4 Steps to the Future: A Quick and Clean Guide to Creating Foresight

by Richard A. K. Lum

This book by Richard Lum, an academically trained futurist, is a practical, straight-to-the-action guide for creating foresight in any organization. Written for today’s attention-stressed and resource-deprived manager, 4 Steps to the Future provides an easy-to-understand process for creating insight about the future that individuals can immediately begin applying within their organization.   Drawing upon almost twenty years of developing foresight within and for organizations of all types, Lum distills some of the essentials of good futures research and lays out a four step process for developing foresight. Beginning with an analysis of the history of any industry or company, the 4 Steps process leads readers through analyzing the present, forecasting alternative scenarios, and reformulating goals and vision.   Intended for managers and executives in need of easy-to-apply tools that can be used immediately within organizations, 4 Steps to the Future is written as a guidebook. Readers who are looking for a resource that provides them the guidance and tools to conduct a foresight project themselves, or who have to lead an upcoming foresight effort, will find this book an indispensable guide.   Complete with worksheets, exercises, and checklists for daily habits, 4 Steps to the Future is an invaluable resource for every organizational leader. From the back
" 4 Steps to the Future provides a concise, pragmatic structure to think about business strategy in an environment where innovation is disrupting traditional approaches. A quick, engaging read with helpful examples, it shows one how to systematically challenge one's assumptions about how the competitive landscape may change." -Allen Uyeda, former President and Chief Executive Officer, First Insurance Company of Hawaii   "In 4 Steps to the Future , Dr. Richard Lum has created a unique and immensely practical manual that will be useful for anyone engaged in critical thinking and strategic planning, particularly those leaders who are responsible for developing strategic goals in the face of change and uncertainty. With very accessible explanations. he reviews the value and uses of foresight - a concept that, in the available literature, has previously been treated in largely academic and theoretical fashion. Without oversimplifying key ideas, he outlines step-by-step approaches for developing foresight and vision, particularly in terms of identifying and understanding the implications of external change."
-Malia Du Mont, Co-President and Chief Operating Officer, Axis Capital Inc., former Director of Strategy, Office of the Secretary of Defense   "This is an outstanding "how-to" book for anyone wanting to get started in the art and science of futures and forecasting. Dr. Lum struck the perfect balance of description, instruction, practicality and humor in this easy to read volume. If you are simply interested in learning more about the field of futures or are preparing to host your own workshop, this is the place to start."
-Stephen D. Kiser, PhD, Senior Innovator for US Pacific Command, former Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff  

88 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2016

About the author

Richard Lum is an academically trained futurist and chief executive of Vision Foresight Strategy LLC, a foresight and strategic analysis firm based in Honolulu. His contributions were featured in the book Thinking about the Future: Guidelines for Strategic Foresight (2006), and he is the co-creator of the Verge General Practice Framework for foresight work, a framework used by foresight practitioners throughout the UK, in Europe, Africa, and Asia for horizon scanning, scenario development, and visioning work. He is an advisory council member of the Hawai‘i Future Caucus of the Hawai‘i State Legislature and is an adjunct faculty member of the University of Houston. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the futures studies program at the University of Hawai‘i.

Reviews

[Rachelle Bugeaud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick read with clear, easy to understand examples and dialect. Useful worksheets and resources are provided as well.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book promotes itself as a quick and clean guide to creating foresight. It is exactly that. It is a short book - more of a pamphlet, really - but it still manages to convey a powerful message. The reader is led through a quick and simple foresight process step-by-step to arrive at something useful that could be used to generate insights into future states. The process consists of four simple steps - analyse the past, analyse the present, analyse the future, and analyse what you would want to see happen.

The purpose of the review of the past is to produce a layered timeline leading up to the present. The past events are viewed from differing perspectives to create a nuanced understanding of from where we have come. The next step is to place current events into an historical context. In doing so, we are then encouraged to uncover emerging issues that will impact upon the future.

Things start to get sexy when we begin to analyse the future. The emerging issues analysis ought to have uncovered a set of drivers of change. These, in conjunction with a set of stabilities, are the basis upon which a set of scenarios can be produced. This is the familiar territiory of the futurist. From here, we can determine a set of implications from the scenarios. These might be futures that we find desirable, which leads us on to the final step - determining what we would like to see happen. Much of this step involves a sequence of visioning to uncover our preferred futures.

The book is a bit unclear about whether the process is suitable for micro-futures (we accept the future we are given) or macro-futures (we can shape the future if we don't like the way it is shaping up). At the micro-futures level, we can plan to embrace the positive aspects of the scenarios and mitigate the negative aspects. At the macro-future level, we can re-purpose a number of the key drivers of change to arrive at a future prospect that best suits us.

As a system, the process makes sense. This in turn makes the book quite valuable. It is written in an easily accessible style and requires very little effort on the part of the reader to follow the argument. Naturally enough, the book leads to the author's consulting business, but one ought to allow such indulgences in a non-academic text. The book has much going for it and is well recommended.

[Todd Davidson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick (on 57 pages) easy guide to foresight. Very practical and the right depth for those that want to use foresight but don't want to be futurists. I wish this was the first book on foresight I picked up.

[Sam D.Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear, Concise and Actionable
A very quick read with a lot of insight as to how to develop a clearer viewpoint as it relates to the future.

[Manoj Joshi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting short text but powerful concentrated juice . Required elevated thinking