Dare to Anticipate – How Mercator Foundation Switzerland made strategic foresight part of its organisational culture
Section
Case in Brief
The issue
Formulating strategy in a world of interconnected, fast-evolving crises is a challenge. How do you balance immediate needs with long-term goals? How do you stay on target while remaining open to new ideas? To practise foresight successfully, its methods must be embedded in the organisational culture and paired with the time to test, apply and reflect.
The context
Historically, strategic foresight emerged in the military context. It has since been used by corporations and governments to spot emerging trends, risks and opportunities – and to think through scenarios and test how to respond. But the needs and interests of civil society are not routinely considered in such foresight exercises. Anticipation for the common good remains a wish, not a reality.
The path forward
Foundations can play a crucial role in establishing foresight for the common good. They can be alert to “weak signals”, foster participatory anticipation methods, mobilise cross-sectoral interest in emerging trends, and provide risk capital to launch experiments on future issues. Establishing foresight routines in a foundation can strengthen the organisation and its impact, but also civil society itself.
Mercator Foundation Switzerland: A snapshot
This Zurich-based foundation aims to inspire change. It seeks to empower civil society to meet the major challenges of our time – the climate crisis, erosion of democracy, inequality of opportunities, and the impact of the digital transformation. The foundation does this by strengthening selected civil society actors with organisational development and multi-year core funding. With a firm belief in cross-sectoral cooperation and collective action, the foundation develops, tests and scales ideas for change in collaboration with numerous partners.
Mindset
- Build ecosystems of change
- Mobilise unlikely allies
- Test, learn, share and co-create
- Focus on the climate crisis
- Promote a resilient and diverse democracy
Overview
The Mercator Foundation Switzerland (Stiftung Mercator Schweiz) has abandoned five-year strategy cycles and embraced an agile, iterative strategy model that builds upon testing and learning.
A good life for all within the planetary boundaries will require a deep societal transformation – new ways of producing and consuming, learning and participating. The foundation aims to foster a just and democratic transformation towards a more sustainable future. This asks for strategic openness: There is no established path towards systemic change, hence the decision in 2021 to shift strategy. While the foundation’s vision remains firm, the paths towards it are allowed to evolve. To cultivate an openness for change and iteration, Mercator decided to harness the methods of strategic foresight. An internal advisory position for “futures and development” was created to anchor futures thinking in the organisational culture. The whole team is encouraged to explore, experiment, and adapt – to develop a futures mindset.
Challenge
The world is moving fast. Philanthropic organisations struggle with the unpredictability and complexity of current and future developments. The balancing act between immediate needs and long-term goals forces many foundations to make uneasy choices. More than ever, the times are calling upon philanthropic organisations to stay true to their promise: providing risk capital; maximising positive impact; embracing the longue durée; focusing on causes that do not attract sufficient mainstream public and private funding; and creating sandboxes for experimentation that spark inspiration on how to do good and better.
The Mercator Foundation Switzerland sees its main role as that of a catalyst. The foundation seeks to initiate and accelerate collective action processes, to help stakeholders from different sectors to pull together and achieve systemic change. It provides spaces and means for ecosystems of change. To be a proactive and ever-learning funder, the foundation under the leadership of CEO Andrew Holland and Board Director Annegret Reisner dismantled traditional strategy cycles and moved towards more agile, iterative planning. This allows the foundation to constantly question its course and to evolve as it moves ahead.
Working with an iterative strategy model requires an organisational culture that is comfortable with anticipating new developments and with testing new approaches of how to meet the future. The methods of strategic foresight help the organisation to challenge its own routines and linear thinking.
Approach
The foundation actively cultivates a mindset of curiosity, serendipity and experimentation in which all team members are encouraged to look beyond standard solutions and to test new routes and methods.
