The challenge
This large, nationally recognised charity, was aware that the world was changing fast and that this could have a fundamental impact on what services they deliver and therefore the type of charity they needed to be. Technology, in particular, was driving huge change and altering the expectations of their service users.
It was being discussed internally as potentially being their ‘kodak moment’, a point where failing to anticipate and respond to change could leave a once-thriving model at risk of becoming obsolete
We were asked to support them to not only forecast what could happen, but also to identify what this could mean and the choices they needed to make now.
The solution
We approached this across three phases:
Phase 1 focused on understanding what was driving the change. Through engaging internal stakeholders, interviewing current and potential customers as well as conducting futures scanning we created a portfolio of ‘drivers of change’.
Phase 2 explored these drivers of change to create a range of possible futures through a Futures Hack and follow up custom interviews. Through a subsequent Futures Sprint we created 100+ different futures, clustered to find areas of commonality and therefore increased likelihood and created a suite of Futures Blueprints.
Phase 3 built on these Blueprints to explore the implications for the charity around future offers and capabilities, culminating in the development of Board papers and Trustee discussion.
Impact
Trustees approved exploration of the future offers, setting the charity on a path to create and pilot a series of new, future focused service offers.
There was also considerable internal buy in, driven by both the level of customer co-creation and evidence as well as our collaborative ways of working.