Welcome to Module Five in the Nursing Informatics Leadership Theory and Practice course. In this module, we discuss the value of foresight leadership for nursing informatics leaders. Foresight leadership will help you anticipate trends and their consequences, that will transform healthcare. The specific learning objectives for this module, challenge you to discuss principles that support the development of anticipatory foresight leadership, and futures literacy, to inspire change and innovation in a learning healthcare system. Explain the difference between change and transformation to support leadership insight, foresight, action, and development. Identify ways to engage in future research methods, to support the application of foresight leadership, in nursing informatics scenarios. Explore references and resources to advance knowledge, insight, understanding, and application of foresight nursing informatics leadership. Let's begin our discussion with a definition of nursing foresight. Nursing foresight is the ability and act of forecasting what will be needed in the future, considering emergent healthcare trends, which have consequences for population and planetary health, as well as the profession's purpose, definition, professional scope, and standards of practice. I have been interested in the concept and practice of nursing foresight for sometime. In 2018, the University of Minnesota School of Nursing and the Katherine J. Densford international center for nursing leadership, launched the foresight leadership, the future of nursing and health initiative. You can learn more about this project by visiting www.foresight-leadership.org. I believe more nurses need to become futurists. Given the acceleration of change, nursing informatics leaders must be futurists as well as nurses with informatics knowledge and leadership skills. Fortunately, we have resources that can help us become futurists. To maximize foresight leadership influence, nurses and other healthcare professionals ought to develop future literacy skills. To that end, I invite you to dive into the learning activities for this module. There are a number of interesting articles and videos for you to explore. Read, What is Future Studies on the World Future Studies Federation website? Watch video about Future Literacy Skills. Watch the video about Secret Powers of Time. Read the article by Ratcliffe and L. Ratcliffe on Anticipating Leadership and Strategic Foresight, and their linked literacies necessary for that. Read, the article about anticipatory leadership, futurist, strategist and integrator. Watch this prime on the difference between change and transformation. Read the article about anticipatory leaders, futurists, strategist, and integrator. Read Big Data and New Knowledge in Medicine: The Thinking, Training, and Tools Needed For a Learning Healthcare System. Read the Future We Framework. Read and review section one of this Guidebook for Nurse Futurists. Scan the Future Tool for Policymakers and Analysis Resource. Explorer the Foresight Leadership: Future of Nursing and Health Resource at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing. I believe there are nine principles aspiring nurse futurists need to consider. They are; know your personal orientation toward time, appreciate the value of innovation and design thinking to support foresight leadership, develop future literacy skills, actively monitor industry trends, forecasts, disruptions. Discern logical consequences of trends, using future thinking tools and techniques. Are you a person who sorts for the past, lives in the present, or looks to anticipate the future? Each of us has a metaprogramme related to time, and it's important to make our unconscious beliefs about time explicit. As noted in the Secret Powers of Time video Dr. Zimbardo's research suggests there are six timeframes that people may operate in. Two from the past, two in the present, and two in the future. What is your preferred time frame? Become aware of this and realize how you're framing influences your foresight leadership abilities. Second, foresight often involves imagining what is yet to come, or what is not evident. Thus creativity, innovation, and design thinking are crucial to a foresight leadership mindset. There are several learning resources to support your development of futures literacy. As noted earlier, checkout the www.foresight-leadership.org resource at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, or the World Federation For Future Studies, to learn more about future research models, methods, and challenges. Another key principle relates to monitoring of industry trends and challenges. Are you aware of the weak signals and emerging technologies that are likely to impact the work that you do? How do you systematically attend to and get information about these trends? What sort of environmental scanning and mechanisms, do you use to stay abreast of developments and disruptions in your field of work? Once you have mastered trend watching, it's vital that you discern the consequences of those trends. There are several future methods for doing so. Some of the more popular, include the use of scenarios. Additional principles are: appreciate the use of vision based scenarios, stimulate strategic conversations about espouse visions, looking backwards from the future, navigate change efforts with your requisite variety competing values leadership skills, and be clear about a professional nursing informatics leadership legacy. So, the next principle suggests you appreciate the use of vision based scenarios. Scenarios are stories about the future. Scenarios are valuable as talking tools. They stimulate strategic conversations about espouse visions, looking backward from the future. Key questions to use when contemplating a scenario are; how plausible does this scenario seem? What thoughts does it suggest? What feelings does it generate? What are the implications for society, healthcare, and nursing? If parts of this scenario are desirable, what actions need to be taken to increase the chances of that happening. If parts are undesirable, what actions need to be taken to prevent them from happening? As conversations unfold, there will be many issues raised and decisions to be made. This is where it will be important for you to navigate change efforts, with the requisite variety, competing values leadership skills, you have learned in this course. For example, think about your Minnesota Nursing Informatics Leadership inventory Results. Given your profile, how do your skills and abilities for navigating different types of culture, as well as change, support foresight leadership. Finally become clear about your professional nursing informatics leadership legacy. Remember the nursing pioneers and leaders from course two. They embodied foresight, leadership, in that they were future oriented, paid attention to trends, discerned the consequences of those trends, advocated for change, used creativity, innovation, and design thinking, as they pushed forward and aligned, people, process and plans, with a desired purpose in mind. The Future We Framework developed by Jonathan Nalder, provides an overview and metaframework, for the development of future literacies and skills. Futures literacy requires creativity, community thinking skills, project delivery, and storytelling skills. Future literacy requires the exercise, of requisite variety leadership behaviors. As you think into the future, what will your story be? How will the world of nursing informatics be different, based on your contributions and leadership influence? What do you want to be known for in the world of nursing informatics? Share your thoughts and ideas and reactions in the discussion forum. Specifically, how do you practice foresight leadership in your day to day activities? What steps might you take to increase awareness in your organization about the importance and value of foresight leadership? What stops you from being more foresighted? What can you do to increase your knowledge skills and abilities related to foresight leadership? If you want to go deeper I have provided some references and resources for you to explore. The book by Riel Miller may be a particular interest, Transforming the future: Anticipation in the 21st century. For a more philosophical exploration, you will enjoy the work of Jennifer Gidley, Global Knowledge Futures articulating the emergence of a new meta level field in the integral review transdisciplinary and transcultural journal for a new thought. There are also some additional references and resources to explore. Quiz time enables you to take your mastery and knowledge from this module into the future. This concludes course number three in the Nursing Informatics Leadership specialization. Best wishes as you continue and progress to the fourth course in the specialization where you can apply your leadership skill set to Teaching and Learning Informatics.
