When I was a member of the Marketing & Innovation team, leading the Designer Concrete marketing initiative for the Ready-Mix Concrete business of ACC Ltd., I noticed that several industry professionals, including myself, with several years of experience distinctly struggled to foresee how their respective markets, or industries would evolve in a horizon of 5 to 10 years.
Though most of us are able to accurately foresee the future over the short term - between three months to two years, when it comes to long term horizons it gets challenging.
What shocked me, was the fact that even Governments with enormous access to funds, think tanks and talent nests often fail to correctly foresee the mid to long term future. I discovered this from a story that appeared in the Opinions page of New York Times dated 12th February 2005 which discussed the post mortem results of the 9/11 twin towers attack and claimed that despite several intelligence warnings about Osama Bin Laden in the months preceding the terrorist attacks, the Federal Government chose to ignore each successive warning citing that the intelligence was not actionable.
It is here that I acutely felt the need to develop foresight as both - business skill and life skill. And I decided to launch a pilot program for Mid-level and Senior Managers in ACC ReadyMix Division. Since we were on a budget, I designed the program inhouse.
Later in April 2018 I authored an article describing my experience and learnings after conducting this workshop "Thinking the Unthinkable" which I presented and published in the first International HR Conference brought out by IBS, Mumbai.
This workshop went through several iterations across 50 hours of Instructor led facilitation for almost sixty participants, that I did for the ACC team.
In 2020, to further formalise and bring more structure into this program with assessments, tools, and insight into international approaches to foresight, I got myself certified as Foresight practitioner from Institute for the Future or IFTF based out of Palo Alto, US. This means that I can now help you learn and apply globally recognized best practices for developing foresight as one of your important skills
This workshop is a cumulative result of my efforts to introduce a skill building program for developing foresight not just as a business skill but also as a life skill.