Great comment here, Ines, and a valuable caution. I appreciate your point that using foresight in place of evidence on actual performance can become a way of endlessly rescuing weak results through imagined future scenarios, especially when evaluation teams lack the technical or sector-specific expertise needed to challenge assumptions. Your emphasis on participatory, feedback-rich systems is especially important, because it suggests that future-oriented evaluation should not rely only on evaluators and institutions, but also on structured stakeholder engagement that can shape policy design, implementation, and adaptation in real time. Thus, building futures literacy with communities is also important element of our conversations.
RE: From Hindsight to Foresight: How Evaluation Can Become Future-Informed
Kenya
Steven Lynn Lichty
Managing Partner
REAL Consulting Group
Posted on 18/04/2026
Great comment here, Ines, and a valuable caution. I appreciate your point that using foresight in place of evidence on actual performance can become a way of endlessly rescuing weak results through imagined future scenarios, especially when evaluation teams lack the technical or sector-specific expertise needed to challenge assumptions. Your emphasis on participatory, feedback-rich systems is especially important, because it suggests that future-oriented evaluation should not rely only on evaluators and institutions, but also on structured stakeholder engagement that can shape policy design, implementation, and adaptation in real time. Thus, building futures literacy with communities is also important element of our conversations.