The Firetail Guide to Time Travel: Part One

“Humans have an amazing ability to time travel. We can picture ourselves in the future and tell stories about it. We can imagine how our lives and communities might change, what might be different in the world around us… This kind of thinking is critical for good strategic foresight work.”

Ben Holt, The Strategic Foresight Book

Part 1: Horizon Scanning.

The ability to travel into the future isn't just for daydreamers or science fiction. It's a critical skill for strategy and planning, particularly when so much feels uncertain, volatile, and fast moving.

Being a time traveller is not about predicting the future, it’s about being better prepared for a range of possible futures and better placed to shape the future you want to see.

This series of blog articles will be your guidebook on how to time travel. They will explore how to scan the horizon, how to deal with uncertainty, and how to connect your discoveries from the future with your strategy for the here and now. 

The first component in the time machine is Horizon Scanning.

What is Horizon Scanning and how do you do it?

Every organisation wants to be better prepared for the future.

Horizon scanning helps, by systematically exploring emerging trends and weak signals of change. It provides a structured yet flexible way to think about the future.

Doing it well allows organisations to be more adaptive, more anticipatory, more resilient, and more proactive. 

In practice, many organisations struggle to translate the results of their scanning efforts into genuine strategic insight.

As we wrote in our piece on the "Futures Gap", organisations that lose their connection with the forces shaping the future risk becoming passive recipients of change rather than active shapers of it. 

The good news is that it does not need a dedicated team or a major investment. Instead, it can be embedded into regular strategic planning and decision-making processes. 

But success requires avoiding some common and predictable pitfalls. 

Five Principles for effective Horizon Scanning

1. Explore

Look beyond normal sources and stakeholders → Avoid echo chambers

Good horizon scanning draws from a rich and diverse variety of sources and stakeholders, beyond those you have regular access to.

Challenge yourself to think differently and go beyond your traditional sources, as this is where you are most likely to uncover the signals and trends you would otherwise miss. Seek out academic experts in adjacent fields. Monitor social media feeds that wouldn't typically appear in your timeline. Engage with those who have lived experience of the issues you're exploring. Seek out community groups at the frontlines of change. And most importantly, invite perspectives that challenge your own.

A common pitfall in horizon scanning is looking at the same sources, going to the same places, and talking to the same people, leading to a narrow view of potential futures. This can reinforce biases and blind spots rather than challenge them. Before the 2008 financial crisis, economists and regulators created such an insular information ecosystem that warning signs were dismissed. Those who spotted the housing bubble—often outsiders examining public data differently—were labelled as alarmists; until the markets collapsed.

2. Balance

Use an organising framework for your scanning → Avoid just focussing on technology

It's easy to become fixated on technology as the primary driver of change. We can see, touch, and measure technological progress. But the relationship between technology and society is far more nuanced. Technologies create possibilities, but human cultures, institutions, and values determine which possibilities are realised and how. The printing press enabled mass literacy, but social and political forces determined what was printed and who could read.

Using structured frameworks such as STEEPLE (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Legal, and Ethical) or PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Environmental) can help to ensure you keep a broader mindset. Frameworks such as these provide practical guardrails against technology-dominated thinking and ensure you capture the full spectrum of forces shaping your future operating environment and the connections between those forces. 

3. Engage

Prioritise collaboration, connection and conversation → Avoid navel-gazing desk exercises

Horizon scanning should not be a passive research task confined to an individual sitting at a desk reading reports or scanning online sources. 

Instead of solo scanning, create meaningful time and space for conversations with your team and stakeholders, but also with those who will challenge your assumptions. Organise workshops or regular meetings where teams can share insights and debate their implications. Bring in external voices to challenge assumptions. Encourage a culture where scanning for signals and trends is a shared mindset rather than a siloed task.

4. Sustain

Integrate the process into your business and planning cycles → Avoid ‘one and done’ horizon scans

Horizon scanning is not a one-off exercise. The landscape is constantly evolving, and signals that seem weak today may become important trends tomorrow. A static approach means missing critical shifts and interactions between trends. After SARS and MERS, global health organisations had identified coronaviruses as significant threats through continuous scanning efforts that connected wildlife trade, habitat loss, and viral spillover. The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that those maintaining dynamic monitoring systems responded more effectively than organisations relying on periodic assessments. The challenge wasn’t spotting the trend, but in sustaining attention to interconnected risks between crises.

Regularly revisit and update your scanning outputs. Map how signals and trends are evolving and look for emerging connections between them. Are demographic shifts influencing policy changes? Is climate action accelerating new funding priorities? By staying engaged, your scanning efforts remain relevant and actionable. Identify where the critical uncertainties are and how they interact with one another, as this will help you test your strategy and plans against a divergent set of plausible futures.

5. Connect

Be deliberate in connecting your insights to action → Avoid scanning for the sake of it

Dedicate time to analyse and assess your signals, trends, and drivers. Ask: How might these forces shape the communities we serve? How do these drivers and trends interact with one another? What are the risks and opportunities posed by these trends for our mission? What decisions should we take today to be better positioned tomorrow? Integrating scanning into strategic discussions ensures that it informs action, rather than just delivering a big trend deck that sits on a shelf gathering dust. 

Even well-executed horizon scanning can be ineffective if the insights gathered are not linked to strategic decision-making. Simply identifying signals, trends, and drivers is not enough; organisations must consider their implications for their strategy. Netflix and Blockbuster had the same market research showing the clear trend of a rise of digital streaming, but only Netflix built this insight into their strategy. The difference wasn't in awareness but in willingness to transform insight into meaningful change. Blockbuster knew the future was coming; Netflix prepared for it.

Horizon Scanning is about preparation, not prediction 

While horizon scanning doesn’t predict the future, it does help us prepare. The future will always bring surprises and shocks, but those who actively invest in scanning their horizon will be more resilient, responsive, and ready to adapt. 

In being better prepared for the future, we can be more anticipatory and adaptive in our strategic thinking. 

In an increasingly fast moving, uncertain, and volatile world, this is more critical than ever for those looking to shape better futures for people and the planet. 

Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads

Organisations that actively scan their horizons are not just better prepared for change—they are the ones driving.

Firetail has helped clients across sectors to develop flexible, extensible horizon scanning approaches.

We also provide bespoke training on horizon scanning and other futures methods to help organisations build their own futures capabilities.

Get in touch if you would like to explore any of these approaches for your organisation.