Most of us give at least some thought to how our future will differ from today, but for some of us, such thoughts can lead to fear and even helplessness, resulting in inaction. Inaction appears to be more likely when we believe we have no ability to forecast or influence future events. Thus, having methods to predict future changes and shape future events is essential.

Just as having insight into the future can be beneficial for individuals, the same is true for companies, organizations, and professions. For the veterinary profession, for example, insight into the future of the student debt crisis could help stakeholders distribute resources where they would have the greatest impact. Enhanced awareness of new health-care technologies could help veterinarians better position themselves to adopt the ones that can help us—and avoid the ones that could hurt. And, awareness of future changes in health-care needs for animals could give us the power to make better business decisions.

Foresight is the academic study of how humans can successfully plan for the future. The value of foresight to the veterinary profession is that it encourages systematic exploration of potential changes to the profession and possible consequences of those changes. Futurists use well-established methods to understand history, gather information on the present state, identify obvious and not-so-obvious trends, and develop possible, plausible, and preferred scenarios for the future. The objective is not to predict an exact future but to identify possibilities so that decisions can be made that will make a preferred future more likely or an undesirable future less so. Foresight exercises help organizations identify possible events, such as new technologies, and predict the impact these events might have on future plans. Richard Lum defined the study of foresight simply as “an insight into how and why the future will be different from today.”¹

Because it can be so difficult to imagine or predict the various things that will impact the future, many of us simply assume that, absent any major upheavals, the future will merely be an extension of the present. This is called the baseline future, and organizations can be lulled into believing that this is their one and only future. By better understanding change, however, organizations can begin to investigate other potential futures that may be more beneficial to them. It appears, however, that many leaders and administrators do not know how powerful the tools of foresight can be in helping organizations plan appropriately for their future.

Frequently, there are barriers in place that maintain the status quo and inhibit change. Foresight exercises examine the underlying structure of these barriers to determine whether they can or should be broken down. For example, an organization may inhibit innovation by requiring that all new projects have a clear path to generate sufficient revenues to offset their costs. By examining the reasons for this policy and the potential future consequences of it, the organization can better decide whether this particular barrier to new projects should be modified or removed.

Working with an organization dedicated to understanding change, a futurist might use a tool that provides better anticipation of and deeper insight into the forces promoting or preventing change. One such tool involves a model called the Futures Triangle,² which maps the past, present, and future to improve understanding of where an organization has come from and where it might be going. This tool is particularly useful for organizations that have a substantial past but that also face potentially disruptive future events.

The Futures Triangle model asks participants in a futures workshop to reflect on the weight of the past (eg, conscious or unconscious policies that shaped the current state of the organization), the push of the present (eg, current trends and drivers pushing the organization, whether it likes it or not, into the future), and the pull of the future (eg, visions of how the future could be different). By visualizing these 3 forces (weight of the past, push of the present, and pull of the future), the Futures Triangle helps the organization develop a better understanding of its plausible futures. Then the organization can determine which of those plausible futures it wishes to strive toward and how to structure the organization to work toward that future.

The idea of applying foresight to the veterinary profession is not a new one. In 1988, for example, the Pew Foundation released its report on “Future Directions for Veterinary Medicine,”³ and in 2007, the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges published results of a study⁴ on veterinary education that included the foresight technique of scenario planning. Unfortunately, the 10 key recommendations from this report have not been fully achieved, but whether this was because of a lack of leadership, a shift in the overall goals, or substantial societal changes is not clear. Further, for the veterinary profession to meet the challenges of the coming decades, it is not clear what sort of critical mass of veterinarians thinking about the future in a systematic way and leaders willing to endorse change is needed.

Of course, foresight is not confined to North America. In 2015, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and British Veterinary Association released a report⁵ outlining 6 major themes for the future of the veterinary profession. Many of those themes were the same as themes identified by the North American Veterinary Medical Education Consortium in its 2011 report⁶ on veterinary medical education in the 21st century. A subsequent survey⁷ showed broad support for many of the recommendations in that report and a willingness to accelerate implementation but only isolated progress toward implementation of recommendations that required coordination among colleges of veterinary medicine and other stakeholders.

Despite the lack of progress associated with previous attempts, we continue to believe that foresight offers the veterinary profession the potential to find solutions to problems that plague the profession. Resistance to change is wasted energy. Resources should be spent on defining and determining our preferred future and developing the resilience and leadership to achieve it.

Of course, there are obstacles to overcome if foresight is going to help the profession. The first challenge is to develop the private practice, academic, association, and industry leadership needed to sustain change. The second challenge is to reward innovation within industry and academia. The veterinary profession is deeply rooted in tradition; therefore, change can sometimes be viewed with suspicion. Innovators should be welcomed, not ostracized. A final challenge is convincing veterinarians to consider how foresight can improve the future for both individuals and the veterinary profession as a whole.

From 1910 through 1930, the veterinary profession went through a time of great upheaval as automobiles displaced horses as the primary means of transportation, and equine veterinarians were forced to adapt. What will happen if the veterinary profession faces a similar upheaval in the coming years? We need to prepare for such an eventuality by examining the forces shaping the veterinary profession now and in the future. Using foresight tools to identify plausible futures and identify means to work toward preferred futures can help the profession take control.

Our future is determined by our actions, the actions of others, and how we react to those actions. There are many possible futures, and our reactions can be used to increase the likelihood of preferred futures. But, we must be able to anticipate events and develop guiding principles for how we want our future to unfold. Only after thoroughly understanding the past and present can scenarios be developed that can help the veterinary profession work through to the best possible future.