sharing insights and organisational experiences of uncertainty, strategy, leadership and narrative. We learn how VSO operates in framing strategy and action, using the principles of dispersed leadership, connecting logic, emotion and action as a way of aligning people, and above all being reflective in practice – constantly assessing what VSO is doing and how that might require the organisation to change. In this way, they have achieved a space where interactions, particularly across the wider global leadership group, maintain momentum and generate opportunity in meeting the organisation’s mission.

      picking up on themes from two publications:

      This conversation shared some exciting food for thought on leadership, which the Centre will be picking up on in our sector leadership convenings in 2022. We think it will inspire you as much as it has us, so please listen and enjoy!

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      Communications Manager

      International Civil Society Centre

      Tools for inclusive futures: Futures Frequency: A workshop method for building alternative futures

      29th September 2021 by Vicky Tongue and Lena Tünkers

      Members of the Scanning the Horizon community recently met online to continue our exploration of ‘tools for inclusive futures’, engaging methods to democratise futures conversations in organisations, using digital tools which do not require previous experience from either facilitators or participants. These tools have been highlighted in our recent Sector Guide on Strategic Decision-Making in a Whirly World.

      —

      Futures Frequency

      This time, we wanted to find out more about Futures Frequency, from the Finnish innovation and futures fund Sitra. The idea behind Futures Frequency is that it inspires thinking and action towards positive, preferred futures and can be ‘used and applied by anyone’. You can check out an intro video here.

      We decided to use it to explore futures of human diversity, and felt that a group of 9-12 is a good size to allow the discussion parts to take place in threes. No advance preparation was requested from participants, just encouragement to join with an open mind, and be ready to ‘enjoy the ride’, go with the process and put their heads in a different, more creative and playful space.

      Setting the stage

      We started with some relaxed individual reflection about the big ‘what if’ question – in relation to futures of human diversity in 2050 – which occurred to us. Then we introduced ourselves and our big question in plenary and it was already really interesting to see the different angles which people had already come up with – from gender fluidity, to intergenerational working with people living longer, to racism being history, to humans being seen as just another part of nature. Just this initial sharing already encourages you to open up and expand your own thinking more.

      First stage, challenge your assumptions about the future

      Then we had to activate our imagination muscles more by moving into the first main stage of the Futures Frequency method, challenging assumptions. We were given an audio drama snippet to listen to individually and then as a small group, we discussed what assumptions we heard in the piece and how it connected to our own assumptions or what felt familiar. This was a really interesting process to go through, surfacing both small assumptions or questions but also bigger ones about when in the future the conversation was set or whether we were just defaulting to assumptions about things in this future were still working in a similar way to the present. From a facilitation angle, you could either use one of the many supporting resources which Sitra provides for this, or you could create your own snippet – audio or written – linked to the theme you’re exploring.

      This process does highlight biases you weren’t aware of in your own thinking and how your brain tries to ‘fill in the gaps’ around incomplete information you have on a situation. It also helps you better understand and appreciate how those you are working with are also thinking. This would be particularly important in a very diverse group, or especially if exploring potentially sensitive topics together. This stage increases your awareness of why you think certain things, before you then move onto imagining preferred futures.

      Second stage, imagine your preferred futures

      In this stage, you again start with individual reflection to imagine what the theme – for us, human diversity – might look like, without boundaries, with new possibilities, and envision a mental snapshot of the future you personally prefer for this, trying to engage different senses to bring this image to life. Then moving into Miro or another digital whiteboarding space, each person in the group writes up their personal vision in one sentence on a post-it and shares it with the others in the group. Then you all work together to combine your (three) different visions into a new statement which integrates the main ‘spirit’ of each. We didn’t really have enough time for this as we were primarily exploring the method – rather than the topic – fully, but in a full session this stage clearly needs a good amount of time to complete. Again, all this has templates from Sitra.

      Take action towards your preferred futures

      The final stage involves thinking through actions which you can take towards bringing this vision about.  First, we were guided through an individual brainstorm to come with ideas that would lead us to our vision. Time was the creative constrain here. In our small groups we were then tasked with coming up with a news headline from the future which captured what would have happened in the intervening period. We imagined we were living in 2030 and working as reporters for ‘Future News’, sharing our headline and a short explanation of the actions that had taken place and answering any questions from the other groups. And we could add visual images to represent the story as well.

