Telling or Experiencing Foresight

Foresight really only makes sense to people in ways that change how they think about futures when it is experienced, when it is 'felt'.

This is an old post, written in 2017 when I was finding my way into the current space I work in now. Still relevant and slightly edited, I write about responding to the challenges as a practitioner finding their unique space in the wide foresight/futures global conversation.

I was invited to Swinburne University's Strategic Foresight class yesterday to talk with them about my experiences at a foresight practitioner. We talked about my journey, what I'd learned and shared the experiences they wanted more information about - how to get into the field, how to tell clients something they don't want to know, what I see as my primary motivation. During the conversation, I realised a couple of things. One was that the reason I probably got such awful student evaluations last year when I 'taught' environmental scanning to a different class of Strategic Foresight students is that I was totally uncomfortable being seen as the sage on stage, the expert with the answers.  I do know a lot about how…