Scenario Thinking is an art form, methodology, or discipline that I believe is as important to master as any tool that we have in our toolbox. When we are looking at different alternatives to the future, we use scenarios to paint that picture. I addressed that question with George Wright, the co-author of Scenario Thinking: Practical Approaches to the Future. His response:
George: Yes, the scenarios are descriptions of the future often constructed by management teams. They usually rough out about four scenarios of the future. They are all qualitative. Their absolutely, pictures of the way the future might be. They are casually linked components in the scenarios. For instance, we are not planning scenario for Martians landing from outer space with ray guns and shooting us. The scenario tends to be many more logical steps from now into the future may be 10, 15, 20, 30 years. Hence, the scenarios are portal pen pictures of the future that are plausible to the people who constructed them. People say, “I can see this series of events starting to happen.” You can go out in that way like dominos swarming in one direction or you can go out in a different way. If they are all plausible futures, than they are futures we need to be concerned with, without occurring major investments.
Scenario thinking is an approach that first started out with capture intensive industries like the airlines, the oil industry where major investment has to be made now. It has to work well against a range of futures. That’s the scenario approach, getting these robust decisions that work well no matter what.
Joe: When done correctly you’re actually building a path, and you can see the path developing and heading towards maybe a certain scenario.
George: If you’ve done this scenario thinking and thought about a different range of futures that you say with a path leading to each of our futures. You become sensitive to the early indicators that a particular future is starting to unfold. So for instance if you, say just spotted a new car, say a BMW with three series might be, and you thought of about buying that car, you would be sensitive to different styles of that car on the road, different levels of kits and different wheels, different types of paint work etc. Let’s just say with that scenario you want to construct a scenario and thought about it. You’re sensitive to the early; I called, trigger event in the scenarios starting to happen. So if you thought about the scenario you become sort of ready early to anticipate a future that maybe favorable or unfavorable say to your business.
You can read the entire transcription (or listen to the podcast): Using Scenario Thinking in Change Management
George is currently Professor of Management at Durham Business School, University of Durham, UK. He has consulted and provided management development programs on scenario thinking and decision making with organizations such as Bayer, EADS, Petronas, Scottish Power, Thales, United Utilities, and national and local government in the UK.