Hindsight, Foresight & Insight

Hindsight, insight and foresight are critical skills for strategists. Hindsight is learning from experience in order to build expertise. Experience alone does not guarantee expertise. The United States Post Office has over 200 years worth of experience, yet still manages to damage, lose and misdirect numerous items each year, in contrast to Federal Express that only has been in business since 1973 with an on-time delivery rate of 98% plus. The United States Post Office has more experience than Federal Express, yet one can argue that Federal Express has learned more, and consequently has greater expertise.

Hindsight involves critical reflection on one's experience in order to integrate knowledge gained from the experience with knowledge already possessed. Stephen D. Brookfield has probably contributed more to the critical reflective process than anyone else in the field. Brookfield identified four processes central to learning how to be critically reflective: assumption analysis, contextual awareness, imaginative speculation, and reflective skepticism. Assumptions structure our way of perceiving reality and influence our behavior and assumption analysis attempts to unearth these taken-for-granted notions. Context is the background in which an event takes place and contextual awareness involves examining the specific context of an event in order to arrive at a correct interpretation. Imaginative speculation challenges prevailing ways of knowing and acting by imagining alternative ways of thinking about phenomena. The outcome of assumption analysis, contextual awareness, and imaginative speculation is reflective skepticism - the questioning of any universal truth claims. The goal is to learn from experience in order to build expertise.

Hindsight = Action --> Thought
Hindsight is where action informs thought.

Jared Diamond investigated the fate of past societies to see if the history would provide lessons for our own future. His research found four factors contributing to societal failure:

• challenge may not be anticipated before it arrives
• challenge may not be perceived when it does arrive
• challenge may be perceived but not addressed
• challenge may be addressed but efforts to mitigate it may not succeed

The first three of these factors – the inability to anticipate, perceive or act upon challenges – describe failures of foresight. Rather than having to experience a challenge in order to learn how best to manage it, foresight allows us to prepare for a challenge.

Hindsight, like experience, educates our thinking by the results of actions. Both hindsight and experience are actions leading to thoughts. The shortcoming is that you must experience something to learn from it. Foresight is the capacity to detect and avoid hazards, assess the consequences of action and envision a desired future. Foresight is connected to cognitive development.

"All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved."

Sun Tzu

The fact that you can observe tactics, but you can only infer the strategy is very useful if your goal is going to mount severe opposition. You simply state that your goal is something you know will not be vigorously opposed and make no mention of your strategy. For opponents to discern your real goal, they would need to monitor your tactics carefully and connect the dots to reveal a picture unlike the one you painted.

"All warfare is based on deception."
Sun Tzu

Foresight = Thought --> Action
Foresight is where thought informs action.

Sensemaking is a deliberate effort to understand reality. It is about connecting the dots and generating inferences, but it also involves identifying what constitutes a dot and how to go about seeking out new dots. Sensemaking is rooted in time and space. We interpret things based on our perceptions of the future as well as our earlier experiences. In this way the future and the past meet in the present. Sensemaking is only possible when we put hindsight and foresight together to create knowledge that can be used for present decision making. One can state that:

Insight = Hindsight + Foresight + Sensemaking