Welcome to From Hindsight to Foresight: How Evaluation Can Become Future-Informed Discussion. My name is Steven Lichty and I’ll be hosting this online discussion over the next five weeks. I live in Nairobi and have been working at the nexus of foresight and evaluation for over 20 years. I am looking forward to facilitating our conversations here, sharing resources, and learning from all of you.
Evaluation has long helped us understand what happened, what worked, and what did not. But many of the systems we care about most (food, agriculture, climate, ecosystems, resilience, etc.) are now shaped by accelerating uncertainty, disruption, and long-term change. In that context, looking backward is no longer enough. The question is not only whether an intervention performed well in the past, but whether it is fit for the futures now emerging.
Over the coming weeks, this forum is a place to test ideas, share examples, surface tensions, and learn across disciplines. Through shared experiences, optional readings, and honest reflection, we will explore what it looks like when evaluation starts looking forward. Not abandoning rigour, but expanding it. Not replacing the DAC criteria, but asking what criteria like relevance and sustainability really mean when the future may look nothing like the world in which a programme was initially designed.
This discussion invites evaluators, foresight practitioners, commissioners, researchers, and decision-makers into a shared space of inquiry. How can evaluation become more future-informed, more adaptive, and more useful in times of volatility? What happens when we bring foresight tools like horizon scanning, scenarios, Three Horizons, Futures Triangle, or Causal Layered Analysis into evaluation design, interpretation, and use? How can deeper epistemologies and ontologies driving critical futures thinking inform how we do evaluation?
This community includes some of the most thoughtful evaluators, commissioners, and practitioners working in food security, agriculture, and the environment. You have seen the limits of retrospective evaluation firsthand. You have also probably seen glimpses of something better. You do not need to be an expert in both fields to contribute. Practical experience, critical questions, promising cases, doubts, and provocations are all welcome.
So let’s begin there: Where have you seen the limits of retrospective evaluation in a fast-changing world? And where do you see the most promising entry points for bringing a foresight lens into evaluation practice?
I am are glad you are here and I look forward to an engaging and thought-provoking discussion.
RE: From Hindsight to Foresight: How Evaluation Can Become Future-Informed
Kenya
Steven Lynn Lichty
Managing Partner
REAL Consulting Group
Posted on 23/03/2026
Welcome to From Hindsight to Foresight: How Evaluation Can Become Future-Informed Discussion. My name is Steven Lichty and I’ll be hosting this online discussion over the next five weeks. I live in Nairobi and have been working at the nexus of foresight and evaluation for over 20 years. I am looking forward to facilitating our conversations here, sharing resources, and learning from all of you.
Evaluation has long helped us understand what happened, what worked, and what did not. But many of the systems we care about most (food, agriculture, climate, ecosystems, resilience, etc.) are now shaped by accelerating uncertainty, disruption, and long-term change. In that context, looking backward is no longer enough. The question is not only whether an intervention performed well in the past, but whether it is fit for the futures now emerging.
Over the coming weeks, this forum is a place to test ideas, share examples, surface tensions, and learn across disciplines. Through shared experiences, optional readings, and honest reflection, we will explore what it looks like when evaluation starts looking forward. Not abandoning rigour, but expanding it. Not replacing the DAC criteria, but asking what criteria like relevance and sustainability really mean when the future may look nothing like the world in which a programme was initially designed.
This discussion invites evaluators, foresight practitioners, commissioners, researchers, and decision-makers into a shared space of inquiry. How can evaluation become more future-informed, more adaptive, and more useful in times of volatility? What happens when we bring foresight tools like horizon scanning, scenarios, Three Horizons, Futures Triangle, or Causal Layered Analysis into evaluation design, interpretation, and use? How can deeper epistemologies and ontologies driving critical futures thinking inform how we do evaluation?
This community includes some of the most thoughtful evaluators, commissioners, and practitioners working in food security, agriculture, and the environment. You have seen the limits of retrospective evaluation firsthand. You have also probably seen glimpses of something better. You do not need to be an expert in both fields to contribute. Practical experience, critical questions, promising cases, doubts, and provocations are all welcome.
So let’s begin there: Where have you seen the limits of retrospective evaluation in a fast-changing world? And where do you see the most promising entry points for bringing a foresight lens into evaluation practice?
I am are glad you are here and I look forward to an engaging and thought-provoking discussion.