Horizon scanning
Strategic foresight is essential for this culture of discovery. The team uses Slack daily to share what foresight specialists call “weak signals” – news or phenomena in society that can be interpreted as indicators of potential greater change. Such horizon scanning creates a routine of exchange and inspiration, explains David Hesse, responsible for Futures and Development at Mercator Switzerland. David’s role is to foster participatory foresight within the foundation, supporting team members to share their observations on trends, risks and opportunities. He curates a monthly bulletin of weak signals, an internal newsletter that documents the team’s findings. The team regularly takes time for informal sensemaking sessions to identify patterns in the plethora of diverging signals. Such patterns may be understood as emerging trends.
Experimentation
Observation and sensemaking are only one side of strategic foresight. Many emerging issues require practical experimentation to be understood. Mercator Switzerland has set up its own Futures Lab, a sandbox designed specifically to conduct strategic experiments that go beyond the foundation’s established methods and theories of change. Courage and encouragement are at the core of the foundation’s philosophy: “Our biggest risk as a foundation is not about reputation or losing money. It is about not having impact,” says Andrew Holland. The team tries new methods, alliances, and funding mechanisms – all with the goal of maximising long-term impact without being afraid of setbacks: “Failure is part of our learning culture,” says Holland.
Evaluation
Strategic foresight will remain superficial without the opportunity to learn. All observations and experiments are thoroughly evaluated at Mercator Switzerland so that the learnings may be shared within and beyond the organisation. Board members are actively involved in this creative strategic process: A continuous Strategic Dialogue between the board and team creates the space for debate, shared critical reflection, and impact analysis. The foundation uses a MELA + Sharing framework to monitor, evaluate, adapt and share its work. External stakeholders are regularly welcomed to challenge and boost the learning sessions.
Results
Through signals analysis, sensemaking sessions, practical experimentation and learning dialogues the Mercator Foundation Switzerland identifies emerging trends which may become important to the foundation’s work and provide an opportunity to increase its impact.
Urban surveillance
Tracked mobile phones, biometrical recognition, smart streetlights: Privacy is under heavy pressure, particularly in densely populated urban areas. Mercator has partnered with a variety of organisations to learn more about how surveillance may affect democracy, education and diversity in the near future. Partners include the Edgelands Institute, an international pop-up project that explores the future of privacy and security in six global cities through the means of arts and academic research. Mercator co-funds the NGO Algorithm Watch CH which defends civic liberties against algorithmic surveillance and discrimination. And it explores the consequences of facial recognition with partners from design and the arts such as Studio Absurda.
Role of finance in transformation
How may impact investors and venture philanthropists contribute to funding systemic change, and how may their funds be pooled to create deep impact? Here, Mercator co-funds the Impact Club, an innovative hybrid of an investors’ club and a social business incubator in the Swiss region of Ticino. Another partner is Meso, an alliance of innovators who seek to scale promising social innovation initiatives to achieve transformation towards a more sustainable, regenerative future in urban areas. The role of finance in such scaling processes is actively explored. Mercator supported Meso first through its Futures Lab, and now through its climate programme.
Public interest journalism
Democracy needs quality information. How can philanthropies strengthen this ecosystem without distorting the market? Mercator co-funds a European house for public interest media innovation in Berlin (Publix), and a Swiss advocacy group that supports journalists and NGOs when requesting lawful access to government information (Verein Öffentlichkeitsgesetz). And it funds selected innovative media literacy initiatives, both in schools and in museums (Print to Pixel).
Foresight for all
These experiments small and large are only some examples of how the Mercator Foundation Switzerland at- tempts to increase its impact and to continuously develop its organisation. Mercator’s work is essentially about cross-sectoral collaboration, courage and risk-taking, embedded in a culture of learning and experimentation. Strategic foresight is an essential part of this. “Foresight for all” is what Mercator Foundation Switzerland calls this approach: “We have many questions and not all the answers, but we have visions of change for our journey together,” says Andrew Holland. “Cross-sectorial collaboration is the core lever to address our most urgent challenges and, if necessary, to change the framework conditions.”