Forth International Seville Conference on Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA)
FTA and Grand Societal Challenges – Shapping and Driving Structural and Systemic Tansformations
Seville, 12-13 May 2011
The challenges of communicating the foresight study outcomes to better advise decision makers in policy and strategy matters
Claudio Chauke Nehme1,2 – , Marcio de Miranda Santos1 – , Lelio Fellows Filho1 – , Gilda Massari Coelho1 –
1 - Center for Strategic Studies and Management - CGEE; 2 - Catholic University of Brasilia
Summary
This paper addresses the challenges of communicating the results of foresight processes to decision makers in a way that truly supports their decisions with confidence and credibility. There are several difficulties often embedded in foresight recommendations regarding the relations between a particular innovation system and the complex and uncertain world. The knowledge about the whole lineof reasoning of those in power to shape decisions and the quality of the information that supports these are critical to enable change and positive impact. Therefore, a foresight practitioner must be prepared to design foresight exercises with macro processes of collective intelligence that are able to involve their clients from beginning to end of the overall process, taking care to clarify and bring into the light existing bias and, on the other hand, to promote commitment. This consideration has been in the backbone of the Center for Strategic Studies and Management (CGEE), which has been acquired through more than 400 foresight studies developed over the course of the past 9 years. The methodological approach employed by CGEE in this regard contains some vital elements. First of all, stakeholders must be involved in a foresight exercise from the very beginning. They have to feel comfortable and self-confident regarding the foresight exercise and its subsequent recommendation. This specific part is associated to definition of main objectives. Usually, at this point, CGEE’s purpose is to hear, interpret and comprehend the client’s necessities, desires and worries. CGEE's task in this context is to help to describe the main objectives and strategic goals taking into consideration several possibilities, opportunities and different perspectives to foresee the client’s preliminary intentions and then suggest some proposals. The second remarkable characteristic of CGEE’s Methodological Approach of introducing collective intelligence processes is foresight exercise planning. This activity deals with the design of the foresight exercise trying to show, in an anticipatory manner, the whole process and the most important points that have potential to introduce innovation and what requires mindset revisions. It impacts directly on the client’s perceived ability and is capable of truly engaging the client and the main stakeholders to start the exercise. In this regard, this paper shows the role of intangible values and out-off-the-box thinking in a foresight exercise and how this is embedded in CGEE's Methodological Approach in order to attain success. As a result, the paper presents CGEE's lessons learned in this period and its relation to improved support to policy options and their implications To this end, the case study developed for FINEP’s strategic foresight - the Brazilian Innovation Agency - will be discussed.The main objective was to support the configuration of a new management model for the agency that would assure, for the next fifteen years, its position as the main public funding and promotion agency and inductor of national development based on innovation. The methodological approach used by CGEE assured, through the participatory process, the commitment of an expressive contingent of internal and external stakeholders, not only with the process, but also – and mainly – with its continuity.
Keywords: Foresight; Decision-making; Strategic intelligence; Communication; Mindset transformation
1Introduction
Foresight studies can be developed by means of different approaches to deal with some of its more crucial aspects: foresight exercise purpose; the knowledge and experience of the foresight practitioner; and the stakeholder's culture of making decisions. In this paper these aspects comprise part of CGEE’s background and are explored as success factors to developing foresight exercises. On the other hand, it is assumed that the communication style is essential to implementing strategic intelligence plans with respect to relevant actions taken by stakeholders. Therefore, this paper discusses this decision making environment and CGEE's experience dealing with complex foresight studies.
CGEE is a non-profit Brazilian think tank, created in 2001 and qualified as a Social Organization by the Brazilian President, and supervised by Ministry of Science and Technology, in order to promote Science, Technology and Innovation (ST&I) development to advance economic growth, competitiveness and well-being in Brazil. The scope of CGEE's activities covers is concerned with three integrated themes: foresight studies; strategic evaluation of large programs and projects; and information and knowledge diffusion related to the Brazilian ST&I System. CGEE is considered an interface organization in the ST&I environment. It has the responsibility of articulating Government, Private Sector, Academia, and other relevant ST&I representatives in the sense of gathering collective understanding to develop its activities. From 2001 to date, CGEE has conducted more than 400 foresight studies and program/project evaluations, mobilizing more than 2000 experts per year coming from 300 institutions.
