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Signals of Change for Swire Group

An introduction to Horizon Scanning

At Swire Group's annual sustainable development workshop, we ran a workshop to introduce people from across the group's property, shipping, food and automotive businesses to futures thinking. This short training program included distinguishing signals of change from merely news, exploring the implications of trends emerging today, and identifying strategic risks and opportunities.

Here's the feedback we received from Lara Tyrell, Group Sustainable Business Manager:

"It's been an inspiration for me personally and for my colleagues at Swire working with Anna. Anna is someone who truly looks with a telescope into the future, but is able to bring back messages that can be used by businesses to begin their transitions now. Anna recently put together a 60 minute crash course workshop for a diverse group of 80 sustainability experts from across the Swire group to introduce them to the idea of weak signals and using these signals to inform future strategies and sustainability thinking. Anna collaborated closely with us to understand our needs and desire outcome from the session. She listened carefully, made necessary adjustments but also pushed us to think boldly. Anna then delivered this session near the start of our Swire Sustainability Workshop to help open our delegates minds to possibilities for the rest of the day. With her well prepared materials, she guided 10 table facilitators with varying levels of experience to be able to confidently support her, and despite the large size of the group she was a confident facilitator: in control, balancing energy, participation and timing expertly. The session was well delivered and easily understood by all our delegates, even those with no future experience. The session was very engaging, and sparked lots of interesting discussions both on the day and after the event. Many of our colleagues are keen to take the signal spotting concept forward into their own strategy work which was a fantastic result. We have had very good feedback on Anna's session. I would not hesitate to recommend Anna's services to anyone or any organisation looking to get more future fit! I look forward to working with her again on future projects."