Environmental scanning (also known as horizon scanning) is part of anticipating the future. It's done by systematically gathering information about current and changing conditions. Good foresight requires environmental scanning for understanding emerging change.
Scanning is a lot of work, but other people already do it for you. Being efficient means scanning the scanners.
How do you scan the scanners?
Find the bloggers, news sites, podcasts, etc. that cover the range of news and information you need to monitor. Online sources, including tons of free ones, do this work well. You can fine-tune what you look at to tap well-curated sources.
My interests flop all over the place, and I find value in a rich mix of places. It's an ever-changing landscape of sources, but some I find valuable these days are: Reddit Futurology, PSFK, Slinking Toward Retirement, Boing Boing, and various of my savvy friends' twitter feeds.
My colleagues are scanners who curate insights with a focus on the Future of Packaging on Twitter at @packfutur, and on the future of work at @50PlusatWork on Twitter and the Future of Work on Facebook.
Your best strategy is to find a manageable set of sources. "Automate" your monitoring by subscribing to email newsletters, using social media, or RSS feeds. That means information will flow to you. You won't have to remember to check multiple sources.
Keep fine-tuning your set of sources. Ditch anything that wastes your time. Add sources when you have a particular focus or project.
One caution. You can be too tailored in your strategy. Allow in some variety, alternative views, and serendipity. You will make discoveries that way, instead of allowing confirmation bias to get ahold of you.
Confirmation bias is getting attention in American politics. It is the tendency we have to pre-filter what we see and read according to our established views. Confirmation bias closes our minds to new ideas and other viewpoints. We end up in a protective bubble of our own making.
This is also a trap in foresight. The act of exploring for information and ideas about change is called environmental scanning. (Also called horizon scanning.) It is the work of collecting information, links, observations, etc. to better understand change and explore future possiblities. Confirmation bias afflicts scanning. It leads us to see only things that confirm our beliefs about the future. In fact, even your set of digital or paper filing categories can trick you into missing other changes.
This is a inevitable risk, and you have do two things to overcome it:
1). develop an approach that ensures you encounter new ideas in new categories. Don't just collect things that confirm what you have already decided is true. Read opposing views on purpose. Move towards divergent thoughts instead of away from them.
2). watch yourself and learn to catch yourself at this. Call out your biases when they happen. Carry your awareness of them into situations like when you will meet people with different world views.
Breaking through your own biases is a win. You should delight in discoveries as you read and observe that don't fit your understanding or or your categories. Get excited about finding out you're wrong. If you can't file it, leave it on the desk top. It's got an important insight for you. Pop that bubble.
I made the case in my previous post Experiencing the future Part 1: Getting beyond analysis and changing minds that experiencing the future is vital to good foresight and benefits organizations. I don’t claim to be a practitioner of the most exciting and advanced experiential futures, but I have decades’ experience getting real business execs in real organizational situations to engage the future better, adding experiences that fit what business seems able to embrace and make useful.
Below I offer some “how to” suggestions for making foresight more experiential. For more on the leading edge, have a look at The Sceptical Futuryst, Stuart Candy’s blog—his topic list is chock full of intriguing and valuable ideas about helping people experience the future. And try a Google search on “experiential futures”.
The ideas below range from the simple to the somewhat more challenging and complex.
Better scanning – See Talk to the Frog and the ideas I share in Ideas on effective environmental scanning in the digital age which make the case for understand how the world is changing better, where possible experiencing that change first hand. The philosophy there is, “get out from behind the mouse.” This is the key to getting a more visual, tactile, and experiential sense of future possibilities–where the first clues or examples of them are in our world now.
Clear ideas about the future – The best foresight concepts are evocative descriptions of future possibilities, which begin to get our heads into something new. For example, the concept of virtual reality. This kind of futures experience is in our thoughts, but that is already more powerful than just engaging with data and analysis about change.
An image of something that may become big in our future. The Espresso Book Machine produces books on demand
Images – There are, by definition, no pictures of the future. But we can do at least two things about that:
1). Create pictures of the future as an artist can, or you can do without art skills, simply doodling, collaging, etc. and
2). Finding pictures of things that may already exist, but aren’t commonplace, and represent something we may see much more of in the future. For example, a picture of a goods-producing kiosk such as the Espresso Book Machine is inspiring of a wide-range of future ideas about goods produced on demand.
