Assessment scheme v2 · as of 30 July 2026
Method
This page discloses the procedure in full: all twelve questions with every answer level and its value, the ten disorder patterns, the type logic and the evaluation. Anyone who would rather not fill in the check can arrive at the finding here by hand.
Two layers
The procedure evaluates on two levels. Layer 1 is a maturity score: every question has an ordered ladder of five rungs, 0 to 4. Layer 2 is a disorder pattern: eleven answers additionally carry a marker which does not enter the arithmetic but produces a second, named finding.
The reason for the split: a score says how far along an organisation is. It does not say what is missing. Two organisations with an identical result can be ill in entirely different ways — one simply has not started, the other actively turns things away. Only the second layer makes that difference visible.
Scoring
| Level | Range | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Question | 0 – 4 | 0 = lowest, 4 = highest maturity |
| Dimension | 0 – 8 | two questions per dimension |
| Chain ① – ⑤ | 0 – 40 | excluding culture |
| Culture | 0 – 8 | reported separately |
| Total | 0 – 48 | chain and culture |
A dimension counts as future-capable from 5 out of 8. The maturity level follows from the chain score: Level 1 reactive (0 – 9), Level 2 attentive (10 – 19), Level 3 systematic (20 – 29), Level 4 anticipatory (30 – 40).
Culture is deliberately kept out of the chain score. It acts on every link of the chain but is not itself a link — including it would either dilute the score or count it twice.
Three findings
- Bottleneck — the weakest dimension. That is where any improvement pays most.
- Break point — the largest drop between two consecutive links of the chain, from two points onwards. It shows where something is built that never arrives at the back.
- Disorder pattern — the markers that were set and their combinations.
Types
The front of the chain ① ② ③ gives Sight, the back ④ ⑤ gives Effectiveness. Both are normalised to 0 – 100 per cent; the threshold sits at 50 per cent. If a value is closer than eight percentage points to that threshold, the result is flagged as borderline.
| Effectiveness low | Effectiveness high | |
|---|---|---|
| Sight high | The Observer | The Vigilant |
| Sight low | The Surprised | The Driven |
The Aimless overrides the quadrant result when the chain score is below 14 and at least two of the markers No Horizon, Faith in Continuity and Boardroom Impulse are set.
The four quadrants describe directions. What the Aimless lacks is not the right idea about the future but any idea at all — hence no fifth field in the grid, but a state below it.
The ten disorder patterns
Ten distinguishable disorders across eleven marker positions: Project Island can be set in question 3 and in question 7. Markers do not change the score.
| Disorder | Question | Short finding |
|---|---|---|
| Boardroom Impulse | 1 | The future gets attention whenever someone at the top grows uneasy. What triggered it stays unknown — and therefore cannot be repeated. |
| Project Island | 3, 7 | Foresight exists, but only locally and only for a while. It ends with the project and never reaches the organisation. |
| No Horizon | 4 | No agreed time frame exists. Without a horizon, any statement about the future is beyond contradiction — and worthless. |
| Active Dismissal | 5 | Signals that do not fit are not missed, they are turned away. That is not a gap in knowledge, it is a stance. |
| Faith in Continuity | 6 | The future counts as an extension of the present. The riskiest assumption of all, because it is never said out loud. |
| Power Budgeting | 8 | Resources follow influence, not argument. Foresight cannot win here, however good it is. |
| Powerlessness | 9 | You see it coming and can do nothing. The most expensive form: the knowledge is already paid for and never redeemed. |
| Decree | 10 | Room for manoeuvre appears by decree from above rather than being built. It disappears just as fast. |
| Attrition | 11 | Dissent is permitted and leads nowhere. It looks more open than suppression and wears people down just as reliably. |
| Blame | 12 | Wrong expectations get a name attached. After that, nobody voices any. |
Combinations with a finding of their own
- Denial (Active Dismissal + Faith in Continuity) — the most dangerous pairing: there is no image of the future, and the signals that would force one are turned away.
- Knowledge without Access (Powerlessness + Power Budgeting) — the capability is there; it never reaches the resources. No method helps here, only a mandate.
- Learning Block (Blame + Attrition) — the organisation cannot learn from its errors, because both routes — dissent and hindsight — carry a cost.
- Double Island (Project Island in question 3 and 7) — foresight has been outsourced entirely into the project world; the organisation as a whole has none.
The twelve questions in full
⚑ marks an answer that additionally sets a marker. The order of the rungs is the scoring; it is deliberately hidden inside the check so that the answer does not follow the score.
