Prospective methods are both a critical step in strategy development, and the most creative. Because we are exploring the future, the rules of the game as we know them today don't apply, and we are able to create images of potential futures in which we can test our strategy, ask 'what if' questions, and take risks without having to live with the consequences. But ... while it is lovely to play around in the future, the most important part of using prospective methods is using the output to strengthen our decision making today. Any prospective method that does not include a step that develops an action plan for the present should be treated with caution.
Visioning
Visioning is a well-known prospective technique, often used in community based futures work because it is a highly participatory approach. See, for example, work done by the MAPP - Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships - a community-wide strategic planning tool for improving community health. But, as Wendy Schultz writes: "Currently the term is in danger of becoming clichéd, hackneyed, and over-used to meaninglessness: in an age of transition, vision is desperately sought but seems so elusive that the seeking itself is often ridiculed".
Visioning taps into the Upper Left quadrant in that it surfaces the hopes, fears and beliefs of individuals about the future. Visioning seeks to answer questions such as "what sort of future do we want", whereas scenario planning explores questions such as "what might happen in the future?". Visions can be very personal, and underpin preferable futures - this is the future I want to happen - whereas scenarios deal with probable futures. With both methods, linking the vision of the future to action today is a critical step.
In planning terms, people often get vision and mission confused. A vision is where an organisation sees itself in the future; it is aspirational, and may never be achieved fully. But it continues to provide a future point of reference that can be used to inform decisions about the mission, which is primarily about what an organisation does in the present or short term future. In planning exercises, people often sit around and brainstorm questions like 'what is our vision?". While this might come up with useful outcomes, like any exercise, will probably come up with better outcomes if a structured and systematic approach is used.
 Scenario Planning
If you type 'scenario planning' into google, you get about 41,800,000 hits. But, as with most things, quantity is not equivalent to quality. I've listed below some of the books and websites I have found useful, but you will find plenty of others. There are many consultants and companies out there which offer scenario planning services and you need to take care to ensure you get a practitioner who is committed to the method, rather than using it as a commercial tool.
Richard Slaughter (Futures Beyond Dystopia (2004), pp 103-104) has suggested that, from an integral perspective, scenarios focus too much on 'out there' (right hand quadrants) at the expense of 'in here' (particularly the upper left quadrant). This results in a focus on empirical elements at the expense of non-empirical factors, and the lack of a structured approach to critique current social reality since the assumptions underpinning that reality are not questioned. And, if not carefully done, the exploration of alternative futures can be done in ways that bears little resemblance to reality, and can't be linked back to the strategic decisions that need to be made today.
This linking back is a critical element of scenario work and one that is often neglected. One of the dangers of scenario work is that the scenarios themselves will be treated as the end product when they are, in fact, the beginning of the real work of strategy development. We risk ad hoc, second rate outcomes that cannot be used by an organisation if the process does not include this stage of overtly linking with strategic decision-making. And, we risk responses like "well, we've tried scenarios once, and they don't work" - which is what one deputy vice-chancellor said to me when I indicated we were thinking about using scenario planning.
Notwithstanding these warnings, scenarios done well are challenging and creative, they can expose participants to information and new ways of thinking about issues, identify blindspots and shift thinking beyond the conventional. But, the bottom line is, they are a tool, not an outcome.
Hardin Tibbs has written a paper: Making the Future Visible: Psychology, Scenarios and Strategy, which is a must-read paper for anyone interested in using scenario planning. Tibbs writes about the future as a strategic landscape and uses this graphic to explain it (reproduced with the author's permission).
The "star" in Hardin's image is the long term guiding purpose for an organisation, the reason why organisations exist, and the pull of the future that keeps us going when the chessboard gets difficult to navigate. The chessboard is the land of scenarios, where we develop strategies to move us closer to the star. The key in futures work is to clearly define your star, and keep your eye on that as you move through the chessboard of day-to-day life.
Scenario Planning Steps
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This graphic shows the five basic steps involved in scenario planning. While the exact detail will probably vary from practitioner to practitioner, the basic steps in a scenario planning exercise are:
- Stage 1: determine a focal issue or critical decision to 'anchor' the process,
- Stage 2: identify and analyse the internal and external driving forces after the decision (these drivers are usually categorised into 'predetermined elements', those which we have a good idea about how they will play out over time - for example, demographics, and 'critical uncertainties', those which we have no real understanding of how they will develop into the future),
- Stage 3: build scenarios (using inductive or deductive approaches),
- Stage 4: identify robust potential strategic options and implications, and determine strategic options, and
- Stage 5: identify drivers and other issues that need to be monitored over time (these are often called 'early warning signals' - to see whether something identified in a scenairo is 'coming true' or is less likely to happen). This last step is often neglected, but it is critical in terms of embedding strategic thinking in the organisation.
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This graphic shows the different types of scenarios that can be developed. This classification is adapted from the work of Ged Davis, Scenarios as a Tool for the 21st Century, Shell International, 2002.
Inductive scenarios emerge from discussion and exploration of drivers and trends, while deductive scenarios choose two or more of those drivers to structure scenario worlds. Incremental scenarios are similar to the official future - the one written in our strategic plans - but different enough to move the organisation in a different direction, while normative scenarios are the realm of visioning - these are the futures that we believe 'should' happen.
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Books on Scenario Planning
Liam Fahey and Robert Randall, Learning from the Future, Competitive Foresight Scenarios, New York: Wiley, 1997.
Mats Lindgren, Hans Bandhold, Bruce Pilbeam, Scenario Planning: The Link Between Future and Strategy¸ Palgrave: Macmillan, 2003.
Gill Ringland, Scenario Planning, Managing for the Future, John Wiley and Sons, 1998.
And another: Scenarios in Business and Scenarios in Public Policy, both published by John Wiley and Sons, 2002.
Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View, New York: Doubleday, 1991. (This was the book that introduced me to the futures field before I knew what it was. I heard a presentation from futurist Suzanne Haydon at an ATEM Conference in Perth in 1997; she mentioned this book and off I went and bought it. It is a bit of a classic and well worth reading.)
And another: Inevitable Surprises: Thinking Ahead in Times of Uncertainty, New York: Gotham Books, 2003.
And another: The Sixth Sense, also published by John Wiley and Sons, 2002.
GBN (Global Business Network) has produced a scenario planning guide for non-profit organisations titled The Art of Scenario Thinking which is an excellent reference guide.
Good Websites on Scenario Planning
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