Beyond the Horizon: Strategic Foresight Tools for Future-Ready Organisations
New strategic foresight course for Australian policymakers
If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that no one knows what the future has in store for us. From the pandemic and lockdown to flash floods and record-breaking temperatures, what holds true today won’t necessarily be the same tomorrow. Public policy must account for this uncertainty and be able to fit and flex to whatever future awaits us.
UNSW has partnered with the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) to create a new microcredential, ‘Beyond the Horizon: Strategic Foresight Tools for Future-Ready Organisations’, to equip public servants with the skills to design and develop public policy amidst uncertainty and make sure Australia is prepared for a range of possible futures.
Strategic Foresight expert Steve Tighe, who collaborated with UNSW Canberra and the APSC to develop the course, says this partnership recognises the increasingly uncertain environment in which all leaders must plan and make strategic decisions.
“The need for new planning skills to prosper amidst this uncertainty is especially so for the Australian Public Service, whose decisions are often made for the long-term, often concern high stakes areas such as national security, and often have the potential to impact millions of Australians,” Steve says.
Why policy must be designed for a range of futures
“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is – and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security,” wrote mathematician John Allen Paulos twenty years ago. For a world grappling with the aftermath of a years-long pandemic, one recession after another, the drastic and often devastating consequences of climate change, and wars springing up on many fronts, Paulos’ words have never hit so close to home.
In the face of such uncertainty, policymakers must use strategic foresight to “anticipate possible opportunities and challenges and better prepare for change,” says the OECD’s Strategic Foresight Unit.
According to Steve, “Being equipped with future thinking tools enables leaders, teams and organisations to naturally think and plan in terms of uncertainty. Once the acceptance of uncertainty is embedded, people instinctively look for emerging signals of change that might challenge or disrupt the status quo.”
Steve continues: “From this broader perspective on how the future might play out, leaders are better positioned to identify potential opportunities, mitigate potential risks, and ultimately make better policy decisions.”
What is strategic foresight?
Strategic foresight in public policy development is a systematic approach used to envision possible future scenarios and explore their implications for current policies. This method is designed to help policymakers anticipate emerging trends and challenges and prepare them to make better policy decisions for the public. It’s a proactive approach that encourages innovation and flexibility and ensures that policies remain relevant in an evolving global landscape.
According to the OECD’s Strategic Foresight Unit, policymakers will need to leverage “a range of methodologies, such as scanning the horizon for emerging changes, analysing megatrends, and developing multiple scenarios, to reveal and discuss useful ideas about the future … then use those ideas to make better decisions and act now.”
Professor Deborah Blackman, Associate Dean at UNSW Canberra and one of the academics leading the course stresses the importance of using foresight tools to plan for ever-changing circumstances: “You cannot make ‘set and forget’ policies. Things are going to change—that’s the only thing we can count on. But strategic foresight allows us to think about how those changes might impact the future so we can be prepared to change tack accordingly.”
Professor Deborah Blackman, Associate Dean at UNSW Canberra
About the course: Beyond the Horizon: Strategic Foresight Tools for Future-Ready Organisations
‘Beyond the Horizon: Strategic Foresight Tools for Future-Ready Organisations’ is designed to broaden learners’ perspectives and increase their comfort when working with uncertainty. Developed in partnership with the APSC, the program is one of Australia’s first strategic foresight courses designed specifically for the context of public policy development.
This micro-credential will give public servants the skills and knowledge to craft policy and programs that capitalise on emerging opportunities and achieve the best outcomes for Australian communities and businesses—no matter what the future brings.
“The course is about enabling people to think about the future in a structured way,” says Deborah. “It’s about giving policymakers tools and techniques to compare different scenarios and make insightful, thoughtful decisions.”
This 8-week strategic foresight course is delivered by King's College London’s Professor Michael Sanders and UNSW’s Professor Deborah Blackman. Participants will learn to critically evaluate evidence and assumptions about future views using a strategic foresight framework. They’ll learn to consider how biases and other factors may hinder futures thinking, and how to mitigate them. They’ll learn foresight techniques and how to apply them, and begin to analyse current and potential future domestic or international developments related to future scenarios.
Participants will participate in interactive discussions, webinars, group activities, case studies, and online forums. By the end, they will have a deep understanding of the drivers of change shaping our future and their implications for policy and decision-making.
“The goal of the course is to get people to learn and reflect, then take it straight back into their work,” says Deborah. “It’s a very practical course, especially for those who come in with a particular challenge or policy in mind. Thinking about real-world applications is a significant part of this course.”
Who should take part?
‘Beyond the Horizon: Strategic Foresight Tools for Future-Ready Organisations’ is designed for mid-ranking public servants with experience in policy planning, strategy, and horizon-scanning on socio-economic, sociopolitical, foreign, and security policy issues—all areas where uncertainty tends to be higher. Learners must hold an undergraduate degree or have at least three years of professional experience.
Some fields and roles that should be considered in the program include:
- Accounting and finance
- Data and research
- Human resources
- Legal and parliamentary
- Monitoring and audit
- Policy
- Portfolio, program and project management
- Service delivery
- Senior Executive Service
Each micro-credential aligns with the Australian Qualification Framework and the National Micro-credential Framework and can be used towards further postgraduate qualifications with the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM).
Deborah stresses that this course is not for specialists – it’s for everyone. “There are people who do very complex modelling and require extremely technical knowledge to make predictions about the future. But this course is not for them. This is for people who need to think about the ideas rather than the data. It’s for people who may be working alongside specialists and need to understand why this matters and need tools to translate these potential futures into policy.
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