① Foresight Practice
Question 1 — What place does thinking about the future have in your day-to-day work?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | It does not happen unless an event forces it. | |
| 1 | Ad hoc, whenever leadership senses urgency — where the impulse came from is usually unclear. | ⚑ Boardroom Impulse |
| 2 | Once a year, as part of the planning cycle. | |
| 3 | There are recurring sessions dedicated to the future and nothing else. | |
| 4 | Established formats with their own time budget and several functions involved — even when operations are on fire. |
Question 2 — Who owns the long view in your organisation?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | No one in particular. | |
| 1 | The executive team, on the side. | |
| 2 | A named person or role — but with no resources of their own. | |
| 3 | A named role with budget, mandate and direct access to leadership. | |
| 4 | A dedicated foresight unit, reporting into strategy management. |
② Scanning
Question 3 — Where does the information your strategy rests on come from?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | It is generated inside projects, and nowhere else. | ⚑ Project Island |
| 1 | From our own market: customers, competitors, trade press. | |
| 2 | Also from adjacent industries and from technology development. | |
| 3 | Systematically from fields outside our industry as well — politics, society, science. | |
| 4 | Deliberately from the margins: niches, outsiders, dissenters — with someone named as responsible. |
Question 4 — How far out does the horizon reach that you seriously talk about?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Unclear — never agreed. | ⚑ No Horizon |
| 1 | To the end of the current financial year. | |
| 2 | Three to five years, within mid-term planning. | |
| 3 | Beyond five years, taken up as a topic of its own at least once a year. | |
| 4 | Several horizons in parallel — near-term planning and long-range images of the future kept apart, and both binding. |
③ Sensemaking
Question 5 — What happens to information that does not fit the picture?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | It is actively ignored. | ⚑ Active Dismissal |
| 1 | It fades away — there is nowhere for it to go. | |
| 2 | Individuals raise it when the moment happens to allow it. | |
| 3 | There is a recurring session where such signals are collected and discussed. | |
| 4 | Contradictory signals are deliberately sought out and recorded — especially the uncomfortable ones. |
Question 6 — What images of the future do you work with?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | None we could name — the hope is that things carry on as they are. | ⚑ Faith in Continuity |
| 1 | A plan that extrapolates today. | |
| 2 | Variants of one and the same future: best case, base case, worst case. | |
| 3 | Several scenarios that differ qualitatively. | |
| 4 | Scenarios that structurally contradict each other — and for each one we know the early signs that it is arriving. |
④ Decision Integration
Question 7 — What part do these images of the future play in decisions?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | None. Decisions run on numbers and experience. | |
| 1 | They illustrate a decision that has essentially already been made. | |
| 2 | Only inside projects, never for the company as a whole. | ⚑ Project Island |
| 3 | Major investments are tested against several futures. | |
| 4 | No strategic decision without asking which futures it holds up in — and which it does not. |
Question 8 — How does the long view show up in the way you allocate resources?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Budgets are settled politically, by influence; the long view comes second to that. | ⚑ Power Budgeting |
| 1 | It does not — resources follow the running business. | |
| 2 | Individual initiatives get funded when there is room. | |
| 3 | There is a standing budget for work beyond today’s business. | |
| 4 | A deliberate split across horizons — core, adjacent, new — reviewed regularly. |
⑤ Action
Question 9 — What happens once a development is recognised as significant?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | It is noted. | |
| 1 | Helplessness — the awareness is there, the levers to act on it are not. | ⚑ Powerlessness |
| 2 | It is monitored and revisited now and then. | |
| 3 | It leads to a pre-project or an experiment. | |
| 4 | It leads to a deliberate decision — act, keep the option open, or drop it — with a date to review. |
Question 10 — What room for manoeuvre have you deliberately kept open?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | None we could name. | |
| 1 | Only whatever a spontaneous top-down call creates. | ⚑ Decree |
| 2 | A few, mostly arrived at by accident. | |
| 3 | Several built on purpose: stakes, partnerships, advance development. | |
| 4 | A tended portfolio of options, reviewed regularly and pruned as well. |
Culture
Question 11 — What happens when someone contradicts leadership with good reasons?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | It practically never happens. | |
| 1 | It happens, but it is uncomfortable. | |
| 2 | It turns into political discussion without end. | ⚑ Attrition |
| 3 | It is heard and taken seriously. | |
| 4 | It is required — there are formats where dissent is explicitly someone’s job. |
Question 12 — How do you handle expectations that turned out to be wrong?
| Value | Answer | Marker |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | They are pinned on someone as a mistake. | ⚑ Blame |
| 1 | Nobody mentions them afterwards. | |
| 2 | They are remembered, but nothing follows from them. | |
| 3 | We look back and learn from them. | |
| 4 | We write expectations down in advance and review them systematically. |
Notes on the order
Three rungs sit lower than one might first assume. They are placed there on purpose:
- Question 5: active ignoring sits below fading away. Fading away is neglect; ignoring is a decision — and the second is harder to cure.
- Question 8: power budgeting sits below “resources follow the running business”, because the latter at least follows a logic that can be traced and therefore challenged. Political allocation does not.
- Question 12: blame sits below silence, because its consequence is worse: anyone held liable for a wrong expectation will voice none in future. That dries out the entire chain from the back.
Conversely, exactly one of the answers belongs at the top: the dedicated foresight unit in question 2. What matters there is the reporting line into strategy management — a free-standing foresight unit without it would be the classic observer trap and would not sit on level 4.
Limits of the procedure
The check is a self-assessment. It measures what the person answering assumes about their organisation — not the organisation. Two people from the same company can arrive at different findings; that divergence is often the more interesting result.
It replaces neither a diagnosis nor advice. It names a place where a closer look is worth the effort.