ANZPAA Futures and Strategic Foresight Toolkit

 

This toolkit can be utilised both by individuals seeking to apply futures and strategic foresight analysis within their own work, or by facilitators wishing to run workshops and develop futures thinking capability within their teams.

This toolkit does not include a number of classic analysis techniques, such as SWOT analysis, gap analysis, and red teaming. Instead, this toolkit is focused on futures and strategic foresight techniques that can serve as alternatives or complementary to techniques police may already be familiar with or using already.

Futures and foresight techniques can be valuable tools for thinking about mid- to longer-term horizons and how signals and trends today may manifest in the future. Analysis derived from these techniques can go on to inform strategic planning, organisational change, and assessments of future threats and opportunities.

However, these tools are not the answer to every issue or problem requiring analysis and are likely to be less valuable when dealing with short term horizons and more very short term operational challenges. While the techniques covered in the toolkit can be used by individuals or in groups, applying them in workshop contexts can provide additional benefits such as incorporating a more diverse range of perspectives, checking individual biases and enabling greater creativity.