Scenario Workshops

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 short time. When applied to visioning, elements from future search can be included as well. The individual steps can be organized in different ways, of which one is described in the following example. This example originates from a two and a half days workshop which was conducted by the Deutsche Gesellschaft fÑŒr Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) on the future of environmental policy advice to developing countries.

Step 1: Identification of influence factors

This is the base on which the rest on the work is conducted. Scenarios are related to people's current reality of , and describe and reorganize what they have in mind. The information- gathering starts with a brainstorming of all the factors which can shape the question under consideration. In our example, about 50 influence factors were grouped into

* economic-political framework conditions

* science and technology

* new models of society

* future of development cooperation

* public interest in environmental policy

In this first attempt, it is of no concern whether these factors are internal or external, opportunities or threats. Sorting takes place in the next phase.

Step 2: Questions to an oracle

In this part, workshop participants identify information gaps, and brainstorm questions they would like to ask an oracle (because they would like to know what they don't know). These questions are based on the influence factors identified in the first step. In our example, 30 questions were drawn up, such as

* "What will be the importance of national governments?"