Strategy News
An invitation to help local government prepare for tomorrow today
Local services to the public in the 21st century
The LGA and the Government Horizon Scanning Centre have started a wiki inviting contributions on how local services can meet the needs of the public in the 21st century. Keep an eye on this as it promises to be a rich resource, pulling together knowledge and ideas from those involved in both futures work and local and public services.
Their hopes for this website may well look familiar with those of you who use the NCVO Third Sector Foresight...
The Future Face of Enterprise
Anyone else ready to jump on the enterprise bandwagon? Dragons Den is trying to make entrepreneurs of everyone, enterprise has now entered the national curriculum, and everywhere I turn, it seems that organisations within the sector are embracing enterprise with a gusto usually reserved for voting on Britain’s got Talent. The capacitybuilders programme has recently announced a £6million investment in social enterprise, and Gordon Brown aims that ‘enterprise is truly open for all’’.
Rela...
How do sector leaders feel about the future 3 months on?
Today NCVO has published the second round of its new Charity Forecast report which reveals the confidence levels and plans of sector leaders. As future change is partly based on present intentions, the report provides valuable information to inform strategic plans; revealing trends in collaboration and competition and how VCOs are feeling about the funding environment and the economy.
Headline findings
- Charity leaders’ confidence has fallen 5% in the last quarter, but still shows a net...
Scenarios and the difficulties in creating the axes of uncertainty
A few weeks ago, I attended a strategic futures coaching event as a FAN (Future Analysts Network) club member and we spent the day developing our own scenarios about cultural and religious futures. I have developed scenarios before, but never right from start to finish. I found it an interesting process which gave me loads of new ideas about the future but also very challenging, especially in a group of people who work in different areas and have very different ideas about what they think...
Shift happens
A couple of weeks ago, I spent a day developing scenarios with other budding futurists at a FAN (Future Analysts Network) club strategic futures coaching event run by the Government’s Foresight programme. To get us all in a future-focused and creative frame of mind, they showed us this great slide show 'Shift Happens' which contains lots of suprising demographic, economic and technological facts and stats about the present and future. I thought I’d share it with you all as I think it’s a...
How do sector leaders feel about the future?
Yesterday NCVO launched its first Charity Forecast report which reveals the confidence levels and plans of sector leaders. As future change is partly based on present intentions, the report provides valuable information to inform strategic plans; revealing trends in collaboration and competition and how VCOs are feeling about the funding environment and the economy.
A positive outlook
62 per cent of respondents to the survey expected their organisation’s general situation to improve over the...
Networking with government's future analysts
My Tuesday morning was spent in the Westminster village at a meeting of the FAN Club, otherwise known as the Future Analysts Network. The participants were largely civil servants but the discussions on how to think about the future were very relevant.
Annabel Turpie from the Strategy Unit took us through the findings of Realising Britain's Potential: Future Strategic Challenges for Britain, which was published last week. This provides a wealth of useful data for considering drivers and their...
Take the new NCVO Charity Forecast survey
NCVO is inviting voluntary sector leaders to give their views on the health and prospects of their organisations in its new confidence and trends survey. This quarterly survey questions sector leaders on current trends and future expectations. Follow the link below to take the test.
The survey
The survey aims to determine how optimistic they feel about the sector and what development plans they have for the coming quarter. The survey results will be used to make predictions about changes...
Adventures in strategy
Last year we ran a series of strategy seminars with the Performance Hub and these have now been turned into a series of interesting think pieces covering issues that we all face such as how to ensure your organisation stays on mission in spite of a challenging funding environment or whether to compete or collaborate. Each ‘Adventures in Strategy’ briefing explores five strategic issues to help you consider the theory and practice of your approach:
How will we use new technologies in five years time?
New 'Future Focus' pocket guide
The current crop of what we might call 'new' technologies (including the internet, mobile telephony and digital television) has led and will continue to lead to changes and shifts in behaviour: from how we communicate, to making choices, and how and where we work. NCVO Third Sector Foresight and the Performance Hub have published the latest in their series of ‘Future Focus’ pocket guides introducing these changes in the external environment. This a practical...
