Using Foresight to Shape L&D Strategy
Lessons from my time running Insights and Innovation at Google
To operate in an uncertain world people need to be able to re-perceive: to question their assumptions about the way the world works, so that they can see the world more clearly.
-Pierre Wack
In 2016, I wrote a proposal to my then boss at Google to form a leadership and development R&D lab, launching with a six-month study on the future of leadership development. In an act of faith, it was approved. Over the next four years, my team honed the power of foresight to shape strategic plans that leapfrog commonplace, outdated HR practices.
What is foresight? Foresight uses trending, scanning and forecasting tools to move beyond the known. This method is designed to help us better understand future possibilities in order to build strategic plans of tomorrow, today.
This type of inquiry is not new — — but it is new for L&D. In the same way people analytics revolutionized HR, there is an opportunity to bring next level innovation to employee growth and development. Keeping pace with the future is now more challenging than ever, as emergent disruptors force organizations to examine longstanding systems.
A host of questions must be asked: How do we maintain our cultural fabric in a hybrid workplace? What is required of leadership to build collective care? How do we dismantle systems that perpetuate inequity?
This all requires innovation that comes from starting with a deeper understanding of the trends shaping the workplace and needs of the employee. We cannot recycle past best practices. Simply, this requires a greater level of inquiry, a new starting place.
Beginning with wider curiosity is how many technological breakthroughs have emerged. Think of Steve Jobs and the classic story of how he invented fonts or how the Iphone was conceptualized decades before most could imagine a human need or want for such a device. But someone did imagine it and did bring it to life.
Now, we have the chance to reimagine the workplace for a more humane, wise and flourishing future. And bring it to life.
At humcollective, I use what I learned from my years in innovation and strategy at Google to hone a process that can help us answer these critical questions. Based on the truth that innovation comes from embracing the new and next while deeply understanding what makes humans human, I help clients capture the possible through a three step approach.
1. Scan
Look to the edges to find the next practice through foresight and ethnographic study.
2. Strategize
Partner with leadership teams and strategists to determine how to apply the insights.
3. Shape
Use systemic change approaches to prepare an organization to embrace the new.
Google as a Case Study
At Google, utilizing this process resulted in us reshaping the approach to leadership development and building a new school that not only focused on skillset development but mindset shifts before that was commonplace.
We got there by immersing ourselves in a sprawling investigation of world trends, work and business trends, and trends in leadership. We interviewed scientists, management gurus, philosophers, academics, and practitioners across the globe. We took advantage of the rigor of foresight methodology to truly uncover new territory and to come to a big ah ha: leadership development needed to move from a fixed set of competencies to an evolving, holistic frame of mindsets.
This next practice born out of the scanning phase then made its way into application, shaping the philosophical approach to leader development and ultimately, the curriculum. The Google School for Leaders began incorporating the tenets of Adult Development Theory into a methodology for offerings. This theory, pioneered by psychologist Jane Loevinger and developed and popularized by psychologist and researcher Robert Kegan of Harvard, holds that individuals continue to learn and evolve to different levels of consciousness throughout their lives. For leaders to mature and to “self-author” their own development, they need practical, tangible methods for introducing new ways of thinking into their daily context. The mindset practices were designed to help them do just that.
Applying Foresight to Your Strategy
It is the bold leader who is ready to depart from the tried and true. But let’s face it, many of the old ways of developing employees and creating effective culture are coming to the end of their utility. Now, there is more risk in not approaching the big workplace questions than innovating a new path. What the humcollective innovation method provides is a simplified process to achieve breakthrough ideas. We can make our way through the approach pragmatically, even when the questions being explored are complex and messy.
A place to start is by leaning into more curiosity and finding small ways to move outside the pressures of daily deliverables. Looking out to what is on the horizon to get a glimmer of how to move forward.
Learn more at humcollective.co.
