This Business of Issues:
Coping with the Company's Environments. James Brown, Conference Board (Research
Report), 1983, 74 pages.
Developed by a business
organization with considerable input via discussion meetings on the topic.
Covers many aspects, including: various interests and their roles, timing
and duration of reports, getting trends on the table and selecting the most
important, contacting outsiders and having internal discussions, relationship
to corporate planning, getting started and who serves on the team, and payoffs.
Getting started includes:
list 100 or more issues, seek other's perspectives on the issues, categorize
the issues, start a central issues file and publicize it, determine which
issues are relevant to the organization, investigate the most important in
detail, circulate conclusions for others to read, learn what other organizations
are doing about the issues, list plans of action in dealing with the issues,
talk about the issues in a variety of meetings/appearances.
Written reports can be
via periodic newsletters, position papers, and issue books or formal studies.
Some companies use internal staff coordinators with broad company-wide representation
and others contract with outside groups to provide this service. Those activities
within the company should be viewed as an extension of normal activities -
with a future emphasis.
Issues Management from
the Consultant's Perspective
Issues Management: How
You Can Plan, Organize and Manage For the Future, Joseph Coates, Vary Coates,
Jennifer Jarratt, Lisa Heinz, Lomond Publishers, 1986, 142 pages.
The book is based on
a research report prepared by J.F. Coates, Inc, for the Electric Power Research
Institute, and therefore focuses to some extent on issues of concern to business.
The book is a very good reference book for several reasons: 1) the authors
have a great deal of experience in technology assessment and issues management,
2) they provide detailed explanations on concepts, processes and techniques
of issues management, 3) they provide a model for establishing an issues management
system, and 4) the provide a research agenda identifying areas that could
use more study.
A prototypical issues
management system would 1) diagnose the situation relative to the organization,
2) begin small and select participants widely within the organization, 3)
gradually expand as the activities are accepted. To make it all work, they
suggest: be positive, be helpful, be informed, be a team player, be interdisciplinary,
be sensitive to the culture (or the organization), be active in outreach (do
stop at the formal report), be selective (don't include everything), and be
smart. The book includes a series of topics for possible discussion
at workshops on the issues management subject.
Foresight from the State
Government Perspective
State Government Foresight
in the U.S. Lauren Cook. Futures Research Quarterly, Winder 1990. p29-40.
Ten Prerequisites for
Effective Foresight in Government. Many of these may not be achieved, some
are only important after a process is moving.
1. Leadership commitment
(a belief that responsible governance includes responsibility to the future;
a willingness to provide leadership to instill this belief in others; a commitment
to effect change as a result of foresight activity if called for).
2. Consensus among those
involved on the broad policy context - that is, the historical trends, current
issues, and their relative importance, that are part of the existing policy
environment.
3. A clear idea on how,
in specific terms, the information that results from the foresight activity
will be used to make better policy decisions.
4. Consensus and realism
on the part of participants about the goals, objectives, resources and outcomes
of the foresight efforts.
5. Recognition that each
foresight application (in different branches or different places in the policy
cycle, or with different configurations of players) will require different
designs for implementation.
6. Continuity: the foresight
activity should engender the capacity to renew and adapt the forecasts analyses,
goals, and visions that result from initial efforts.
7. Open doors: with few
exceptions, the foresight process should provide opportunities for input from
people external to the office or organization initiation the process.
8. Politically sensitive
but shielded from political manipulation.
9. Consensus on the analytical
timeframe(s).
10. Management (internal)
and political (external) accountability for short- and long-term outcomes.
Institutionalizing a
Foresight Process
Data need to be collected
and presented to form an institutional foresight process. New activities need
to be justified, particularly on subjects such as foresight, where the immediate
value is not always clear to those controlling resources.
Organizations have many
people doing, in their minds, adequate planning for the future, and thus feel
threatened when some new process like this is instituted. So, care must be
taken to deal with other people in the organization, and involve them in the
information collection role.
Having outside experts/consultants
is good to gain third party endorsement of your ideas, but don't have the
expert serve as a dictator rather than as a facilitator.
Once information is collected,
people are informed of the process via participation in it, the results will
need to be presented. These presentations should take the multiple forms which
already exist in the organization, and be used as further educational tools
about the futures process you are undertaking.
The Foresight Principle:
Cultural Recovery in the 21st Century. Praeger. 1994. Richard Slaughter.
232p.
Foresight depends on
establishing the context (past, present, future) and understanding the elements
of looking ahead. He defines foresight as "the ability to weigh up pros
and con, to evaluate different courses of action and to invest possible futures
on every level with enough reality and meaning to use them as decision-making
aids." Slaughter identifies six strategies to respond to difficult times
for young people (applicable to the non-young as well): "1) develop an
understanding of the effects of young people's media, 2) change fears into
motivations, 2) explore social innovations, 4) see the future as part of the
present, 5) use futures concepts, tools and ideas, and 6) design your way
out of the industrial era. Concludes with an extensive annotated bibliography
or relevant references covering a range of disciplines and viewpoints.
