Summary
This is nowadays my preferred approach for strategic planning. Scenarios shake the mental maps of those who develop them by inventing stories about what cannot be known - the future.
Scenario Workshops - a Tool for Challenging Collective Mental Maps
As originally published in the Change Management Toolbook by Holger Nauheimer
There are an indefinite number of stories about the future, our purpose is to tell those that matter. (Lawrence Wilkinson)
What are Scenarios?
Scenarios are specially constructed stories about the future. Every scenario represents a different but plausible world. The objective of scenario planning is to show how different forces can manipulate the future towards opposite directions. Scenarios enrich our mental maps and increase the number of options to act on coming events.
A complexity reduction of systems, based on secure information, is a typical outcome of a scenario planning exercise. A workshop therefore cannot substitute a longer process of information gathering. However, scenario workshops do utilize the collective consciousness of a large group of different stakeholders. The higher the diversity, the better the results of the workshop.
Scenarios have been used for 30 years in different sectors. The famous scenario group of Shell Oil anticipated the rise of crude oil prices in 1973, thus enabling the company to be the first to react to the changing conditions. The Austrian-based insurance company Erste Allgemeine Versicherung foresaw the fall of the Iron Curtain and strategically planned its expansion into the countries of the former Eastern block.
There is no blueprint approach for a scenario workshop. However, it has been shown that a series of steps can bring good results in a sh ...