Day 5 of 21 Days of Futures Fit Learning - Strategic Foresight

24 Jun 2026 · 2 min

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1:56

In this segment, the presenter explains core ideas of systems thinking for strategic foresight. They argue that a system’s purpose is defined by what it actually does, not by intended goals or marketing claims, and illustrate how outcomes can appear broken for some stakeholders while serving others perfectly (e.g., crime hotspots benefiting criminals, long customer‑service waits funneling callers to automated bots). The talk stresses that visible results are often only the surface; every decision generates second‑ and third‑order effects that must be anticipated when designing future‑oriented policies. To help practitioners imagine these ripple effects, the speaker recommends tools such as the Futures Wheel, which maps indirect consequences. Overall, the message is that understanding the true purpose of systems, recognizing divergent stakeholder experiences, and systematically exploring downstream impacts are essential skills for becoming “future‑fit” in a fast‑moving, complex world.

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We're looking at systems thinking, and the purpose of a system is what it does, not what we want it to do, not what the marketing department says that it does. When we look at bad outcomes and we say the system is broken, we need to pause and find out if it's really broken or if it's just producing the right results for someone other than ourselves. Crime hotspots are systems that are broken for victims of crime, but they're working perfectly for the beneficiaries of crime. The purpose of a system is what it does. Long waits on a customer service line looks like a broken system to the person who's waiting on the phone, but when it forces the human off the phone and onto the computer to use the automated bot, then it's worked perfectly. For the company as intended. Systems thinking is the ability to see the whole system at work, the capacity to see, interpret, and intervene in interconnected systems by understanding the patterns and relationships and second and third order consequences. The final result that you see is rarely the real results. Every decision has a second or third order effect. When designing policies that will have an effect on the future, we must think beyond immediate concerns and outcomes and imagine what might come next. Tools like systems thinking and the Futures Wheel help us to explore with imagination what those second and third order consequences might be. And in a world that is defined by its fast pace and complexity, being able to see the system and appreciate the consequences is the best way to become more future fit.