How do shared beliefs about futures emerge?

A strategic foresight capacity is the outcome of the development and coalescence of individual foresight capacities. Here I see foresight as a neurological and cognitive capacity.

In this post I'm exploring the need to clarify the role of an individual in how shared beliefs about an organisation's futures emerge.

I believe now - after 22 years experience and a PhD in futures -  that foresight will only emerge in ways that are useful in the present when we turn some of our attention to integrating individual foresight with organisational or strategic foresight. The latter focus is understandable because it's the collective that take strategic actions of any kind. But integrating individual foresight in collective processes is also critical if actions emerging from futures processes are to have 'impact'.

Those actions are underpinned by our foresight capacities which are, in turn, underpinned by our assumptions - a broad term which I take to mean the beliefs what is right and wrong, what are values are, and what we can accept as valid and what we reject, all of which shape our thinking, our actions and our judgement on what futures are possible - or not.

I did this …