This paper is organized into the following key points:
●Intangible values: the main intangible values, in CGEE's view, are the collective understandings about challenges, situations, future possibilities for actions, and the convergent reasoning process for making decisions. These intangible values are the results of foresight exercises, which, in their conduction, value the decision makers participation and commitments. In other words, the main goal is not a perfect foresight study, but the best possible one with respect to involving decision makers and the ability to truly explain the reasoning process through clear, consistent and coherent recommendations and strategy formulations.
●The wisdom of conducting foresight exercises is critical to attaining intangible values. In CGEE's experience, a key factor of success is to start with robust planning which can structure the fundamental questions posed and challenges related to the issues regarding a foresight exercise. That is, the pre-foresight phase of CGEE’s Methodological Approach considers the clients' necessities and desires, and in addition, has to introduce strategies, methods and tools to be applied in out-off-the-box thought in order to break the mental models in a way that guarantees the particular outcomes agreed on for the foresight study.
●In order to express and explain the key points of this paper, CGEE’s Methodological Approach to foresight exercises will be presented, mostly regarding the experience and knowledge required in the foresight exercise conduction to attain the desired outcomes.
●Finally, CGEE's lessons learned related to the main theme of this paper will be presented.
2Intangible values
In the past 10 years, CGEE has conducted more than 400 foresight exercises, for government, corporations, industrial sectors, and academia. One of the most difficult and common situations is how to deal with (and avoid) the desire of the stakeholders to make decisions supported by the first phase of information generation - the horizon-scanning phase. This phase has the purpose of understanding what is going on, but not exactly to support the decision making process. There are several possibilities to connect the present situation, mainly observed by horizon scanning activities, and the strategic actions for the desired future. In other words, the collective understanding about situations and challenges of a specific issue gets the decision makers involved in the problem solving process, but produces anxiety because there is a strong temptation to act immediately rather than completing the strategy first. This kind of behavior is more frequent with the stakeholders in government.
In CGEE's experience, getting involved is a positive aspect, but it is up to the expertise of the foresight leader to make it clear that this is not the suitable time to design strategies. This could be considered as the first intangible value.
Furthermore, it is important to assemble possible futures as a puzzle, with the purpose of connecting the necessities of the present situation to the desired future. This is another challenge, because different stakeholders usually have divergent perspectives of defining the best route to the desired future. A participative process of conducting foresight exercises helps to overcome these limits and build a convergent reasoning process based on learning organization practices.
In other words, the main goal is not a perfect foresight study, but the best possible one with respect to involving decision makers and the ability to truly explain the reasoning process through clear, consistent and coherent recommendations and strategy formulations.
The intangible values are not clear in some cases, nor is there a particular list for all situations. It depends on the client, the specific issue, the environment related to the foresight study, and so on and so forth. But it is possible to register the most important ones, mainly with respect to stakeholders and foresight practitioners: common sense; better and deeper understanding about relevant issues; better strategy formulation; better reasoning process to support decision making; high dissemination of a foresight exercise among stakeholders; and, finally, commitment for strategic actions.
3The role of out-off-the-box thought in a foresight exercise
In the previous topic, the importance of intangible values and the ability required for conducting a foresight exercise were discussed. Next, the pre-foresight phase (or planning phase) is the focus as one of the key factors of success. The following is a list of activities within the scope of the pre-foresight phase: how to plan the foresight exercise process; organize data structure to support the exercise; select the list of experts to help in the exercise; plan the production process for the main products and outcomes; and so on and so forth. This is a list of activities that are part of a procedure. It has to be understood as the application of some best practices and knowledge conducting for a foresight study. It is not a sequence or routine to be executed in the same way for all foresight exercises. For CGEE, each foresight study has to be designed and conducted in a tailor-made manner: a unique methodology for each study.
This kind of mindset when applied to foresight exercise conduction is one of CGEE's main challenges, and one of the key factors of its success. The nature of foresight studies done by CGEE usually has demands for innovation, competitiveness, long-term government planning, government policy, and other related complex purposes. In this context, the pre-foresight phase deals with out-off-the-box thought as part of its task in order to truly conduct foresight exercises in a tailor-made manner.
The concept of out-off-the-box thought adopted in this paper is related to the Learning Organization Theory. The idea is, in the beginning, to think and reason about some issue avoiding influences from someone or some organization's mindsets. In other words, it is a thought process oriented to making decisions or sharing perceptions - free of prejudice, cultural influence, and reasoning processes. This concept requires the experts and stakeholders to think about the new, to foresee related issues, to imagine influence and impact dynamics regarding a specific issue analyzed in the foresight study.
