Introduction to Strategic Foresight

Strategic foresight offers the promise of continued business growth in a world of uncertainty.

Through strategic foresight, we peer through our members’ eyes into their world, identify their unmet needs and see new solutions we can provide.

Whether yours is a small association and you’re looking to grow beyond your current set of members and you hope to increase revenue by understanding unmet needs, or you’re part of a larger organization faced with ever-increasing demands for growth, strategic foresight can help. This approach brings you the answers you need straight from the frontlines of your organization.

We all know we have to keep our eyes on what’s next, whether it comes to us from the newspaper, a cocktail conversation, a thought leader’s analysis, internet news sources, social media, or even our own brain putting together new information in a moment of insight. But how exactly do we do that?

Just like we can never stop marketing, we can never stop learning about our members and their emerging, unmet needs. The best of us have systems for making that learning happen. It all comes down to regularly talking to smart people, scanning the environment, connecting the dots, trying new things and learning from both successes and failures.

You might ask, can you really take any change in the environment and use it to your advantage? The answer is always yes! In fact, when things change for the worse, the opportunity window opens even wider.

Every time your members are dissatisfied, no matter what the reason, there is a short time when you can help them before others start generating solutions — that is your opportunity window. When members are disgruntled, they desperately want things to be better. This desire is a force you can harness.

If you see the opportunity window approaching, you can be ready for it and it can take your association forward in leaps and bounds. That’s where strategic foresight comes in. In this course, Seth Kahan will give you the playbook to get you to one place: the territory of advantage for you and your association’s growth.