Role playing – Having people get their heads into a particular identity, different from their own, is a powerful way to begin to shift their understanding and give them a different experience. And you can get a group to do this together, putting them into a simulated situation where their identities and circumstances are different, showcasing what might be true in the future. We also like to work with the “TOPs” (technical, organizational, and personal) multiple perspectives method with groups. This concept, described in detail here, was originated by futurist and systems science expert Hal Linstone. It helps a group understand the common perspectives that shape and are shaped by an organization’s decisions. We’ve had great success asking a group to break into three groups, each taking up one of these perspectives to confront issue or ideas about change.
“suffering” – A version of role playing is to have people lose something, or simulate losing something to highlight a potential future change. We had this experience with a futures team who decided to have those participating in a dinner be fed in three ways: normal food, a lavish feast, and plain rice and (simulated) dirty water. Each group had something to think and talk about, from different, simulated perspectives. You can also consider the opposite of “suffering”–Why not try out some utopian ideas and get people to describe and play with what the future would be like if something great happened, such as the end of hunger or cancer.
Getting people to see, touch, experience the leading edge of change: Packaging Executives visit a Center for Hard to Recycle Materials
In the world – It’s particular powerful with office-bound people to get them “out from behind the mouse” and out into experiences different from their own. That can mean seeing things that exist today, but that represent a change we will likely see more of. For example, we put a group of packaging executives on a bus and took them first to a standard municipal recycling plant and then to a center for hard to recycle materials (aka a “CHaRM”). The CHaRM is a rare facility–at the time there were only a few in the world. But it may represent a vital future in their business. Despite their being in the packaging business, some had never been to a conventional recycling facility, let alone to a CHaRM. It was eye-opening for some and idea-provoking for most of them. I reflected on this kind of experience in an earlier post, Offsetting your suburban, middle class, white collar bias which advocates for you getting loose of whatever built-in perspectives and biases you might have.
Scenario building – I’ve written several times about the scenario method and my fondness for it. Its power in really getting people’s head into the future is remarkable and reliable. Scenarios go far beyond basic trend analysis and forecasting to depict in words and/or pictures whole futures, with the changes we are thinking about portrayed in real situations. The greatest power of the method is in experiencing the process, though the outputs can be terrific tools for communicating about the future and sharing the experience with others.
Farmville and other mobile/web games teach people about big complex systems
Gaming – Games give players the power to shape future outcomes. They are a way to bring alive the forces and countercurrents possible that we try to convey in scenarios. Consider for example the power of fantasy ball teams in bringing to life the meaning and power of strategic decisions. More games are about life and decisions than ever. The mobile/computer game Farmville is teaching its virtual farmer users about climate change, for example.
Other tools, techniques and methods
Virtual worlds – online and console gaming can simulate futures in elaborate and immersive ways, including allowing players to game out outcomes of decisions.
Experiential scenarios – a method for bringing future possibilities more alive for people’s learning and understanding, debate and discussion. It goes beyond art and narrative storytelling to, for example, create experiences in the real world, such as simulating a pandemic’s effects on a city, as was done in Coral Cross.
Artifacts from the future – a long-time feature at the back of Wired magazine that features similated objects; consumer products, for example, from some future year. See: Found futures.
No matter how far into the experiential to reach, you’ll gain something from working to bring the future more alive with your colleagues. It’s worth the effort and the risk you’ll take. Give it a try!
Images: Espresso Book Machine via ondemandbooks.com, CHaRM by jbmahaffie, Farmville by tankgore1 via Flickr
Once you have recognized that you cannot assume continuity across the systems, technologies, relationships, etc. you depend on, you should recognize that you have to ask some tough questions: “Do we have a future?” “What makes us think so?” “What could disrupt the systems we rely on?” and “What do we have to do to ensure our future?” You have to ask these questions bravely and honestly, getting past assumptions of continuity.
The scanning that supports probing those questions has a different character than routine organizational scanning. It puts a focus on the fundamental and big systems in global society, on changes in technology, on changing in the global economy, and on threats from other areas of knowledge and professions. It lets in the more-speculative provocations and leading edge of change discoveries that are not normally on an organization’s radar screen, or that it may have difficulty conceptualizing and facing.
A valuable step in the process is to build positive and negative scenarios for the organization’s future, and use them to explore the potential for disruptive change. The scenarios don’t assume continuity. Some of them challenge it, and propose alternative futures in which there is sharp change or negative outcomes. Those possibilities need to be the focus of scanning and monitoring regarding the organization’s future.
