Using Foresight to Plan for Your School’s Future
“Thinking about the far-off future is more than an exercise in intellectual curiosity. It’s a practical skill that new research reveals has a direct neurological link to greater creativity, empathy, and optimism. In other words, futurist thinking gives you the ability to create change in your own life and the world around you, today.”
— Dr. Jane McGonigal
Writer Virginia Woolf once wrote, “The future is dark, which is the best thing the future can be, I think.” For educators and school administrators who are focused on how to best prepare today’s learners to be tomorrow’s leaders, the endless possibilities can be overwhelming: How can one prepare students of today for an unknown future? Schools can take a forward-thinking approach by exploring several possible futures through the intentional practice of strategic foresight.
What is Strategic Foresight?
According to the Institute for the Future (IFTF), strategic foresight is “a set of tools, collaborative processes, custom research, and mindsets used to anticipate future possibilities and make better decisions in an ever-changing world.” Organizations and individuals use strategic foresight for a variety of reasons, including to “make smarter decisions in an uncertain world, explore alternative futures, build long-term resilience to change, create opportunities for innovation, and enable positive change.”
The study of the future is described by a myriad of names: foresight or strategic foresight, future studies, futurology, prognostics, futuristics, and prospective studies (Acceleration Studies Foundation). And, one who studies the future, whether by formal training or not, is oft-described as a futurist — “someone who models next-order outcomes using a broad spectrum of weak signals, strong signals, trends, and other factors” (What is a Futurist?).” Quantitative futurist and founder & CEO of the Future Today Institute Amy Webb asserts that, rather than making predictions, futurists make projections, resulting in the creation of “a state of readiness, to determine strategic actions, to aid in decision-making, to build long-range plans, or to simply imagine alternate future states.”
The Future of Learning
Schools are always in a pattern of considering the future, be it next year’s enrollment projections or the next three to five years as part of a strategic planning cycle. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional learning was upended, and schools were left to consider how things could — or even if they should — return to normal.
While it’s impossible to predict the future and impractical to plan for every possibility, scenario planning is still worth the time investment. Amy Webb poses the question, “Why bother with long-range planning when there’s so much uncertainty now? Because scenario planning isn’t about future decisions that will need to be made, but about the future of the decisions we make today. Great futurists focus on the future and present simultaneously.”
Futurists explore all sorts of possibilities for various sectors, including the future of education and learning. IFTF’s Map of the Decade 2009 explores possible futures for society, the economy, the environment, infrastructure, and politics. In their 2013 Report on the Future of Learning, IFTF further predicts a shift breaking away from traditional educational institutions to what are described as continuous learning flows, where learning can take place anywhere and knowledge can be gained through a variety of means and from many sources.
At the 2024 SAIS Annual Conference, SAIS President Dr. Brett Jacobsen shared “10 Shifts in Education” of which heads of school should be aware. Having knowledge of these shifts can help school leaders better prepare for these changing dynamics and plan for the future.
Establishing a Vision for the Future at Atlanta International School
The Atlanta International School, an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School in Atlanta, GA, serving students in grades PK3-12, took a futurist’s approach to its strategic planning process. Dubbed “AIS Vision for Learning 2035”, the school aspires to develop a community of global learners who are equipped to explore passions, address challenges of complexity, and build intentionally inclusive and sustainable futures for all, while offering personalized learning and supporting student agency.
As they embarked upon this new approach to planning, the school considered several resources, including a futures planning process developed by Pierre Wack at Royal Dutch Shell and taken mainstream by the Global Business Network in the late 1980s. The Art of the Long View by Peter Schwartz helped shape the conversation at AIS, a visioning process that took approximately four years, as it coincided with the pandemic, forcing the school to spend some time on short-term and tactical solutions.
