1.
Report:
RNLI Strategic Futures
a workshop held by the Innovation team
in association with:

2.
SUMMARY
The Innovation team successfully demonstrated the power of using
foresight techniques and ‘futures thinking’ to stimulate debate and
inform future oriented strategic thinking within the RNLI.
Using insights emergent from the World’s leading foresight programme
(Future Agenda), senior managers from across the business developed
compelling future narratives and future oriented questions that may
now be collaboratively explored by the RNLI Innovation team. The
answers to these questions will then subsequently be used to inform
our future strategic direction.
The event attracted lots of positive feedback from attendees and the
team has already received requests to support a number of existing
work packages with foresight work, including those owned by
Corporate Strategy.

3.
Background
The RNLI strategy is 100% aligned to achieving our mission. It is developed by taking
into account current trends and insights, making implicit assumptions about the World
the RNLI will occupy 20 years from now. However, that ‘future world’ is actually one of
many, spread along a variety of different axes – political, economic, technological,
societal etc.
The first objective of this workshop was to use foresight techniques to explore these
alternative future worlds and stimulate the challenging of some of our assumptions
about the future.
The second objective of the workshop was to then use this conversation as a
foundation from which to generate future oriented questions that could then
potentially be addressed by the RNLI Innovation community. If we develop questions
with our heads in the ‘Now’, by the time a solution is developed, the window of
opportunity for it to be truly disruptive and create new value is significantly narrowed.
If we put our heads in the future and ask questions about how we may solve future
(10yrs +) challenges, you increase the likelihood of creating interim and final outputs
that are truly positively disruptive.

4.
The Future Agenda
• The workshop used insights from the not-for-profit “Future Agenda”
programme as a springboard / stimulus for talking about the future.
• The insights we used had been collated from workshops with over 5000
people World wide and are a great indication of what people are most
concerned / excited about when thinking about the future. You can learn
more here
• Our facilitator for the day, Patrick Harris, of Growth Agenda / Thought
Engine was heavily involved with the programme.

5.
Workshop flow
Introductions and “What is Foresight?”
• Intro to Foresight thinking
• How does it fit with current strategy development?
Open discussion
• Explore and discuss insights and outputs from the Future Agenda global foresight
programme.
Prioritise
• Prioritise! (High/Med/Low)
• What insights will have most impact upon wider society / the organisation?
Narrative development
• Develop a story / narrative about the future where the prioritised insights have been
realised.
Question development
• Use the story to develop questions about the role of the RNLI in the future context.

6.
Introductions and “What is Foresight?”
•Intro to Foresight thinking
•How does it fit with current strategy development?
Before kicking off in earnest, we got to know each other a
little and what our current thoughts were about the
future, 10yrs from now…
Boundaries and
borders
Energy –
rebalancing the
economy
Education – What
role will Artificial
intelligence &
social learning
play?
Resource wars &
consequent migration -
siege mentality in W
Europe and North
America
Political
devolution –
weak central
governments
Tech leading to
extended lifespans
and ageing
demographic
Individualisation
– personalisation,
expression of
best and worst
Big Data –
surveillance,
privacy
Big Issues – will
much change
fundamentally?
Growing Inequality
– inevitable or will
society organise &
take action?

7.
Open discussion
•Explore and discuss insights and outputs from the Future Agenda global foresight programme.
We held an open forum to discuss some of the Insights emerging from the Future Agenda
foresight Programme, trying to keep our heads in the ‘Global’ mind set and not diving into
becoming ‘RNLI focussed’ too early. It was a powerful tool in untying people from their
current role and the constraints associated with those roles. We learnt a lot about the person
behind the job title. Themes included the Future of Water, Brand, Loyalty, Government…

8.
Prioritise
•Prioritise! (High/Med/Low)
•What insights will have most impact upon wider society / the organisation?
Groups were asked to prioritise
insights based on their potential
impact on their ‘World’.
Responses varied based on the
perspective they took...

9.
HIGH PRIORITIES
- All four groups placed these Insights as high priorities
• Crypto-anarchists
• Infeasible retirement
• The talent challenge
• Influence of China
• The funding challenge
• Closing the inequality gap
• Pop up economies
• The climate change challenge
• The third space for data
• Citizen-centric data
• Digital engagement
• Age diversified workforces

10.
HIGH-ISH PRIORITIES
- Two groups placed these foresights as high priorities
• Water Wars
• Readiness for water scarcity
• Chronic diseases
• Collaboration and trade-offs
• Changing role of government
• Joining the dots (Increasing collaboration via social networks)
• Increased well-being

11.
POTENTIAL BLINDSPOTS*
-Issues rated relatively ‘LOW IMPACT’ by three groups. Beware strategic surprise…
• Political Stimulus
Political consensus creates the conditions for a societal and business operating context
more focussed on resource efficiency – including a long-term focus, fiscal stimulus,
skills development and greater cross-border collaboration
• Hard Choices
In a society where there is a widening gulf between rich and poor, the rich may live
increasingly separate lives and provide for their own ‘public services’
• Crowd Truthing
Such is the influence of the rising data swirl that ‘truth’ may well become what the
online crowds agree to: We see a world where ‘crowd truth verification’ is prioritised
over search and media
*the things that we don’t think are important at the time and so don’t pay any attention to!

