Our methodology involves ways to help organisations develop the five key capacities the HFP believes are important in identifying and preparing for future crises: anticipation, adaptation, innovation, collaboration and strategic leadership. Through our work with partner organisations, the HFP is developing a range of tools to assess and strengthen these five capacities.

Anticipation: the capacity to be sensitive to the humanitarian implications of longer-term trends and the ability to develop and adjust organisational strategies to deal with what might be. Anticipatory capacities have to be linked to processes of strategy formulation, leadership and knowledge management.

Adaptation: the capacity to respond to new situations, innovations and changes in the organisation’s environment. In the light of the possibility that future humanitarian crises will be marked by rapid change and intense complexity, the effective humanitarian organisation will have the flexibility and fluidity to adjust accordingly.

Innovation: the capacity to identify and incorporate innovative practices into strategies and operations. The sources of innovations will stem from a wide range of social and natural sciences. The 21st-century humanitarian actor will have to know how to engage in dialogue with sectors not normally associated with humanitarianism, and will have to prioritise and implement innovations, also relating these to collaborative partners.

Collaboration: the sheer dimensions and dynamics of future humanitarian threats, as well as innovative means to deal with them, will require different forms of permanent, temporary and ad hoc collaboration. A greater appreciation of what collaborative networks will look like in the future, in terms of their impact on information sharing, operations and advocacy, is an essential starting point in looking for new approaches to the division of labour.

Strategic leadership: strategic leadership is about achieving a set of objectives that reflect a clear purpose over time, based on abiding goals and values. How to attain this clear purpose is in no small part a key element of the strategic leader’s function, but that function is confounded by the deep uncertainties and complexities that pervade the environment – internal as well as external – in which strategic leadership should take place.