Gordon, I think this is exactly the right provocation. I agree that foresight is not entirely absent from evaluation...the deeper issue is that it is often present only in a limited, procedural, or retrospective form.
The distinction you make around timing, depth, and intent is critical. Many evaluation processes may use tools that look adjacent to foresight (e.g., risk registers, adaptive management loops, strategic questions, even scenario language), but this is not the same as foresight being practised professionally. Foresight is not only a toolkit....it is also a disciplined way of sensing change, reading weak signals, interrogating assumptions, judging when a system is approaching a threshold, and understanding the deeper narratives and power dynamics shaping what futures are considered possible or desirable.
That is where the professional insight of a foresight practitioner matters. Tools can help structure conversation, but they do not automatically generate anticipatory intelligence. Used superficially, they can simply extend existing planning logics. Used with depth, they can reveal when the frame itself is wrong, when adaptation is no longer enough, and when evaluation needs to support strategic reframing rather than incremental improvement.
So I would fully agree...the issue is not the total absence of foresight, but its containment. The challenge is to move from foresight as a set of occasional methods to foresight as a professional evaluative capability via being embedded early, used in real time, and directed toward shaping future-informed decisions rather than merely validating past performance.
RE: From Hindsight to Foresight: How Evaluation Can Become Future-Informed
Kenya
Steven Lynn Lichty
Managing Partner
REAL Consulting Group
Posted on 27/04/2026
Gordon, I think this is exactly the right provocation. I agree that foresight is not entirely absent from evaluation...the deeper issue is that it is often present only in a limited, procedural, or retrospective form.
The distinction you make around timing, depth, and intent is critical. Many evaluation processes may use tools that look adjacent to foresight (e.g., risk registers, adaptive management loops, strategic questions, even scenario language), but this is not the same as foresight being practised professionally. Foresight is not only a toolkit....it is also a disciplined way of sensing change, reading weak signals, interrogating assumptions, judging when a system is approaching a threshold, and understanding the deeper narratives and power dynamics shaping what futures are considered possible or desirable.
That is where the professional insight of a foresight practitioner matters. Tools can help structure conversation, but they do not automatically generate anticipatory intelligence. Used superficially, they can simply extend existing planning logics. Used with depth, they can reveal when the frame itself is wrong, when adaptation is no longer enough, and when evaluation needs to support strategic reframing rather than incremental improvement.
So I would fully agree...the issue is not the total absence of foresight, but its containment. The challenge is to move from foresight as a set of occasional methods to foresight as a professional evaluative capability via being embedded early, used in real time, and directed toward shaping future-informed decisions rather than merely validating past performance.