THE ORGANIZATION OF FORESIGHT

The interpretative approach required today is to see that interpretation has moved to a deeper level of abstraction. That is, it is our interpretations of the way that things work, of the nature of things, of what is structure and what is merely form or result, that determines our approach to strategy. Foresight as strategy has gone through cycles. At its best times, foresight has emerged from considering the profound questions of the times. At its worst time, foresight has been merely a matter of prediction based on analysis of trends and their extension. Strategy at its worst has been merely a matter of planning based on "more of the same" with little concern for foresight or even current understanding.

We are coming into a high point for strategy where foresight is demanded. The source of this foresight will be new thinking, new and more powerful questions, and an understanding of the relationships of structure and design as well as all the connections to internal and external entities. Actually, the choice of interpretation models for what is internal and what is external will be one of the significant elements of foresight. Those who want to attain foresight would do well to consider the explosion of life forms in the Cambrian era. The relative amount of change in life forms of that era-the beginning of almost all life forms as we know them-will be instructive in this period of rapid development of both technology and the life forms known as organizations.

Life is organization. An explosion of life forms is an explosion of kinds of organization. In the Cambrian era, it was organization of cells for survival. In the current era, its organization of human beings for survival in mutual productive enterprise.⁹ This explosion of forms will result in a number of new relatively stable models after there have been many tried. It isn't the survival of the form that matters, however, because human organizations can change their forms many times. What matters, in the arena of foresight, is that the forms of organization match the condition of the environment and the purposes of the enterprise. The particular matches that emerge with the aid of design will be those that have connected to the environment in ways that produce access to the structure of the future. This means that they are connected to many environments and can generate information for themselves that extend their ability to survive the current environment and those that are coming. The greatest reward will go to those who develop the organizational forms that have not only foresight but "future reach". That is, those that influence their environments-mainly other human organizations- and thereby have impact on the structure of the future. These are the companies that influence what happens to their industry. They generate information and use it in ways which appear to be demonstrating foresight.

This new approach directs us to the structures of our organizations and their processes as the sources not only of responses to the world, of implementers of strategy, but also of strategy itsel£ When strategy is emergent it requires organization which is a match for the structure of the future and therefore expresses that future in its form.

Organization, when thought about at all, has been thought of as the implementer of strategy. A good organization design is one that carries out what those with foresight-strategists and executives-have decided based on their predictions. A really good organization also provides information and feedback to these experts. Neither of these will be good enough in the future. The organization itself is the source of crucial inforrnation. The organization itself has better foresight than any of the individuals within it. The new challenge is to design an organization that is intelligent, that adds to the intelligence of each person and that processes information in ways from which foresight and the strategy to go with it emerge.

3M may be the example of this which is easiest to understand. It has a very large percentage of its current sales mix, at any time, provided by new products. The products are not the result of individual foresight nor, specifically, are any of them the result of corporate strategy. The corporate strategy is to create organizational design and management practices that continually encourage new product development. The foresight of 3M is to see that the organization itself is the source of invention, information and activity that is connected to the structure of the future and thus provides all of the foresight required in the places where the action based on that foresight will occur. Policies such as devoting 15% of time and resources to unaccounted for efforts at innovation will have the desired result emerge rather than be directed and controlled into being.

The source of the challenge of foresight is not so much the rate of change as the vast size of the space of possibility. The particular challenge to foresight is to select the portion of the space of possibility to explore and then to develop approaches that explore more of this space faster than others. This will appear as effective foresight in the marketplace. The selection of the space of possibility which is likely to produce rich returns for the investment in its exploration is the key question for strategists today.

The problem is increased because the vast space of possibility is not standing still. Selecting the space of possibility to explore needs to take into account that others are also looking for the best space to explore and that their success or failure will affect the outcome of your choice. The selecting process and the selection will also affect the impact of the choice that you make on your own organization. Your success of failure will impact your competitive environment and may then alter the value of the choices.

Making these choices requires an understanding of corporate intentions, organizational design and those portions of the structure of the future which are the best fit for the previous two. That is a matter of deep understanding of the world (including other organizations), your own organization and the development of interpretations that relate the two.

Theories being developed by John Holland¹⁰, Robert Axelrod, Stuart Kauffman¹¹ and others exploring the nature of complex adaptive systems at Michigan University, the Santa Fe Institute and other locations provide new approaches to exploring large spaces of possibility. These theories even help select strategies for choosing which space and how much of it should be attempted based on current states of technology and organization. However, the fundamental choice of the space of possibility to explore is beyond these efforts. The fundamental choice is based on an interpretative understanding that is prior to any method of organization and any method of exploration. It is not until one invents the questions to be answered-the questions of the times that one can design organizations to match. It is not until one invents the organizations to match the questions that one can design strategies for searching possibilities.

The structure of the future is a matter of personal, or corporate, interpretation that provides the beginning point for those approaches that develop and exhibit foresight. Most fail to see that it is those conversations which explore possibility and the interpretations or theories that are generated from these conversations that provide the selection criteria for which spaces of possibility get explored. The flexibility at this kind of conversation, distributed throughout an organization, provides the richest basis for generation and for choice as well as developing the natural ability of the organization to pursue those choices. The final frontier of foresight is understanding the structure of the future as a set of generated interpretations that never settles down to a correct or even a best one. Being a set of generated interpretations that doesn't settle down, and being about a space of possibility too vast to explore (even by theoretical means), we can engage the whole organization in a process of continuous creation that positions us to forever be connected to the past, present and future.

It has been said that Merlin's foresight was merely a matter of revealing, at the appropriate times, what he already knew that others didn't. Another way of saying that is that he knew the future was already present and that his power was in interpreting that present and revealing his interpretations in theatrical manner. His legendary magical powers were assigned because he influenced the actual future of his people not because of correct predictions of that future. Any foresight we are attributed will be for similar reasons. We will be seen to have foresight if we develop the constantly adapting interpretations that keep us connected to a fast changing structure of the future. It is the success of our actions over time, revealed to the rest of the world at appropriate times that will have our organizations be successful throughout rapidly changing times-if not turn us into legendary figures of the arts of foresight.

© 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd, International Journal of Strategic Management, Long Range Planning