Frequently asked questions

To better understand my approach to strategy design, here’s a quick guide based on frequently asked questions.

Why is good strategy and strategic foresight essential for modern businesses?

Organisations operate under conditions that are constantly changing. The modern business environment is highly-competitive, volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Designing strategy that delivers results under these conditions is incredibly difficult if you are not able to properly manage this kind of complex uncertainty. Strategic foresight is a cross-disciplinary application system which not only helps organisations logically process and understand contextual change, but gives them the capability to gain the insights needed to greatly improve their competitive advantage.

What strategic foresight services do you offer?

I offer organisations services in four primary categories:

  • Trends scanning - impactful, one-hour presentations that focuses on signals of change and the opportunities and risks that they offer business leaders.

  • Scenario planning - developing a deeper understanding of how current uncertainties may unfold into the future and what strategic options these futures presents the organisation.

  • Strategy facilitation workshops - 2 / 3 day strategy workshops to aimed at understanding where the strategic opportunity or risk may be and designing an appropriate approach to exploit or resolve it.

  • Strategy implementation - structuring the longer-term implementation of the strategy to enhance organisational learning and agility. I work in partnership with organisations over a 6- to 12-month period.

Who do you work with?

I work in partnership with senior product managers, CMOs, CEOs, Innovation managers, Sustainability specialists and HR Directors in support of the work that they do within organisations.

As an inside / outside strategic foresight service provider I am able to greatly amplify their affectiveness within organisations by offering an alternative perspective as well as a wide-range of tools and frameworks that deliver measurable results.

In other cases, I work with directly with executive teams as a change agent on dedicated transformational programs over extended periods of time. My role is to enhance an organisations’s forward-orientation and future-fit capabilities.

  • Horizon scanning

  • Scenarios

  • Systems thinking (CLD, Cybernetics)

  • Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)

  • All quadrants | All layers (AQAL)

  • Balanced scorecard

  • Journey mapping

  • Customer-based corporate valuation frameworks

  • Idealised design

  • Cross-impact analysis

What tools do you make use of?

What is the outcome of strategic foresight work?

Companies that are committed to using strategic foresight are:

  • Better positioned to take advantage of emerging opportunities.

  • Design and implement strategy more effectively, saving time and money.

  • Deal better with change resulting in sustained earnings growth.

  • Are more innovative, building stronger brands with the right customers generating higher margins and better customer LTV.

  • Are more equipped to find and solve the right problems, increasing productivity and ROI.

How do you work with clients?

I work with clients primarily in three different ways:

  1. I support internal strategy professionals who are focused on strategy, business intelligence, marketing and innovation with strategic foresight services that includes horizon scanning and trend research and advisory on specific strategy related challenges.

  2. I work on one-off projects with clients; either facilitating strategy workshops or conducting a scenarios exercise.

  3. I enhance an organisations overall capacity to be more innovative and future-orientated by working with leadership over an extended period of time to transform the skills and processes of the group.

“Strategy is not a goal setting exercise that rolls around once a year with great fanfare. It’s an exercise in squarely facing your greatest obstacles and designing the best way to overcome them.”
— Jon Cherry

Hi - I’m Jon Cherry. For the past 20 years I have helped countless teams and organisations in 8 different countries overcome their significant business challenges through the designing of great strategies. 

From blue-chip corporate companies through to innovative technology startups my speciality is in applying an innovative foresight-based approach to complex problem solving. 

I’ve had the privilege of speaking about strategy to audiences of some of South Africa’s leading organisations over the years and regularly provide commentary on business innovation on media platforms like Capetalk / 702 and Moneyweb.