If your “what if” scenarios don’t shake people up, they probably are not about the tough questions you need to ask.
Did the makers of slide rules assume too much continuity?
An organization’s routine strategymaking has to include ongoing explorations of the forces, issues, and trends in its internal and external environment. That is environmental scanning, and the process is routine for any well-led organization. But too often our scanning focus is too narrow and is based on assumptions of continuity.
Here’s why that happens. When you look at your future from today, and explore the topics you already know are part of your business, you are focusing tightly on your existing systems, processes, relationships, technologies, and the trends and forces shaping them. In doing that, you can too easily assume your organization, or your profession, or your sector, or your product/technology will continue as it has. And unfortunately, that’s the kind of routine environmental scanning that organizations do.
Is this what the makers of “adding machines”—the mechanical calculators of three or four decades ago thought? The slide rule? Probably. They just kept working to get better at the same business, assuming continuity.
But your continuity is not assured—it is essential to question it. Bigger things—things you may not be looking at carefully—can disrupt or destroy the pathway you are on. You need to question that pathway, and explore what could change your game entirely. That means asking some tough questions and changing the way you explore your future. Those points are the subject of another post.
You almost certainly have friends and colleagues that are always sharing articles they found, web links, Youtube videos, and so on. They are natural born environmental scanners. You can use their hunger for information, their energy, and their generosity to make a difference in helping you catch up, keep up, and get ahead of what’s going on in the world.
Too often, people go to this trouble, and nothing much comes of it. They get no feedback, and may think no one appreciates what they are doing. But they are doing free work for you.
What these instinctive scanners do may already be adequate, but you may be able to get even greater value from them. So you should encourage them. At least reply with "thanks," or, "you are absolutely right," or, "have you seen anything else on this?"
Second, they may work a bit quickly, and not always add value to their discoveries. Urge them to do that, ask "what did you see here?" "How shall we think about this?" "How do you think we can find out more about this?" You can get them in the habit of adding meaning and value to what they find.
This can go a long way to improving your organization’s foresight. Seeing its value and the encouragement others are getting, others will join in. And it certainly is part of fostering a foresight culture.
I’ve been working for some time on a piece Environmental scanning in which I lay out thinking and advice on how to do effective, collaborative environmental scanning (aka horizon scanning) using the tools of the digital world. This work, which I expect to update from time to time, is long enough that I’ve given it its own page on ForesightCulture.com. Click here to see it, or look for the "eScanning 2.0" tab at the top of any ForesightCulture page.
A few weeks ago, I gave a talk to a group of association executives on environmental scanning. My proposed title for the talk was "Environmental Scanning 2.0," by which I wanted to reflect the potential and power we have in harnessing new tools and the network to make envirobmental scanning much more effective. My host urged me to use a title clearer to my audience, so we went with "Technology, Members, and Effective Environmental Scanning." In my view and based on comments I got, the talk went very well. My audience had thoughtful questions. Most of them said they did not currently do environmental scanning, but I think that reflected their assumption that that would entail a somewhat formal process culminating in a report, called "environmental scan." I advocated, as I have here on foresightculture.com, for making scanning a daily, continuous habit, a part of building a culture of foresight. I told them about online tools they can use, such as RSS feeds and iGoogle to organize and "push" information to themselves. I urged them to tap the available technologies such as listservs, GoogleGroups, Facebook, etc. to create sharing and collaborative space for the results of scanning. I also urged them to shop carefully among the sources of information and the tools for accessing and sharing it, and to make sure what they set out to do was going to work for their specific constituencies and situations. Throughout our discussion lingered the question: "Isn’t this just one more task to add to our over-burdened lives?" I tried to show how doing scanning differently could help the cause of busy executives trying to be effective. Inevitably, however, each of those in attendance will have to decide how important new insights on change and better readiness for dealing with emerging issues and opportunities is to them and their team. The value of scanning has to outweigh the added burden. By making scanning a part of the fabric of each day, it’s my hope people can avoid adding it as a task. I try to be sure to show people how more important than adding new sources information to what they see is attaching meaning to it-meaning for them in their organizations. I hope my group from that Friday’s meeting arrived at that thought, and understood that new efforts and a clearer focus on how to fit scanning into their work is worth it.
Scanning is a lot of work, but other people already do it for you. Being efficient means scanning the scanners.
You almost certainly have friends and colleagues that are always sharing articles they found, web links, Youtube videos, and so on. They are natural born 
