A working vocabulary for strategic foresight and anticipatory governance
Foresight has its own language, and some of it can sound abstract. These are the ideas that matter most for community college governance, defined plainly.
Twelve concepts
The discipline of thinking systematically about possible futures. It does not try to predict what will happen. It maps what could happen so that decisions can be tested against more than one future.
A way of governing in which a board regularly and explicitly considers several possible futures as part of its decisions. The idea comes from public policy, where Leon Fuerth developed it for governments facing fast and complex change.
The habit of treating the present as the template for the future. It leads institutions to plan as if current conditions will continue, even when the evidence suggests they will not.
A small, concrete sign that something may be changing. A signal can be a study, a new law, a product launch or a decision by one institution. Most signals fade. A few are early evidence of a larger shift.
A belief about the future that a plan depends on. Most assumptions are never written down. Stating them makes them possible to test, and shows a board where a decision is exposed.
A large force that shapes many signals at once. Drivers are often grouped as social, technological, economic, environmental and political. Mapping them shows which forces a college cannot control but must account for.
A coherent description of a future that could unfold. Scenarios are used in sets, because the point is to see several futures side by side. A decision that works in only one of them is a bet.
A common way to build scenarios. It crosses two critical uncertainties, each with two extremes, to produce four distinct futures. One example crosses the pace of AI development with the value of credentials.
How an institution chooses to act under uncertainty. A bet commits to the most likely future. A hedge protects against a future it hopes to avoid. A robust choice works across all scenarios. A core-and-satellite approach holds the core steady while testing new ideas at the edges.
A model for seeing change over time. Horizon 1 is how things work today. Horizon 3 is the emerging future. Horizon 2 is the transition, where the old and the new run side by side.
Evidence a board agrees to watch after it decides. A good indicator carries a return trigger: a point at which the board will revisit the decision.
An event that seems unlikely but would have large effects if it happened. Examples include the closure of a major regional employer or a sudden change in federal aid. Naming wildcards in advance shortens the time it takes to respond.