CGEE's mindset revision with experts and stakeholders uses qualitative approaches. CGEE has a strong ability to mobilize experts around the world in order to show and discuss relevant facts and trends with internal experts and stakeholders in the course of foresight exercises. It has the skills to handle complex discussions with experts and stakeholders, planning workshops, technical meetings, and applying methods and tools to bring to the table the main impact questions related to the foresight exercises. In addition, its web survey platform supports foresight exercises in several ways, mainly to gather primary data from experts in issues related to the main questions regarding the goal of the exercise.
CGEE has been continuouslyimproving its ability to deal with mindset revisions. For large and complex studies, CGEE applies the Idea Accelerator software (Rasheed, 2009) as part of mindset revision, where driving forces and specific issues related to a complex problem are associated and a thought oriented by innovation mindset drives a collective discussion in order to reach innovative ideas. This process is a mix between quantitative analysis, supported by data bases, and qualitative analysis by moderating a group of experts.
4CGEE’s Methodological Approach
In this topic, the main aspect of CGEE's Methodological Approach will be explored: its role to promote understandable processes of collective intelligence oriented to desired outcomes.
There are some vital elements in CGEE's Methodological Approach. First of all, stakeholders must be involved in a foresight exercise from the very beginning. As discussed in the intangible values topic, stakeholders have to feel comfortable and self-confident regarding the foresight exercise and its subsequent recommendation. This is described in the first block of Figure 1 - Definition of main objectives. Usually, at this point, CGEE’s purpose is to hear, interpret and comprehend the client’s necessities, desires and worries. CGEE's task in this context is to help to describe the main objectives and strategic goals taking into consideration several possibilities, opportunities and different perspectives to foresee the client’s preliminary intentions and then suggest some proposals.
The second remarkable characteristic of this approach of introducing collective intelligence processes is foresight exercise planning. This activity deals with the design of the foresight exercise trying to show, in an anticipatory manner, the whole process and the most important points that have potential to introduce innovation and what aspects require mindset revisions and/or transformation. It impacts directly on the client’s perceived ability and is capable of truly engaging the client and the main stakeholders to start the exercise. This part is expressed in the second block of Figure 1 - Topic Selection.
The foresight exercise is comprised of three phases: Initial, Main, and Dissemination. The first phase, Initial, is responsible for establishing the baseline of the exercise, usually mapping what is going on related to the main issue. In this phase, tasks related to gathering and structuring data, and environment scanning are frequent. This phase also produces the most relevant information to later support perspective analysis. The second phase, Main, is the most creative phase, where several studies, workshops, and tools are applied in order to revise and transform mindsets, understand possible future impacts and influences among the main issues in the foresight exercise. In this phase, collective intelligence is vital to the success and to sharing common understanding about strategies and behavior regarding the purpose of the foresight exercise. It is always prepared and executed together with the client and stakeholders, in a partnership style. In this phase, CGEE prepares the field of the decision-making process in order for it to become clear, complete and comprehensive for all. The third phase, Dissemination, is responsible for showing the decision makers all aspects defined in the exercise and the processes of intelligence applied to reach the strategy definitions and action recommendations. See Figure 1, blocks 3, 4 and 5, respectively, Initial Phase, Main Phase, and Dissemination Phase.
The last block of Figure 1, Decision making, is out of CGEE's governance. The client and stakeholders are in charge of implementing the recommendations and strategies. It is important to note that CGEE is evaluated regarding to the effectiveness of its recommendations; however it is not involved in the implementation process. This means that its credibility depends on the relevance and applicability of its recommendations.
A special remark is needed regarding CGEE's methodological approach of engaging the clients and stakeholders. To attain the desired outcomes, the complexity to engage clients and stakeholders in the Main and Dissemination phases imposes a distinguished attitude compared to the technical and scientific attitudes required. The communication style is considered crucial in CGEE's opinion. The comprehension of tools, workshops, and studies depends on the style of communicating and making the whole process acceptable for all. Different groups of stakeholders demand different communication skills and style. CGEE has vast experience with governmental and academia groups. From the last 5 years to date, CGEE has also developed foresight exercises for corporations and private associations.