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UNDP's Foresight for Strategic Planning Toolkit
Strengthening UNDP’s capacity to anticipate and shape the future
Why use foresight in any strategic planning process?
Foresight is not about predicting the future but about preparing for a range of plausible futures. It shifts the focus from reactive problem-solving to proactive strategy-making, helping Country Offices design plans that are:
Authored by Manasi Kumbhat, Futures Network Coordinator, this guide is an effort to support country offices in applying foresight to the Country Programme Document (CPD) process, ensuring that our strategies are forward-looking, resilient, and informed by a broad, participatory approach.
Please reach out to the Strategy & Futures Team if you have any questions on the toolkit.
The Toolkit Process at a Glance
Below you'll find a comprehensive high-level overview of the foresight-informed process outlined in this toolkit. Each chapter incorporates actionable methods, tools and templates to guide teams through both strategic and operational decision-making.
You can download this one pager to guide your exploration of the chapters.
Foresight for Strategic Planning Roadmap
Download a one-page overview of the toolkit process
Download the PDF of the entire Toolkit
Where Do I Start
Use One Chapter or All—This toolkit Adapts to Your Needs.
Each chapter is self-contained and can be used independently based on your CPD development stage. Answer a few quick questions to find out which chapter(s) are most relevant for you.
FAQs
Foresight is the systematic study of change.
It employs structured methodologies to explore multiple possible futures, enabling better decision- making in the present. Unlike prediction or forecasting, foresight does not claim to know what will happen or project today into the future. Both forecasters and foresight experts use today’s facts to think about the future. But forecasters use firm facts and evidence, whereas futurists pay much attention to emerging issues. They focus on understanding what is possible and what is probable to ensure we can proactively shape the future we want to create and avoid undesirable outcomes.
As articulated in the UNDP foresight training developed by the University of Houston, foresight aims to:
- Understand Change: Study trends, disruptions, and weak signals to understand how change is unfolding clearly.
- Build Confidence: Equip decision-makers to make informed choices by preparing for uncertainty.
- Enable Action: Turn insights into actionable strategies to influence the future rather than merely react to it.
