As the pace of change accelerates and uncertainty grows, the ability to look ahead becomes increasingly important. Futures thinking, foresight, scenario planning, and visioning help people imagine different possibilities, explore emerging risks and opportunities, and build shared direction. These approaches support resilience by giving teams and communities space to anticipate change, work with uncertainty, and shape pathways that can hold up under different conditions.
Futures work is not only about long-term strategy. It also strengthens day-to-day practice by helping groups surface assumptions, consider alternative trajectories, and identify actions that are both feasible now and adaptive over time. Used well, these approaches contribute to collective resilience by linking imagination with practical decision-making, and by supporting conversations that bring diverse knowledge and experience into view. They are therefore increasingly used alongside strategic planning and systems thinking approaches to help groups explore long-term direction while remaining adaptive in the face of change.
This page brings together a selection of recent, open-access resources for practitioners, facilitators, and policy-makers applying these approaches in their work. The focus is on practical guides, toolkits, and frameworks that can be adapted to local contexts and used to support participatory processes, systems change, and collaborative planning.
Practical guides and toolkits
Exploring futures in practice: using foresight, scenarios, and visioning together
This LfS post offers a grounded introduction to four key futures approaches—futures thinking, foresight, scenario planning, and visioning—and shows how they can be used in combination to support strategic clarity and shared learning. It also reflects on the social nature of these methods and their value in collaborative settings.
The Facilitating Futures Playbook
This guide by SessionLab is a practical guide for designing and leading participatory futures and foresight processes. It offers tools, methods, and case examples to help facilitators engage diverse groups in imagining preferred futures and co-creating strategic pathways. Whether you’re new to futures thinking or experienced in facilitation, this resource supports inclusive, action-oriented conversations that build shared insight and direction in complex, uncertain environments.
What If? The art of scenario thinking for nonprofits
This online book by Diana Scearce, Katherine Fulton highlights that scenario thinking is both a process and a posture. It is the process through which scenarios are developed and then used to inform strategy. After that process itself is internalized, scenario thinking becomes, for many practitioners, a posture toward the world—a way of thinking about and managing change, a way of exploring the future so that they might then greet it better prepared. The guide was intentionally designed to be read either whole or in sections, with each chapter addressing a specific aspect of the art of scenario thinking.
CIFS toolkit for applied strategic foresight
The toolkit offers practical insights, honed through many years of CIFS’ applied foresight work. It gives an overall description of each tool/approach, along with key considerations that can help in successfully delivering the technique. The tools are adaptable, and can hence be customised to meet the needs of most futures projects.
UNDP Foresight Manual: Empowered futures for the 2030 Agenda
A comprehensive manual for using foresight and visioning in policy and SDG contexts, with practical frameworks for participatory scenario building and visioning.
McGuinness Institute: Foresight tools cards
Provides sets of printable, workshop-friendly cards designed to support scanning, mapping, and scenario planning in futures work. Developed by the McGuinness Institute, these tools help groups structure foresight conversations and surface emerging issues. The site also links to a range of guides, templates, and curated resources—useful for those facilitating strategy, policy, or community-based planning under conditions of uncertainty.
IFTF foresight essentials
The Institute for the Future’s Foresight Essentials offers practical frameworks and hands-on exercises to help teams build futures thinking skills. Designed for use in a wide range of settings—from strategy and innovation to community engagement—these tools support scanning, scenario building, and long-term thinking. The focus is on building confidence and shared language for navigating uncertainty and shaping preferred futures together.
Futures toolkit for policy-makers and analysts
The Futures Toolkit (2014) provides a set of tools to help embed long-term strategic thinking within the policy process, and explains how to ensure they have real impact. It has been developed by the UK Cabinet Office and Government Office for Science, and is intended for policy officials and analysts across government.
Research and reflections on foresight practice
Rethinking scenario building for sustainable futures
This 2025 article by Borja et al. argues that to better support sustainability transitions, scenario-building must move beyond technical models to embrace conscientização (sociopolitical awareness), social learning, and knowledge co-production. Drawing on survey data and literature, the authors call for capacity-building among scientists to foster more inclusive, participatory, and transformative scenario processes. They emphasise the importance of challenging dominant narratives, embracing diverse values, and addressing inequalities to co-create scenarios that can drive meaningful action for sustainable futures.
UNESCO Futures Literacy & Foresight
UNESCO’s Futures Literacy initiative supports individuals and organisations to strengthen their capacity to imagine and shape the future. The site shares tools, guides, and insights from global Futures Literacy Labs—participatory workshops that help challenge assumptions and support new thinking. With resources including case studies, e-books, and a practical lab playbook, it offers useful material for those working in policy, education, and community development.
SEI: Megatrends and foresight: key for planning for sustainable transitions
Frameworks and case studies for applying foresight to sustainability transitions, focusing on participatory visioning and scenario work. You can also access a suite of data-driven tools, providing the robust datasets necessary for insightful planning and informed responses to global challenges.
Scenario-based strategizing: Advancing the applicability in strategists’ teams
In this 2017 paper Thomas Lehr and colleagues remind us that, in general, scenario planning and strategy formation should be further integrated Their paper then goes on to look at how scenario planning can be further improved to allow the strategizing team to self-run or at least participate more actively in the process.
Scenario-driven roadmapping for technology foresight
This 2017 paper links ‘scenarios and roadmapping’. It suggests using: i) using scenario planning first to identify plausible images of the general environment and then using the scenarios for technology roadmapping; and ii) taking advantage of ‘flex points’ – critical developments which would signal transitions along particular pathways – to create a ‘radar’ to support effective monitoring of the environment over time.
Visions and visioning in foresight activities
This 2007 paper explores how visions influence foresight processes, using eight European case studies. It shows that who participates and how roles are framed shape the outcomes. Offers useful insights for those designing participatory or strategic foresight processes.
Picture this – a guide to scenario planning for voluntary organisations
This 2006 guide by Caroline Copeman and Megan Griffith is intended to be used to help the reader facilitate the process of scenario development. It is a practical guide with a series of templates and tools to help plan and run scenario planning workshops and engage your organisation.
For a wider grounding in how organisations and groups set direction in uncertain conditions, you can explore the Strategic planning and direction setting hub page. Other related resources include the pages on Strategic planning resources, Working with resilience, and conceptual modelling, which offer practical tools to support futures work and collaborative sense-making.
If your team is working with long-term strategy, uncertainty, or future pathways and would value a sounding board, you’re welcome to get in touch. I work with groups remotely and in person, and am happy to talk through what might help.
[* Photo: PxHere]