From Short-Term to Long-Term Planning: How LocalTapiola Built a Strategic Foresight System- Case Study

Building a strategic foresight system with LocalTapiola

Short-and medium-term planning processes at LocalTapiola Group had traditionally been well in order, but the group observed that their long-term strategy work could be improved. The corporation’s leadership and strategic planning department concluded that it was time to start building a foresight system to support strategic decision-making. Futures Platform’s strategic foresight solution helped LocalTapiola bring structure to their foresight work and encouraged collaboration across different teams within the organisation. 

LocalTapiola is a Finnish finance group company that provides comprehensive insurance, saving and investment services to both corporate clients and private customers. Foresight work at LocalTapiola centred around observing and preparing for long-term changes in the organisation’s operating environment. However, before using Futures Platform, the company didn’t have a systematic approach for continuous foresight work. “Typically, foresight work at LocalTapiola tended to happen on a need basis. There was a lack of long-term and systematic action,” says Jari Karjalainen, Information Specialist at LocalTapiola.

LocalTapiola chose Futures Platform to address this issue and strengthen its continuous foresight activities. Using Futures Platform’s collaborative foresight tool enabled the group to build a structured foresight system, promote future awareness among staff and hold engaging foresight workshops that encourage collaborative foresight work across teams.

“Before we started using Futures Platform, foresight work at LocalTapiola tended to happen on a need basis. There was a lack of long-term and systematic action.”
Jari Karjalainen, Information Specialist at LocalTapiola

“Foresight helps one recognise their own ignorance”

The creation of a continuous foresight system in LocalTapiola took place in multiple stages over two years. The first step was to figure out what foresight meant for LocalTapiola. To understand the current situation and need for foresight, management and staff in development and innovation-focused roles were interviewed. The interviews revealed that LocalTapiola had a risk management-oriented culture, which meant that a good foundation for future orientation was already in place. This was a good starting point for developing foresight activities. 

In the next step, the leadership team identified potential use cases across the organisation that could benefit from foresight. It was concluded that the primary use case of foresight for LocalTapiola would be to inform decision-making, specifically in the strategy work of business units’ management teams. Additionally, a continuous foresight system would be useful in the context of new development initiatives. Other identified uses for the tool were all kinds of projects that require information on future trends.

For LocalTapiola, the most significant value of foresight was to challenge 
conventional thinking, bring up new perspectives on alternative futures and 
thereby address blind spots. “One’s vision of the future is often very limited, and with foresight, you can recognise your own ignorance. To quote Daniel Kahneman: we are blind to the obvious and blind to our blindness. Foresight helps you control your own and your organisation’s blindness. So don’t think you know everything, challenge yourself and your organisation to approach the future more systematically,” explains Jari Karjalainen.

“One’s vision of the future is often very limited, and with foresight, you can recognise your own ignorance. To quote Daniel Kahneman: we are blind to the obvious and blind to our blindness. Foresight helps you control your own and your organisation’s blindness.”
Jari Karjalainen, Information Specialist at LocalTapiola

Futures Platform brings structure to foresight workshops

Futures Platform was the right choice for LocalTapiola because, among other benefits, it helped bring structure to the discussions about the future. “Our wish was to gain a better understanding of the driving forces and trends that will affect the company’s operations. Futures Platform’s foresight tool is well suited for workshops where we create and work together,” Jari Karjalainen explains.

First, building a strategic foresight system on a corporate level required understanding the outlook for each line of business within LocalTapiola. To achieve this, the corporation ran a series of workshops on various topics, such as healthcare trends and financial market developments. In these workshops, management teams from different business units outlined their operational environments on Futures Platform’s visual trend radars. They also set up plans to review and update the radars regularly.

During the first year, the focus was on developing an organisational culture of
foresight. To do this, the management teams started to monitor trends on their radar
and their impacts. The results were reported at regular intervals. “The main benefits
we’ve gained from using Futures Platform as part of our foresight work have been
persistence, a systematic approach, the informational content of the tool and the
way it helps groups work together,” Jari Karjalainen describes the findings from the
first year.

Later on, LocalTapiola also held open workshops to which staff around the organisation were invited. These workshops aimed to determine whether other teams would reach the same conclusions as the management team and to spark discussions. “Our goal in building a foresight system is to encourage our staff to look at the future in a systematic, analytical and forward-looking way and to be able to discuss it together,” says Jari Karjalainen, Information Specialist at LocalTapiola. 

Results: LocalTapiola awarded for future-proof strategy

According to Jari Karjalainen, continuous foresight is now a well-established practice within the organisation that supports strategic decision-making. What’s more, LocalTapiola’s foresight work has already started to produce results and receive external recognition and praise. Soon after establishing its foresight process, the LocalTapiola Real Estate Asset Management achieved the desired five-star EFQM Recognised for Excellence certification granted by the Finnish Quality Association. Among the selection criteria was the fact that the Real Estate Asset Management strategy was based on future business environment analysis, and that the corporation transformed its strategy into tangible actions.

In the future, LocalTapiola plans to use Futures Platform’s foresight tool with a wider group of stakeholders, and possibly also with customers. “It’s not enough to just have an internal view on foresight, but you also have to look for views outside your own company. Futures Platform is well suited for more than just internal foresight work,” says Jari Karjalainen.

Staff at LocalTapiola have also discovered that the Futures Platform’s foresight tool provides a convenient way to stay informed of changes in the world beyond strategy work. “In the future, we plan to use Futures Platform as a source of information for tracking trends, as the tool includes not only content created by futurists, but also daily news updates related to phenomena around the world,” says Jari Karjalainen.