Strategic Foresight Project Inc

Transformational Leadership Foresight Audit (TLFA)

TLFA purpose is to help minority/woman business enterprises (M/WBEs) satisfy their need for sustainable long-term employability enabled by a foresight assessment of practice, organization development/learning, and navigating structural barriers to the future of energy transition, innovation and wealth generation in communities where they operate.

The nature of the proposed pilot project is an action-research for development and education program enabled by a holistic and integrated results-oriented futuristic communication approach to evaluating an organization’s foresight capacity based on best practices in the field of foresight. TLFA foresight framework and Delphi methodology mimics a human-centered research design allowing for the capture of quantitative and qualitative data, analysis, feedback, and evaluation via an iterative process. The research innovation supports delivery of focus group, structured survey, and interviews to integrate world views of small businesses and stakeholders participating in this novel interdisciplinary research and education project. TLFA approach will be enabled by co-located/virtual on-demand learning management system (LMS) driven by 5G or New “Fifth Generation” wireless network platform.

The strategic intent is to enable M/WBEs' capacity to transition from a traditional hindsight to a foresight, a cognitive mindset, practice by determining its “Fit for Foresight", what should be done?” and “how to do it?”, thus, empowering M/WBEs preparedness and ability to make decisions today informed by insights from the future rather than just the past over time; increasing timely response to inevitable surprises, emerging opportunities, and to uncertainty, complexity, and a changing global environment over time.

Sustainability has long been on the agenda at many companies, but for decades their environmental social, and governance (ESG) practice has been disconnected from core strategy (IIRC Stakeholder Feedback Survey 2016). IIRC findings reveals, globally, the biggest concerns for stakeholders were a perceived poor linkage of reporting to corporate strategies and governance (62%) and insufficient focus on the medium/longer term (61%). The 2008 financial crisis illustrates, traditional strategic planning models, fail in the uncertain, complex, and changing global environment of today. 

On the other hand, the energy transition over the next 40-50 years will have a transformational impact on companies of all sizes while shaping valuation of industries (Blackrock 2016). Are US enterprises prepared for the emerging future?

There are 2.6M African American small businesses out of 31.5M small businesses in US (SBA). CNBC's interview with Melissa Bradley, Former National Advisory Council on Innovation & Entrepreneurship agrees with experts, "the financial meltdown wiped out about 53% of the wealth in Black communities." And that wealth has not been recovered, adversely impacting M/WBEs ability to innovate and socio-economic justice in Black communities. Black or African Americans make up 13.4% of US population (US Census).

TLFA project Challenge dimensions:

• Offering focused leadership, staff development & learning to make decisions today informed by insights from the future based on best practices in the field enabled by futuristic results-oriented communi-cation platform with wireless network capacity.
• Assisting M/WBEs with access to financial (crypto/innovation) literacy and foresight education, and publications (IP) informed by TLFA action-research.

Alignment:

 Our specific public benefit purpose aligns with the Challenge to help small business owners. TLFA inquiry intends to better understand and identify stakeholders' performance/learning gap between traditional hindsight and a foresight practice informed by insights from the future based on best practices in the field of foresight. TLFA foresight maturity assessment of practice for strategic evaluation of small businesses or M/WBEs organization’s strategic foresight capacity in alignment with Challenge dimension.

Our intent is to stress test existing M/WBEs strategy against plausible scenarios in the leadership development/learning component of the project informed by research for development (Phase I) to build robust strategies along with core capabilities for professional development of small businesses in alignment with Challenge.

Other ways TLFA achieves its purpose in alignment with the Challenge by:

Connecting with small business owners and stakeholders to participate in TLFA pilot research project to better understand (M/WBEs) practice within the small business ecosystem. Project intends to achieve its purpose by collaborating with road testers of the TLFA research methodology including:

•Delivering focus group, structured survey, and interviews in multiply places simultaneously (i.e., omnipresence) to obtain world views to inform better understanding of practice problem/issues to inform leadership development/learning interventions.

Assisting M/WBEs with access to financial education and/or expanding literacy in Web 3.0 promise and digital assets (i.e., NFTs) with partners like Blockchain and Ripple. See categories A, B, and C in the Partnership section of this application for more connection opportunities for guest lectures to participate in the TLFA project.

Minority business enterprise (MBE) is an American designation for businesses which are at least 51% owned, operated/controlled on a daily basis by one or more (in combination) American citizens of the following ethnic minority and/or gender (e.g., woman-owned) and/or military veteran. According to MBDA, minorities own more than 8 million firm. African American-owned employer firms own 2.6 million; mostly concentrated in California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Texas.

