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What are the typical approaches for managing Foresight activities?

A structure for any Foresight activity needs to be thought through, including the assignment of roles to working groups, panels, committees, sponsoring agencies, trainers, etc. The tasks assigned to such parties are linked to the type of Foresight planned. Common characteristics include, for example, the vital initial step of establishing a steering committee and management team. Many activities also make use of "expert" groups or panels that focus on particular issues. Thus, common organizational elements include:

• A Steering Committee that will tend to approve the objectives, the focus, the methodology, the work program, validate the strategy and tools for communication, and help to promote the results. It will define / adjust the assessment criteria and review the deliverables. It will monitor the quality assurance process for the whole project. The Steering Committee can also be a key actor to raise awareness, mobilize experts, and to nominate them to various panels.

• A Project Team that will manage the project on a daily basis, with tasks such as:

-          Leading the project on a daily basis;

-          Maintaining regular contacts with the stakeholders & the Steering Committee to ensure that the project direction is maintained;

-          Keeping accurate records of costs, resources and time scales for the project;

-          Ensuring integration of Management Reports and their presentation to the Steering Committee;

-          Checking that the project maintains its technical objectives; and

-          Ensuring that the project maintains its relevance to wider activities, initiatives, and policies.

• Securing high political support early on, which demonstrates that the exercise is taken seriously. If key people are first targeted and won over, a momentum can be established. It would be helpful if ‘champions’ or ‘ambassadors’ could be enlisted early on to put forward the arguments for KS Foresight. Such figures are vital to seeing projects through difficult times; but there are sometimes risks of rivalry (e.g. between agencies), or of divergent expectations.

• Expert work, which is more often than not organized around expert panels/working groups. Expert work is highly significant in terms of:

-          Gathering of relevant information and knowledge;

-          Stimulation of new insights and creative views and strategies for the future, as well as new networks;

-          Diffusion of the Foresight process and results to much wider constituencies; and

-          Overall impact of Foresight in terms of follow-up action.

The mechanics of setting up these groups need to be thought through very carefully, since their membership will influence the whole exercise. Moreover, the management style of these elements will need to be defined – for example, will working groups be given the freedom to make many of the decisions outlined in this Handbook for themselves? (This is a definite possibility if the exercise is to be sponsored by more than one organization.) Alternatively, a central project team or steering committee might define the terms of conduct to be followed (this is more common). Tasks & responsibilities will have to be assigned to the different groups appointed.

Whether the aim is to set up a process-based or a product-based Foresight activity, one of the main features of Foresight activities must be the active involvement of the various stakeholders from initiation and throughout all the stages of the activity. This is a core factor differentiating fully-fledge Foresight from more narrow futures and planning approaches, and is an important determining factor in Foresight’s organization and management.

While critical details of the Foresight exercise have to be decided on by the Steering Committee and management team, there is still much scope for wider consultation about the process - its key themes, methods, etc. A program of meetings that can explain what is being planned and gather feedback on it can be a valuable input; other modes of consultation involve requesting written submissions, etc. Such approaches can be important in legitimizing the exercise and helping to clarify its functions and alleviate misunderstandings about what is involved. This requires adequate preparation, and soundings to provide early warning of any political fault-lines that may be encountered.

Widespread participation by various types of players should not be tokenistic (though it does play a role in establishing the legitimacy of the activity): it should be highly-valued as a source of vital knowledge and perspectives. It should not be occasional and episodic (though there will certainly be occasions where specific knowledge inputs are required and thus particular sorts of consultation arranged): Foresight requires the participation of players in guiding the participants right from the identification of the general and specific objectives, through the planning of the activities to be completed and the methodologies to be adopted, to the management of operations and the dissemination of results.

Participation must be considered a determining factor of the final result. In terms of ‘how’ to ensure wide and in depth consultation, promotional activities, such as those suggested previously, offer opportunities to elicit views on the conduct of regional Foresight. Moreover, many of the methods used in Foresight require inputs (e.g. data, visions, etc.) from participants. In other words, Foresight activities ‘naturally’ offer a number of opportunities to consult stakeholders – it is up to project managers to decide how to take full advantage of these.

Finally, setting up simple tools that will allow the project team to monitor the Foresight project follows what is now considered good practice in project management. Monitoring consists of continuously observing and ensuring that the resources foreseen for each project step are used effectively as defined in the blueprint, that work schedules are respected and that outputs actually materialize. It will help the project team to control and focus the implementation of the project. On-going monitoring involves:

• Observing the activities undertaken during the implementation of each step in the project in order to compare them, in real time, against the targets set.
• Continuously adapting the project plan to its environment. As new knowledge is gained and stakeholders are activated, the vision or process of your project may need to be altered: Foresight projects are not expected to be rigid.

The monitoring methodology should involve a set of selected indicators that are designed to provide relevant actors with specific and topical data that allow them to follow the course of the project.

Notes:

Miles, Ian & Keenan, Michael. “Handbook of Knowledge Society Foresight”, PREST, October 2002, p. 56-58