Strategic and Futures Thinking (Practising)

70% on-the-job learning

• Apply a futures thinking mindset by testing your assumptions when you design policy outcomes for the short, medium, and long term.
• Identify established and emerging trends and a range of futures tools to explore their implications for your policy work.
• Lead cross-sector futures and strategy projects (e.g. Long-term Insights Briefings).
• Contribute any insights from your futures thinking relating to your policy area to your organisation’s strategic work programme (e.g. statements of intent, strategic intentions).
• Work with specialists in futures thinking to identify and use futures techniques to inform policy development.

20% learning from others

• Ask more experienced colleagues to reflect on their experience of selecting and applying systems thinking and futures thinking tools, and using the outputs to inform policy work. Ask them to explain how they used the outputs to inform policy work, what went well, and what they would do differently next time.
• Ask more experienced colleagues to identify systems thinking and futures thinking resources that will expand your understanding.
• Join the Strategic Futures Group – Interagency Community of Practice on Futures Thinking.
• Read books by leaders in foresight and futures thinking (e.g. Looking Back at Looking Forward (van der Duin and van der Steen) and Strategic Foresight: Learning from the Future (Lustig).
• Stay up to date with foresight reports from other jurisdictions and international organisations, such as Policy Horizons Canada, OECD’s Strategic Foresight, Singapore’s Centre for Strategic Futures, and Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. 
• Attend seminars that provide examples of how futures thinking has been incorporated into policy development processes.

10% formal learning

• Take courses on strategic or futures thinking.