12.
Narrative development
•Develop a story / narrative about the future where the prioritised insights
have been realised.
For the high priority insights, we then linked them
together to create compelling stories and future
contexts, and pitched them back to the larger group
for feedback.

13.
Exemplar narrative: Using the insights above, we created the following narrative:
“In the future, an educated and digitally empowered global, connected society will exploit open
data sources to reveal globally impactful trends affecting society. They will be frustrated at
governments speed of response / inaction and look to businesses to develop and deliver the
solution. Businesses will do so as ‘global mindedness’ is now a key organisational pillar of value”.

14.
Narrative notes:
“Social activism driven by data”
• What is the situation today, what is changing?
• Climate change & inequality gap
• More information and data enables greater awareness and understanding
• Speed of information /image transfer around the world – rapid reaction
• Business wanting to be seen as responsible in the eyes of society
• Inequality across all dimensions – Political, opinion, £/$, enables individual
bravery
• Part of global community. Greater discussion about issues
• Risk of knowing only a little about a lot of things
• Knowledge democratised. Everyone feels they should have a voice. Social
activism more transitory
• Situation in 2025?
• Increased opportunity for organisation to take facilitating role, to be conduit
of public opinion Nodes / filters
• 50 billion connected devices by 2020 (Data)
• Developments to extract the signal from the noise (data created by society)
• Possibly too much information, too many causes / issues, causing overload.
• Businesses as opposed to government have a bigger role to play – creating
value / net positive is the new norm
• Wider social value is a key decision metric for purchasing decisions
(Resources)
• Specific examples of the change?
• Net positive – Kingfisher group, Eden Project, Crowd sourcing Cells / planets,
Opendata.gov, Degree online / OU, Malala being shot / female educaion, head
scarves
• Get kids out of gangs and into coffee (Kenco)
• IoW boatyard – built an inflatable raft (Low cost / rapidly deployable
• Assumptions we’re making?
• People still care, not paralysed by the number of causes
• UK still wants to be global leader (Thought and action)
• Own knowledge and culture, west is best?
• Tech advances can keep pace with demand for knowledge and data
• Knows and don’t knows creates as big a gap as haves and have nots.
• Do we all know, understand and agree on what is best?
• Islandmentality – do not fundamentally shift to ‘our country first’
mentality with resource
• Impact globally? Impact Regionally?
• Globally business cares more and takes more posiive decisions about ‘doing’
good, Increased speed of response
• Regionally greater accountability and action, greater demand, authentic,
honest, transparent decision making.
• Data philanthropy enables greater focus and targeted intervention. Micro vs
macro needs
• Key q’s for RNLI to remain relevant to communities in
2025
• How far to we devolve responsibility to deliver our mission to partnering
profit-making organisations and local communities.
• How might we increase the granularity of the data we collect, informing our
interventions and then how do we make it available to communities to
enable them to take action.
• Will ends become more important than means?If we are judged on our
impact and the difference we make, will we be more open to working in new
ways?
• How do we add real value to the communities where we operate? How do
we encourage society to change and Care (value based organisation). How
prepared are we to care about the things communities care about?
• How do you find and identify the communities?

15.
Narrative notes: “Evolution – an
organisation flourishing in the future”
• What is the situation today, what is changing?
– Issue led groupings
– Ephemeral
– More flexibility for people to move between trives
• Situation in 2025?
– More transient relationships and transactional
– More informed society and based on data
– More free time, ageing population, more engaging
societal changes lead to tribal loyalties
• Specific examples of the change?
– Later life internships
– Sabaticals
– Joob swaps . Shares
– Less security
– Open source and open data
– Flash engagement (about the activity)
– ICE Bucket challenge - Who knew what the cause was?
• Assumptions we’re making?
– Economic, climate
– Freedom of choice
– Maslow scale
– Issue overload
• Impact globally? Impact Regionally?
– Short termism
– Missing the big one
– Community lead causes
• Key q’s for RNLI to remain relevant to communities in
2025
– How do the RNLI maintain the appropriate engagement
at the right level?
– Are we quick and flexible enough to change and rate of
change?
– Issues – small things that galvanise people without
missing the bigger picture
– Flexible working and volunteering. More transactional
volunteering. How do we take advantage?

