Performance information helps us examine what has happened and what is happening now. Managing under uncertainty also requires asking whether the conditions behind a plan may change.
Strategic foresight brings that question into view. Its value is not a promise to predict a single future. It is an opportunity to consider uncertainty before decisions become fixed.
Why foresight remains peripheral
Mhamed Biygautane's conceptual article examines why foresight remains difficult to integrate into public management despite growing interest and analytical capability.
The paper describes a self-reinforcing institutional pattern. Its central concern is evidential standing: foresight is often not treated as usable policy evidence. The qualities that help it gain credibility, including robustness, fit with the policy context, inclusive production and connection to decisions, can be difficult to develop before foresight has an established place in those decisions.
Integration requires more than a workshop
The article argues that breaking this circularity requires both capability inside government and institutional backing for using foresight. Its analysis is a conceptual synthesis, not a test demonstrating that a single intervention will work everywhere.
For results practitioners, this is a useful caution against treating a one-time exercise as organizational integration. An interesting set of scenarios is not, by itself, evidence that the scenarios influenced a choice.
Connect future questions to present decisions
As a proposed practice, identify one assumption behind a current initiative and ask what might make it less reliable. Then ask which decision would be affected and what information could help the organization recognize a change.
This does not require claiming that a particular future will occur. It creates a connection between uncertainty and a real management question. The exercise should make its assumptions explicit and distinguish plausible possibilities from established facts.
Another useful question is who participates in the discussion. The source's emphasis on inclusive production invites practitioners to consider whose experience informs the possibilities being explored.
Lesson learned
Foresight becomes more relevant when it has a clear place in decision making, not simply a place on a planning calendar. Capability and organizational support need to develop together.
For the PPX community, the connection with managing for results is a proposed practical one: evidence about current performance can be discussed alongside uncertainty about the conditions needed for future results.
Which assumption in your current plan would most benefit from a structured conversation about change?
Use that question to connect planning, risk and results practitioners in your next learning exchange.
Sources and further reading
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