Thinking Futures will work with your staff to build a scanning system from the ground up, or adapt and improve your existing scanning processes.
Everyone scans the environment every day, whether it is conscious or unconscious scanning. In an organisational setting, managers usually scan around both their jobs and their professions, but this scanning is usually done individually. Setting up a formal scanning system in your organisation allows this individual scanning knowledge to be surfaced to generate collective views about what matters for your organisation.
Scanning on a regular and systematic basis allows you to build a strong intelligence base about events, trends and emerging issues today that are likely to have an impact on your organisation into the future.
Exploring how these trends and issues might evolve over time allows you to be proactive in your strategy, and avoid the reactive, crisis management approach to events so often characteristic of organisations today. The aim of scanning is to strengthen the quality of information that informs strategic decision making.
A new scanning project typically covers the following stages and will be tailored to match your organisation's scanning expertise:
- scoping your needs and identifying the scanning team,
- agreeing on the scanning framework - key issues, focus, categories for scanning 'hits', recording of 'hits',
- workshop tailored for your organisation to introduce your scanning team to the principles and approaches underpinning scanning, how they will scan, what to look for, and how to record scanning 'hits',
- setting up a repository for scanning 'hits', either in house or using existing (free) external systems,
- regular review sessions, either in person or remotely (email/online project management site) during the initial scanning phase,
- support to develop ways to report the outcomes of the scanning to staff across the organisation, including both electronic and face-to-face reporting,
- aligning scanning outcomes with your strategy/planning processes, and
- gaining support and participation across the organisation.
Contact Maree Conway at Thinking Futures today to talk about the benefits of setting up your in-house scanning system today. |
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