The school formed multiple, generative working groups and reviewed many resources, as well as worked with futurists and think tanks, read science fiction, and reviewed as many meta analyses as possible. Professor Yong Zhao consulted with the school to help shape the vision, as did Will Richardson and Homa Tavangar of The Big Questions Institute, who wrote of AIS in their book One Foot In The Future: “Yet, few are the number of schools or individuals that I’ve been able to find that have a stated commitment toward building futures-oriented cultures in their communities, where the future is an ongoing topic of conversation and study and an evolving frame and context for daily decisions. Some schools do ‘scenario planning,’ (and some, like Atlanta International School, do that very well). Others infuse some ‘futuring’ into their three or five-year strategic plans. But the vast majority of schools that I’ve come into contact with in my 15 years meeting educators around are confronting the future as it happens. In a moment where so much is changing so quickly, that’s not a winning strategy.”
As AIS considered what an intentionally inclusive sustainable future for all meant and what that would look like, they uncovered key drivers leading to emerging futures: access to technology; sustainable economic growth; cultural values; demographic shifts; race, gender, and identity relations; community relationships; and climate change impact. These insights informed the development of four possible futures for AIS, based on a matrix ranging from polarization to collaboration and abundance to scarcity.
Kevin Glass, head of school at AIS, shares, “The key is flexibility and agility within the planning framework, whilst not losing sight of our aspirational North Star, our Vision for Learning 2035. If you look at each of the [future planning] scenarios, there are many common threads and ideas that surface in each of them.” The emphasis shifts depending upon the environment in which the school finds itself: AIS as a bridge-builder, a beacon, a partner, or a hub.
“We recognize that we will, most likely, end up in some combination of the four possible futures — and this is all, of course, fluid,” says Glass. “Thus, we conduct an annual scan of the world around us — locally, nationally, and internationally — and look at which of the key drivers are most at play.”
The school uses this data to form part of its annual assumption, checking for its three-year, iterative, strategic planning process. This check-in allows the school to make necessary adjustments to its objectives and key results (OKRs).
As a land-locked, urban campus, the acquisition of additional acreage as well as the possibility of additional campuses across the Metro-Atlanta area (or possibly even satellite campuses across the Southeast or in key cities around the world) has always been an area of strategic consideration for the school. The “Vision for Learning 2035” and the school’s ability to increase access to an AIS education or components of it have also been key drivers when looking to expand the geographic footprint. Such an opportunity arose in November 2023 when AIS acquired a second campus. The school then updated its first three-year strategic planning cycle (2022-2025) and the associated OKRs.
Next steps for AIS include beginning to map the next three-year strategic planning cycle for 2025-2028, which will involve its own set of OKRs, some of which will be obvious continuations and next steps from the 2022-2025 OKRs.
“Foresight work hasn’t been used much in education, but it’s formed the North Star for Atlanta International School. A student who joins our 3-year old Kindergarten program in August of 2024 will be 100% immersed in German, or French, or Spanish, or Chinese in a global program and community. They will graduate [from] AIS in 2040,” share Glass. “What will their world be like then? What are we doing now to get them ready to not only survive or even thrive, but to contribute positively to whatever society, community, culture, and place they find themselves in during the 2040s and beyond? That is our epic design challenge.”
Ready to Exercise Your Foresight Skills?
In her TedxSkoll talk, Dr. Jane McGonigal says, “To create something new, or make a change, you have to be able to imagine how things can be different. The gift of the future is creativity. The future is a place where everything can be different.”
To build psychological flexibility, McGonigal suggests practicing “The Triangle of What If.” This three-part exercise encourages your brain to practice creativity in both imagining possible futures and accepting that the future is flexible.
What’s Possible? Putting Ideas Into Action
There are countless resources available, both in print and online, regarding planning for multiple futures. What follows is a curated collection of a select few online resources for your consideration.
To dive deeper on strategic planning, check out the SAIS webinar recording “Strategic Leadership for Independent Schools” for an insightful discussion between RG175 Consultant Tom Olverson and SAIS President Dr. Brett Jacobsen. Learn why your strategic plan should feel a little bit like a bet, the importance of school culture on change, how to approach market share, and more.
Then, join SAIS for an upcoming webinar, “Leading the Future of Independent Schools – Insights for Aspiring Leaders”, on January 16, for a discussion designed to empower the next generation of school leaders.