Impact

• Increases M/WBEs understanding and knowledge of a transformational leadership foresight process, methods to redesign/retool governance structure and strategic leadership skills, respectively.
• Increases knowledge among M/WBEs and community about its leadership team’s development/learning required to create a pathway to a foresight practice/company.
• Accelerates innovation and transition from a hindsight to a foresight practice and workforce culture to support practice over time.
• Sustains long-term employability, small business strategic relevance in its community and M/WBEs strategic relvence in corporate supplier diversity programs.
• Transforms M/WBEs capacity-building, preparedness for change, and capability to make decisions today informed by insights from the future, increasing readiness and resilience for inevitable surprises and emerging opportunities in an uncertain, complex, and rapidly changing global environment.            

Today, M/WBEs are operating with a backward-looking/short-term (1-5 years) rather than a forward-looking/long-term (10-20+ years) planning model. TLFA action-research identifies M/WBEs performance/learning gap, analyzes quantitative/qualitative data, reviews research findings with the leadership team, gains consensus for a practice change. TLFA designs/develops and customizes individual/organization development and learning solution to enable M/WBEs to transition from a hindsight to a foresight practice and supporting workforce culture while improving innovation and transforming strategy and organizational effectiveness over time.

Influence

• Partnership involvement increases trust, commitment, demand for improving M/WBEs preparedness for change, innovation, strategic evaluation, and governance in a local, regional, and global context.
• TLFA transformational practice change attracts private investments enabling innovation, competitiveness and improves livelihoods.

Expansion Plan

SFP's expansion strategy begins to form with the first commitment letter from a Category A company to participate in TLFA project's action-research methodology. At that time, the corporation should agree to become a road tester and identify a small sample of M/WBEs who are participating in their corporate supplier diversity program, where M/WBEs leadership team participates as respondents in the research effort. The first project's tally now includes one (1) road tester, where (n=1) and respondents, where m ≤ 100 and m = small businesses or M/WBEs represented by cohort 1. The selection process repeats itself with a second company or until m ≤ 400 M/WBEs in the first year.

Timeline

Year 1: TLFA plans to launch a total of 1-4 cohorts to participate in the research methodology. The number of M/WBEs may be selected to advance to Phase II component or leadership development/learning intervention enabled by TLFA's customizable co-located/virtual learning management delivery system (LMS). 

In third quarter of year 1, TLFA outreach communication comes online and supports SFP’s impact organization's grant fund raising campaign, leadership development/learning. SFP's e-commerce model begins to promote co-located/virtual workshops, futures and foresight consulting services in New York City - Manhattan.

SFP | TLFA project is designed to sustain small businesses depending on its novel research innovation goals, inputs, activities, and/or desired outcomes.

SFP* Purpose:

 To help older entrepreneurs or minority and women business enterprises (M/WBEs) in order to satisfy their need to enhance sustainable long-term employability and financial (literacy) well-being of communities where they operate; enabled by foresight maturity assessment of stakeholders' practice based on best practices in the field of foresight, informing decision-making today about "what should be done" to accelerate a foresight workforce culture, a "cognitive mindset" in preparation for a sustainable future in a new era.

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*Strategic Foresight Project impact organization's fiscal sponsor is the Institute for Education, Research and Scholarships (IFERS), a non-profit, California charity. Contributions to IFERS are on behalf of SFP’s specific public benefit purpose in accordance with the IRS 501(c )3 law.

Currently, SFP Founder is strategically positioning itself as a global sustainability, futures and foresight company.   

We believe SFP TLFA will serve 400 small businesses or minority and woman business enterprises (M/WBEs) NLT year 1. In five years, the number will exceed more than 25,000+ enterprises in a local, regional, and global context.

Minority business enterprise (MBE): an American designation for businesses which are at least 51% owned, operated and controlled on a daily basis including woman-owned and others. According to MBDA, minorities own more than 8 million firms. African American-owned employer firms own 2.6M are most concentrated in California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Texas. Americans who identify solely as Black or African-American make up 13.4% of US population.

Who influences organizational strategy?

Investors

The world's largest asset manager who oversees $7 trillion, announced in his 2020 annual letter to CEOs: BlackRock will make investment decisions with environmental sustainability-ESG as its core goal sooner than later.

Delaware Statute “The Act” 

Certification of Adoption of Sustainability and Transparency Standards Act (“The Act”). The Delaware statute was driven by the need to craft provisions that could implement the stakeholder values inherent in benefit corporation governance. B Corp —a globally recognized trademark.

TLFA community-based outreach program works with its stakeholders to create an opportunity or pathway to a sustainable long-term future with a focus on satisfying their need for sustainable long-term employability in corporate supplier diversity programs. Individuals/organizations undergo a situational assessment of current practice to identify potential performance/learning gap between hindsight and a foresight practice. TLFA review provides a viable resource that is used to determine in advance if the enterprise and/or employees can satisfy the necessary requirements to execute job duties, skills, tasks, and/or tools for an effective foresight practice and/or company.  For example, engaging M/WBEs, project support team, and/or support personnel by using intelligent chatbots that can talk to several stakeholders simultaneously, which is possible due to Web 3.0.