      Final reflections on the method

      It’s recommended to add further methods to this final phase if you want to build out the process into more of a detailed action planning process. For instance, you could use backcasting or future literacy labs. But from a first experience, it really is a very useful way of getting the participants into a different space to share ideas and inspire others, appreciate the diversity of perspectives in the group and be encouraged to use your imaginations, within a simple but effective framework. It really does feel like a universal method which anyone can just pick up and use!

      Vicky Tongue

      Vicky Tongue was the Centre’s Head of Futures and Innovation/Scanning the Horizon project manager from 2018-2022, leading the Centre’s futures strategy and collaborative trends scanning community. In this role, Vicky wrote and edited many of the Centre’s Scanning Sector Guides and Civil Society Innovation reports.

      Lena Tünkers

      Co-Founder and Partner

      Zukünftige

      Lena Tünkers is an entrepreneur, process designer and facilitator, guided by the purpose of empowering people to cheerfully move towards the future. She has designed and executed a variety of strategy and innovation processes in Denmark, Kenya and Germany and applied the method Futures Literacy and Futures Frequency to the topics of education, collaboration, leadership and culture. From her work with the UN, Spotify, HelloFresh and Hugo Boss, among others, Lena brings experiences in business model design, strategy as well as innovation development. She is a board member of Founders of Tomorrow and hosts the House of Beautiful Business in

      Podcast: How can social changemakers get better at not just adapting to change, but actively engineering it?

      13th August 2021 by Elizabeth Parsons

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      Foresight practitioner Krizna Gomez has written JustLabs’ new ‘Guide to Foresight in the Social Change Field’ and is a passionate advocate of why foresight needs to become part of the DNA of the social change field. In this episode, Krizna shared some of her insights from leading futures work with organisations in the social change field around the world, as well as activists and creatives, and why this new guide is needed to ‘demystify’ foresight. Krizna also presented some simple visual outcomes of applying these steps to look at the future of media and information, and the kind of areas of new exploration this can generate for social change organisations and leaders.

      Download JustLabs Guide to Foresight in the Social Change Field.

      Krizna Gomez works as an independent consultant, using design thinking, foresight, systems thinking and other methods normally not employed in the social change field, to help partners tackle long-standing problems with a fresh perspective, and opening them up through working with experts from other disciplines such as neuroscience, tech, marketing, and design. She is a recipient of the Joseph Jaworski Next Generation Foresight Practitioners Award (Humanitarian Special Award) by the School of International Futures. See Krizna’s full bio here.

      Find out about the Centre’s Scanning the Horizon civil society futures community here.

      Communications Manager

      International Civil Society Centre

      Understanding megatrends’ impact on civil society’s work – Oxfam GB

      30th April 2020 by Thomas Howie

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      Listen on itunes

      Links

      Mini Series: Exploring the Interconnectedness of Global Trends Mini-series – Episode 2

      Irene Guijt and Filippo Artuso, Research and Publishing Team Oxfam GB, share insights and discuss their findings of a yearlong mapping of global megatrends

      Producer: Julia Pazos

      Global Megatrends: Mapping the forces that affect us all: oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstrea…d=yOxfam From Poverty to Power blog: Will the real megatrend please stand up? Insights from a scan of scans: oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/will-the-rea…-a-scan-of-scans/
      Scanning the Horizon – icscentre.org/our-work/scanning-the-horizon/

      Thomas Howie

      Communications Manager

      International Civil Society Centre

      Thomas joined the Centre in June 2017 as the Communications Coordinator. He is responsible for developing and implementing the Centre’s global communication strategy, as well as the Disrupt & Innovate platform – a place for civil society professionals and activists to discuss current innovations and future trends in the civil society sector. Prior to the Centre, Thomas worked for 5 years in the European Parliament firstly as the Digital and Social Media Coordinator for the Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament, and then, after the 2014 European elections, for Jude Kirton-Darling and Paul Brannen as Head of Communications, where he worked on issues such as the EU-US trade deal, issues around Brexit and as a specialist on the Petitions Committee. Thomas graduated from Bristol University with BSci in Geographical Sciences and holds an MA in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford, where he completed research into the role of civil society in the post war peace settlement in northern Uganda.

      Why we’re looking forward to foresight in 2020

      16th December 2019 by Vicky Tongue

      Download the Scanning the Horizon 2020 flyer

      Looking forward to 2020 might seem a bit short for a group of strategists and horizon scanners, but we’re pretty excited about the state of foresighting and futures in our sector at the moment. And here’s why: there’s some great work and resources that we’re seeing both done in and shared by some of the international civil society organisations in our Scanning the Horizon community at the moment.

