From understanding the future to acting with intent
Today’s leaders are not short on information. They are short on clarity.
We regularly meet executives who feel stuck between urgency and uncertainty: surprised by how fast markets shift, overwhelmed by the volume of signals they are expected to interpret, or uneasy because familiar strategies no longer seem to hold. Others arrive having sensed that something is changing but unsure how to turn that intuition into direction.
This is where foresight matters today. Not as a theoretical discipline or a “nice-to-have” strategic exercise, but as a practical leadership stance. Foresight is about choosing to engage with uncertainty rather than reacting to it, and about building the confidence to act before the future becomes obvious.
That belief is why we are doubling down on foresight as a core capability heading into 2026.
Foresight shows up long before it has a name
Foresight does not only live in formal scenario workshops or future reports. It shows up everywhere:
- when a leadership team senses that its operating model no longer fits, but can’t yet articulate why
- when a CEO hears an unfamiliar concept during a visit and feels both resistance and curiosity
- when leaders compare notes with peers and realize that “our problem” is actually at a systems level
In those moments, leaders are already practicing foresight testing assumptions, noticing weak signals, questioning what feels “normal.” The challenge is not starting foresight; it is making it intentional, shared, and actionable.
This is why we see foresight less as prediction, and more as preparedness: preparing leaders and organizations to navigate multiple plausible futures, not just one expected path.
Experiencing futures, not just talking about them
Two complementary approaches help leaders move from abstract predictions to concrete insight.
- Design fiction allows leaders to experience possible futures. Design fiction is a narrative-driven exercise that involves creating fictional scenarios to spark debate and reflection. In design fiction, teams create a story of a possible future and design artifacts that are reflective of this prospective future (e.g fake advertisements, short films, presentations that represent tangible “evidence” from the future). By engaging with tangible artifacts from a “future world,” teams can feel emotions about an imagined future that surface hidden assumptions much faster than slides ever could. These emotional reactions are not side effects; they are signals. They show where today’s strategy may already be under strain.
- Prospectives, on the other hand, ground imagination in evidence. Prospectives involves anticipating possible, probable, and desirable futures to support current strategic decision-making. Prospectives can take many forms, whether that be reports, written scenarios, models, or strategic roadmapping. By exploring possible, probable, and desirable futures through data, trends, and structured analysis, leaders can connect long-term uncertainty to near-term decisions. The value lies not in the scenarios themselves, but in the strategic questions they bring out.
Both approaches only matter if they change how leaders think and act today. Foresight provides the lens—but leaders need a laboratory to test what they see.
Why Learning Expeditions are a foresight accelerator
This is where Learning Expeditions become critical, not as inspiration tours, but as living foresight experiences.
During a LEX, foresight happens in real time:
- Leaders encounter organizations that are already operating under different assumptions
- Weak signals become visible through practices, technologies, and cultural choices
- Peer conversations reveal shared tensions and unexpected responses to uncertainty
A LEX allows leaders to see foresight in action, not as a concept but as lived reality. Visiting companies, exchanging with peers, and stepping outside one’s industry creates an “outside-in” mirror: it challenges blind spots, validates emerging intuitions, and reframes what is truly at stake.
The most valuable insights often emerge not from the visits themselves, but from the conversations between peers who suddenly realize they’re facing the same invisible shift. These peer-to-peer exchanges act as accelerators: one leader’s intuition becomes another’s validation, and together they decode signals that would have remained ambiguous in isolation.
In this sense, a Learning Expedition is not about learning about the future, it is about learning from futures that are already unfolding elsewhere.
Foresight and Learning Expeditions: a natural complementarity
The relationship between foresight and Learning Expeditions is not just additive, it is symbiotic. Foresight without LEX risks remaining theoretical: scenarios on paper that never confront the messy reality of how change actually happens in organizations. LEX without foresight can feel inspiring but directionless: a collection of interesting visits without a frame to interpret what truly matters.
Together, they create a powerful cycle:
- Prospectives map possible futures → LEX lets leaders test their assumptions against organizations already living those futures
- LEX surfaces weak signals → Foresight helps leaders interpret those signals and connect them to strategic choices
- Peer exchanges reveal shared tensions → Foresight provides the language and frameworks to act on them collectively
This is why we see Learning Expeditions as one of the most effective ways to build foresight muscle. They transform abstract futures into tangible encounters, and turn solitary intuitions into collective intelligence.
A clear stance for what comes next
As uncertainty accelerates, foresight can no longer sit on the sidelines as a separate topic or periodic exercise.
Our stance is clear: foresight is a leadership muscle that must be trained continuously, and Learning Expeditions are one of the most powerful ways to do so. They intentionally amplify foresight by exposing leaders to weak signals, alternative models, and lived experiments, well before these become mainstream. And critically, they unlock the power of peer-to-peer learning, where leaders don’t just observe the future, but collectively make sense of it.
Looking toward 2026, we believe the organizations that will thrive are not those with the best forecasts, but those whose leaders are most comfortable navigating ambiguity together.
For us, foresight is no longer something we occasionally do. It is something we experience, cultivate, and amplify through Learning Expeditions.