Each enterprise is unique with a different strength, resources, social & relationship as well as human and intellectual leadership/management styles, and culture that defines the individual/organizational beliefs, values, norms, practice, and the way people solve problems. TLFA will allow for AI to develop real-world use cases that can make better use of the data to help M/WBEs think about what potential interventions may look-like in the real-world under different scenarios.

TLFA service delivery’s place-based solution builds-in accountability, community participation, and determines M/WBEs ability to make effective decisions today informed by insights from the future rather than just past performance data based on best practices in the field of foresight.  Thus, TLFA works at the local/regional level to engage and facilitate strategically targeted solutions tailored to community’s needs being community capacity and social impact where M/WBEs operate. SFP's transformational approach integrates Framework Foresight as suggested by Drs. Peter Bishop and Andy Hines, Graduate Futures Program, University of Houston. Dr. Bishop granted SFP's Founder, S. Raphael Martin, permission to use its Framework Foresight Model in its consulting practice.

SFP's impact organization in collaboration with its fiscal sponsor, potential road testers of the research methodology (see Category A in this application's Partnership section), small businesses (M/WBEs) or respondents participating in the TLFA research inquiry along with corporate supplier diversity programs enabled by Web 3.0 customer engagement communication and digital marketing platform exploring with stakeholders enabled by focus group, structured survey, and interviews with subject area experts and others the implications of Web 3.0 to better understand drivers of change and alterative future scenarios, positive or negative environmental, social, and governance (ESG), in this new world of Web 3.0 and/or the promise of 5G wireless network era for the future of organization development and learning environments in a new era. 

 Also, the assessment and the adoption of integrated thinking inspire an evolution of a foresight practice across the organization’s resources in a more appropriate manner when forecasting over longer time-horizons (10-25+ years) and more than one or broader domains in an uncertain and complex global environment.

 Mode of Interaction - The internet allows new ways of group interaction which can be incorporated into the Delphi process (Keil al, 2002). Others used online surveys (Cabaniss, 2001; Richard, 2000; V. Schmidt, 1995). There are many different modified and future modes of interaction and applications available to the TLFA Project Support Team in a 5G wireless network environment to enrich all stakeholders holistic and blended learning experiences in a co-located/virtual organization integrated action-research for development project (Martin, S. Raphael, 2022).

TLFA research (model) methodology allows for several rounds of exchanges with community and feedback loops across focus groups, structured survey, interviews that concern road testers’ select supply chain along the organization’s value chain. The research innovation is organized across a virtual organization to optimize cross-functional/interdisciplinary understanding of inbound change world views captured from local, regional, and/or global community stakeholders and M/WBEs, participating in corporate supplier diversity programs.

 SFP TLFA action-research model has been used as a research instrument  when there is incomplete knowledge about a problem or phenomenon (Adler & Ziglio, 1996; Delbeq et al, 1975). The method can be applied to problems that do not lends themselves to precise analytical techniques but rather could benefit from the subjective judgments of individuals on a collective basis (Adler & Ziglio, 1996) and to focus their collective human intelligence on the problem at hand (Linstone & Turloff, 1975). According to other researchers, Delphi technique may be used to investigate what does not yet exist (Czinkota & Ronkainen, 1997; Halal, Kull, & Leffmann, 1997; Skulmoski & Hartman 2002). 

TLFA project offers M/WBEs better understanding of practice, new knowledge, and insights supported by their own data concerning “what should be done” to shape and develop a foresight practice and workforce culture informed by trustworthy research; using data and information provided by stakeholders concerning practice. 

SFP leadership team embraces multi-stakeholder engagement approaches that build trust, credibility, transparency, and accountability to create user-friendly change for M/WBEs' employees and ecosystem partners expect it, and the longevity of SFP depends on it.

Blackrock’s new environmental sustainability investment goal opens up a dialogue about sustainable practices and emerging opportunities to co-innovate on sustainable solutions that can help parties concerned achieve their goals when managing and mitigating ESG issues and reputational risks allow SFP to build and deepen trust in its relationships with M/WBEs and key partners to generate new value creation and impact stories about our ability to create value for SFP and others.

Phase I (Year 1)

(Practice Change Activities inform practice and systems change at the macro-level)

SFP | TLFA Research for Development Goal:

• Review M/WBEs practice in collaboration with road testers (partners) of the research methodology and disseminate findings to participating leadership teams.
• Define/identify performance/learning gap based on best practices in the field of foresight.
• Analyze/evaluate M/WBEs practice to answer “what should be done” to bridge the performance//learning and/or talent/skills gap.
• Gain consensus from leadership to pilot best practices and/or feed research findings into a strategy plan.
• Redefine/package best practices at the appropriate strategic level of the enterprise.
• Gain agreement from M/WBEs leadership/management to adopt/adapt foresight practice.
• Develop plan and timeline in collaboration with stakeholders to launch project’s Phase II.

