Strategic Foresight Advisor – IPSA12

Background

Instructions to Applicants: Click on the “Apply now“ button. Input your information in the appropriate Sections: personal information, language proficiency, education, resume and motivation. Upon completion of the first page, please hit “submit application” tab at the end of the page. Please ensure that CV or P11 and the Cover letter are combined in one file.

The following documents shall be required from the applicants:

Personal CV or P11, indicating all past positions held and their main underlying functions, their durations (month/year), the qualifications, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the Candidate, and at least three (3) the most recent professional references of previous supervisors. References may also include peers.

A cover letter (maximum length: 1 page) indicating why the candidate considers him-/herself to be suitable for the position.

Managers may ask (ad hoc) for any other materials relevant to pre-assessing the relevance of their experience, such as reports, presentations, publications, campaigns or other materials.

Office/Unit/Project Description

UNDP works with countries to expand people’s choices for a fairer, sustainable future.  UNDP’s Strategic Plan 2022-25 aims to build a more agile, anticipatory UNDP that embraces complexity, actively manages risk, continually adapts and seeks to learn alongside delivering results.   The Strategy and Futures (S&F) Team in the Executive Office supports the UNDP Administrator in building a more agile, anticipatory UNDP, alert to the trends and changes of an uncertain world and ready to respond to many different futures.

The S&F Team is responsible for two pillars of work: strategy and futures. Both pillars intersect and help inform each other. The strategy pillar is responsible for shepherding the Strategic Plan and for providing direction to the corporate systems that underpin our planning and reporting. This includes developing the organization’s strategic plans and driving the midterm review of the plans. The futures pillar’s focus is to connect, cohere and amplify the various futures efforts across UNDP, linking people and resources of knowledge and experience into and to establish a futures ecosystem, enabling UNDP to achieve stronger development impact.

The S&F Team having oriented UNDP’s Strategic Plan 2022-25 around a vision of a more future-smart and anticipatory UNDP, will work closely with all bureaus, regional and country offices to connect and amplify the various foresight initiatives already underway across the organisation, building a coherent futures ecosystem.  Its goal: to infuse a futures perspective throughout UNDP’s work that translates into a stronger decision-making and impact, as countries recognize the value of programmes that can anticipate and adapt to change, helping them to confidently navigate an uncertain future.

Institutional Arrangement

The Strategic Foresight Advisor will be part of the UNDP Executive Office Strategy & Futures Team and report to the Futures Lead.  She/he will be required to work closely with the S&F Team, other units in the Executive Office and the broader organization.

Duties and Responsibilities

Scope of Work 

The Strategic Foresight Advisor will play an integral part in the design of processes, methodologies and products for futures thinking across UNDP in support of the S&F Team’s following priorities that reflect the Strategic Foresight Advisor’s scope of work:

1. designing a trends and signals system for the organization to better capture and use trends, signals and other data, to translate them into insights actionable intelligence to inform high-level decision-making;
2. the development of a UNDP signals report, particularly those signals that may have the greatest potential impact on development;
3. support specific Strategic Plan goals to understand how global trends and alternative scenarios may impact the pathways to reaching them, and consider their implications for decisions now;
4. the conceptualization and carrying out of ‘strategy check-ins’ – a review of the Strategic Plan’s progress with leadership in light of emerging global trends and future scenarios.
5. establish a UNDP futures network connecting the varied people and initiatives already working on futures across UNDP and the knowledge and experience on futures and foresight for Country Offices and other teams to consult and apply, including practical case studies on using foresight in UNDP’s work.