16.
Narrative Notes:
“Delivering more for less…”
• What is the situation today, what is changing?
– Traditional business models are changing
– Individuals can have a bigger impact with technology
– Government is done less
– Tech changing the way we are working together
• Situation in 2025?
– Businesses are less tangible
– Small government rather than big government
– Working week changes
– Global workforce (online)
• Specific examples of the change?
– Reluctance of central government to fund some
emergency services provided currently
– Air B&B, UBER, Tinder, Bristows, Experts exchange
• Assumptions we’re making?
– Society will adapt to flexible working and living together
– Benefits of short-term business relationships outweigh
risks for business
– Trust between business and customers Air B&B vs
Travelodge
• Impact globally? Impact Regionally?
– Laptop sweatshops? More / Less inequality?
– More home working
– Increased global productivity
– Agile business models
• Key q’s for RNLI to remain relevant to communities
in 2025
– Remain open minded about services RNLI provides –
integration with NHS and Fire and Rescue Services &
SAR Helicopters
– How do we define communities in 2025? How do we
manage to keep our identity? Does it remain the
same?
– Will RNLI core services (LB&LG) be in demand in 2025?
– Does fleet size and age meet business model?
– Need to achieve the balance between good corporate
identity for fundraising – and ensuring open and
collaborative approaches to working with other NGO’s

17.
Narrative notes:
“Power of the people…”
• What is the situation today, what is changing?
– Rise of groups of people (Occupy) passionate about
issue, not necessarily informed or balanced, fleeting
groundswells
– Virtual groundswell that forms a catalyst – challenge to
established ways of working
– Breakdown of trust in governments
• Situation in 2025?
– Society becomes less tolerant, more easily offended.
Groupsbecome more agile, using technology, groups
join forces
– Increases in trends, need to collaborate and unusual /
unorthodox alliances
• Specific examples of the change?
– Paralysis of authority – difficulty in sticking to decisions
e.g. St Abbs and migrant policy
– Paedophile vs paediatric nurse
– Crowd truthing – Olive Cook and changes to Charitable
governance
– UKIP / Greens, Julian Assange, Wikileaks,Snowden
• Assumptions we’re making?
– I want to be an individual, just like my friends…
– People will follow a crowd
– Tribal, sense of belonging
• Impact globally? Impact Regionally?
– Less stable, more reactive (Good and bad)
– Global interest in local issues (positive or negative)
• Key q’s for RNLI to remain relevant to communities in
2025
– Communities own their own destinies, RNLI governance
decreases
– Impact on Customer Journeys, no longer linear

18.
Question development
•Use the story to develop questions about the role of the RNLI in the future scenario.
•Questions, when answered, should allow the RNLI to remain relevant to communities
10years from now. From the stories and future world scenarios, we subsequently developed
questions that the RNLI may wish to now explore. Such exploration could
then be used to inform our future strategic direction.
How might we predict
what RNLI communities
look like in 2025?
How might we integrate
with other lifesaving
community services?
How might we keep our
identity? (Or does it
change?)
How might we look if
there is no longer any
demand for our core
LB/LG services?
How might we
collaborate with NGOs
but keep a distinct
brand Identity?
How might RNLI
governance look if
communities are highly
autonomous?
How might the dis-
continuous ‘Supporter
Journey’ of the future
look?
How might the dis-
continuous ‘Supporter
Journey’ of the future
look?
How might we make big
data available to
communities to inform
their decision making?

19.
Question development 2
•Use the story to develop questions about the role of the RNLI in the future scenario.
•Questions, when answered, should allow the RNLI to remain relevant to communities
10years from now. From the stories and future world scenarios, we subsequently developed
questions that the RNLI may wish to now explore. Such exploration could
then be used to inform our future strategic direction.
How might we increase the
granularity of the data we
collect, informing our
interventions?
How might we find and
identify future RNLI
communities?
How far might we devolve
our responsibility to profit
making organisations
(and communities)?
How might we add real
value to the communities
where we operate?
How might we
encourage society to
change and to care?
How might RNLI
governance look if
communities are highly
autonomous?
How might we begin to
care about the wider things
that our communities care
about?
Will the ends become
more important than
the means?
How might we work if we
were judged on impact
alone?

20.
• These questions will now be prioritised
according to impact (if solved)
• A programme proposal to tackle the higher
ranked challenges will then be created, and
circulated for comment and buy in.
• This will be owned by Innovation in
Transformation, and sponsored by a core VS.
From question to answer

21.
Next Steps
Task Owner Delivery by
Share report with attendees
and on Yammer
Innovation (WR) 20/10/2015
Solicit future foresight work
opportunities / needs
Innovation (JG/WR) 31/10/2015
Rank / prioritise questions
developed in workshop
All, led by Innovation 31/10/2015
Develop plan for RNLI Foresight
programme
Innovation (TR) 15/12/2015
Deliver first Foresight event Innovation (TR) 28th February 2016

22.
Will Roberts
will_roberts2@rnli.org.uk
01202 336265
Contact Details
Tim Robertson
Tim_robertson@rnli.org.uk
01202 336265
Please fee free to drop any one of us a line if you would like to know more, help us run your
own futures event, or attend any future events as an active participant.