Phase II (over the next 5 years)

Phases I & II are rolling-out new cohorts (n = 1, 2, 3, … n+1) of road testers, respondents, TLFA student interns, and communities of interest in Mid-Atlantic regions of US participating in the SFP | TLFA research and organization development/learning project over time.

SFP | TLFA Organizational/Leadership Development/Learning Goal:

• Determine what the learner needs to learn informed by Phase I
• Increase the foresight knowledge and skills acquired by the learner
• Re-enforce learning through recall and feedback during the learning experience
• Determine how much foresight knowledge was transferred to the learner after the learning experience.
• Criterion-testing and certify learners in the field of corporate foresight and/or as a foresight company over time.
•  Replicate TLFA and scale into new regions.

Mr. Martin was first exposed to small business ownership via his exposure to family businesses across such sectors as real estate broker (agency), retail pharmacy, electrician/contractor. In the private sector, SFP's Founder managed geographical business territories consisting of small/med-sized businesses.

SFP's proximate leadership team is well-positioned to deliver TLFA project because of their deep industry knowledge, insights, and know-how informed by a shared interdisciplinary understanding of integrated thinking outside the box, systems thinking, processes, social dynamics, theories, and tools along with technologies enabling a transformational practice change and workforce culture to support a foresight practice for small businesses. SFP's fiscal sponsor (IFERS) is a futurist.

Core Capability:

The Founder aquired his organization development skills and know-how from private industry experiences from IBM and Xerox corporations.

 Organization development and learning (OD) is a response to change—a complex educational strategy intended to change beliefs, attitudes, values, and organizational structures. OD is also intended to improve organizations’ internal human capacity for the purpose of enhancing individual development while improving performance. The strategy aims to maximize your organization’s efficacy so that you can better adapt to new technologies, markets, and challenges created by the complex and uncertain global economy. With OD, your organization can learn to be self-sustaining over time.

The United Nations' global sustainability development goals (UN SDGs) and Blackrock's influence in the global financial system's community of investors capital markets behavior. Let's not forget,195 countries are supporting UN SDGs, the Paris Agreement to lower carbon emissions to 1.5°C by the year 2030.

Strategic Foresight Project Inc (SFP) intents to become the premier service provider of transformational leadership development and learning product/service offerings for small/medium-sided businesses to determine their  “Fit for Foresight", what should be done?” and “how to do it?”, thus, enabling M/WBEs preparedness, innovation, strategic evaluation and governance practices in an uncertain, complex, and rapidly changing global environment over time. SFP’s statement of direction inspires minority/woman business enterprises (M/WBEs) to satisfy their need for sustainable long-term employability in communities where they operate.

Truist Foundation Inspire offers an opportunity for SFP to achieve its specific public benefit purpose and statement of direction, allowing for an effective and productive collaboration between key stakeholders. In doing so, the Challenge positions TLFA to leverage its capability, a link between strategy and performance, enhancing its credibility, trust, and capacity to realize change for a broader environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impact in communities where M/WBEs operate over time.

Office, conference or studio/production space 

linking TLFA pilot research and education project with the top corporate supplier diversity leadership teams. In doing so, a plan of action can be developed, roles/responsibilities assigned, coordinated across organizations, partnerships, respondents and road testers, and other stakeholders.

Obtaining letters of support from road testers and respondents (M/WBEs) to participate in our TLFA action-research methodology.

Category A

SFP would like to partner with a sample (p1) of the Top 100 corporations who have minority and women business enterprises (M/WBEs) participating in their corporate supplier diversity program. The corporate sample (p1) participates as road testers of the TLFA research methodology while M/WBEs sample (pm1) participate as respondents. The Women’s Enterprise USA annual list of Top 100 Leaders in Supplier Diversity.

Category B

SFP welcome partnerships with the following organizations' foresight project team to work in collaboration with TLFA team, graduate student interns, and Category A as subject area experts and/or road testers of the research methodology and leadership development/learning components. The organizations follow: Shell, General Motors, Coca-Cola, McKinsey Company, Deloitte, Walt Disney World, IBM, AT&T, Philips, PricewaterhouseCoopers, World Bank. The following organizations bring subject area expertise in science fiction prototyping as foresight using future personas to engage an audience in communities of the future: Pepsi, Apple, Google, Samsung, Microsoft, Nike, Visa, Boeing, Ford, Hershey.

Category C

Partner with banks like Wells Fargo, Citi, Bank of America, Blackrock, and Black banks insured by FDIC, Ripple Company, Coinbase Global Inc and/or Blockchain to participate as road testers of the action-research methodology to inform TLFA's financial (literacy) education/curriculum program.