The Tuesday Morning Problem of Foresight
Most organizations do not lack signals, they lack a pathway from signal to decision. This article explores why foresight often becomes theatre or fantasy, and why the real work is earlier relevance, decision readiness, and timing under pressure.
Many SMEs are not thinking about 2035 right now. They are thinking about energy costs, missing skills, delayed investments, squeezed margins, and decisions that somehow never feel safe enough. The future feels like a luxury topic, something for later, something for larger companies, something that requires imagination, time, and distance.
I understand why this framing is so persistent, because it is almost polite. It protects you from yet another demand, yet another workshop, yet another narrative that implies you should be doing more than you already do. When you are running a business in the middle of real constraints, the idea that futures work belongs in distant worlds can even feel a little tone deaf. As if the only legitimate way to talk about the future is to leave the present behind, to step into speculative scenarios, to brainstorm bold visions, to build alternative realities, while the current reality is asking for attention right now.
And yet, this is where the misconception quietly does damage.