      New foresighting and futures resources: The Future Is Ours, thanks to Save the Children…

      First of all, there are some fantastic new resources around. JM Roche at Save the Children, with the School of International Futures, has just done everyone in our sector a fantastic favour and pulled together a compendium of 12 strategic foresight tools and techniques which they have successfully adapted for their own and partner use. The Future is Ours is out now and immediately essential reading for anyone involved in strategy, planning and decision-making in our sector.

      This guide walks you through a number of tools, why you would use which and when, with helpful facilitation notes. Key tips overall include: being open to a range of possible futures, pay attention to weak signals, practice foresight regularly, and integrate and embed insights. Sounds like four great New Year’s Resolutions to me! You can also join us for a webinar with JM on 30 January to hear him introduce this in person.

      …and understanding the rise of global China may be somewhat more manageable now

      This year, our Scanning the Horizon community did our first ever ‘deep dive’ on one of the most major influential megatrends, the rise of global China. We’ve just put out our Sector Guide of strategic recommendations for ICSOs, and hearing some great feedback from our community. Amnesty’s China Strategy Manager Heather Hutchings has already shared a bit of an informal reflection on ‘benchmarking’ itself against our findings, in this excellent blog in case you missed it.

      You can also catch up on our webinars which feature our author and researcher Bertram Lang providing more context ‘meat’ to flesh out the ‘bones’ of the recommendations, and explaining more on where and why there was consensus and divergence among the ICSOs involved.

      The Sector Guide has been a cumulative process throughout the year, building on interviews and experience-sharing with global and China strategists, as well as country or regional management, from most of the top international ICSOs working both in and beyond the boundaries of mainland China. We’ve incorporated additional insights from ‘China watchers’ from academia and philanthropy, and highlighted some of the priorities and need to engage with local community-based organisations.

      This has been a huge topic to explore and make more navigable in practical ways for our sector. We worked carefully with our community to find the right way to break it down into key sub-themes and entry points for strategists. While the recommendations might not all be straightforward, they lay out an ambition and signpost some directions of travel, which can help steer organisations in these unpredictable waters. What this collaborative exploration proved most though was the enormous value of bringing the major and diverse players in our sector together to share their different experiences and capacities. We have seen again the enormous power in co-producing new knowledge and insights, which can then be shared with the rest of our sector.

      We also love what we’re hearing from other recent strategy processes

      At our recent Global Perspectives conference in Addis Ababa, we were very excited by a presentation from Plan International on the scenarios they have been using – looking at the combination of climate change and nationalism in different future world’s scenarios, and what each might mean for the organisation’s place in the world.

      We also heard how Oxfam International’s recent global strategy process included meeting with a ‘critical chorus’ of external voices, some of which told them some challenging things, but triggered a range of important and reflective conversations to guide thinking of the different roles the organisation may have in future.

      And IFRC’s new 2030 strategy has clearly put climate action as the main priority for its programmes and appeals. The other key challenges it has identified are crises and disasters, health, migration and identity, and values, power and inclusion.

      We look forward to learning more, together, about these and other exciting developments.

      So here’s to the New Year and what we will be doing in 2020!

      Taking inspiration from these developments, and also what we’re seeing from outside the sector, our annual meeting in May 2020 will bring our community together to explore more how the global trends influencing our work are interconnected and intersect to bring about different potential futures, and how to better integrate this analysis into organisational strategic planning.

      We will have a collective check-up on the trends we’re all watching as organisations. We will explore tools and practical processes for intersectional approaches and take a look at the detailed scenarios ICSOs are seeing, with a special emphasis on climate change + (one or several trends). We will invite input from beyond the sector, with private, public and academic sector insights. And, with funding, we will deliver another Sector Guide this time next year summarising our insights for the sector.

      Our monthly newsletters throughout 2019 have been packed with new resources from within and beyond our sector, but there are so many things we just can’t keep out! A lot of careful curation goes into what the Centre and Direct Impact Group summarise and share with our community each month, and we’ll continue these efforts to keep bringing you the best throughout 2020!

       

       

      Vicky Tongue

      Vicky Tongue was the Centre’s Head of Futures and Innovation/Scanning the Horizon project manager from 2018-2022, leading the Centre’s futures strategy and collaborative trends scanning community. In this role, Vicky wrote and edited many of the Centre’s Scanning Sector Guides and Civil Society Innovation reports.

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      Phone: +49 (0) 30 20 62 46 97 11

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