Foresight by SwineTex

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Foresight by SwineTex is a new offering from SwineTex Consulting Services. This offering is focused on providing training and facilitation on the implementation of a Strategic Foresight process for pork production companies and supporting businesses and organizations.

What is Strategic Foresight?

Strategic Foresight has different meanings to different people but for our purposes, we like this simple definition: A discipline organizations use to gather and process information about their future operating environment. Strategic foresight uses a set of principals, methods and processes to allow organizations to understand how the future is likely to affect their operations which intern allows them to take the next step of developing long term business strategies to ensure that they remain relevant and competitive in an uncertain future.

While strategic foresight is related to a field called futures studies, it's important to understand that strategic foresight is not about predicting the future. Strategic foresight seeks to gain perspective into the future by exploring multiple potential futures through a process called scenario planning. The idea is to create many scenarios representing a diverse set of plausible futures. 

Once the scenarios have been completed, the organization can then begin exploring how these different possible futures could impact their business directly or indirectly. They can then analyze what capabilities and resources they would need in each scenario ultimately working to determine which capabilities and resources come up most often across the scenarios. This gives the business or organization specific, high-value capabilities and resources to focus on incorporating into their business and strategic planning processes. 

What, Specifically, Does Foresight by SwineTex Offer?

The Foresight by SwineTex process starts with an initial inquiry and a free follow up 30 minute phone call to see if the process is a good fit for your business or organization. If it seems like a good fit, the next step is a short presentation for senior leadership. It is critical that senior leadership be committed to this process so this is an important step that shouldn't be ignored.

Once we have determined that Foresight by SwineTex is right for you and we have executive buy in, we assist with selecting your strategic foresight team (usually around 8 people). When the team is assembled, we are ready to start the workshop. The workshop is an intense 2 1/2 days of training, discussion and exercises. In person workshops are highly preferred but virtual workshops are possible if necessary. When the workshop is over, the team will have developed a complete set of scenarios, identified key capabilities and resources needed for a successful future and will have the skills necessary to continue to implement the strategic foresight process. All Foresight by SwineTex programs include one year of support for the team including scheduled follow up sessions via video call. 

Why choose SwineTex? 

We are swine production professionals and are deeply familiar with swine production companies and related and support industries. There are many capable strategic foresight practitioners who can assist you but few understand your business and the unique challenges it faces. All of us in agriculture have had the experience of hiring an outside consultant only to spend half of the time with them educating them about our industry, explaining the lingo and correcting their misunderstandings. We already understand all these basic aspects of your business and can jump right in to understanding your specific needs and how they could be addressed through a strategic foresight process. 

Lastly, we are passionate about the future of our industry. We believe this is a valuable offering to our clients but we also believe it will help our industry continue to be competitive in the future. We want to be part of a movement that makes our industry more future-focused, progressive and pro-active and this is one way to do it. We would be honored if you chose us to help your team establish a strategic foresight process in your business.