Institute For The Future

Alumni Insights: You Don’t Need to Be an Expert

As many of us are continuously exploring ways to stay ahead, or at least keep up, with the changing times, often we find that the methods we’ve been using for strategic planning are tired and don’t yield innovative results. The advantage of futures thinking methodology is that it provides a fresh framework that stretches our creative thinking. 

Cassie Solomon, a 2018 alumna of IFTF Foresight Essentials training and President of The New Group Consulting, shared her story during January’s online alumni meet-up about a recent project where she used futures methodologies like signals scanning and scenario planning to lead a mind-opening strategic planning conference with state bank supervisors from across the country. 

The problem Cassie had to tackle was helping leaders at state banking agencies — professionals at the top of their fields who wanted to up their game on emerging technology —  better understand AI, blockchain, fintech, and other developments, and their implications for regulators. How does one help top decision-makers develop a 10-year strategic plan when there’s always so much new information to learn?

The key to Cassie’s solution was simple: Peer-to-Peer learning. Eight months prior to the strategic planning meeting, Cassie helped her client form signals groups around specific technical topics such as machine learning and cryptocurrencies. People collected examples of innovations in machine learning, blockchain, and more, reflected on the implications, and discussed findings in a monthly call. Instead of relying on an external expert, they relied on each other to find what was most compelling and relevant to them. (For more on the theory of why generalists triumph, check out David Epstein’s book Range.) 

The peer-to-peer learning facilitated by their signals group set the foundation for a novel strategic planning conference. The signals provided fodder for a rich discussion around transformation scenarios, which resulted in participants leaving the strategy meeting with concrete action steps for themselves personally and for the organization as a whole. And not only does the signals group live on, the association of state bank supervisors formed several more signals groups after the meeting.