Strategy Survival Guide

When building scenarios, the focus of interest needs to be agreed, the change drivers identified and the key
uncertainties mapped to determine the critical planning area for scenario development – the area of
uncertain, important change drivers. The dynamics between these change drivers and how they play off
each other are the starting point for developing different possible futures. For scenarios to be effective they
need to plausible and compelling (as opposed to being implausible or obvious), as well as being stretching –
taking their intended audience into what can be 'uncomfortable’ territory. There is a risk or even likelihood
that audiences may 'pull back’ from such scenarios, for a number of reasons:
• People are not skilled at thinking about the future and therefore may find it difficult to understand
where the scenarios have come from
• Scenarios invite people to lay bare their assumptions
• Scenario thinking removes the rules and structures of today, which makes some people defensive.
• Scenarios invite people to explore what might happen, and people want to control what will happen
• Understanding scenarios (the output) relies on understanding drivers and uncertainties (the input)
and many people do not have a detailed understanding of the current situation.
For effective scenario generation therefore it is important to know well the intended use and audience for the
scenarios. As far as possible, the audience should be used for developing the scenarios and testing and
verifying the plausibility and areas of comfort or discomfort in each scenario.
Scenario Development - process
There are a number of factors which will affect the design of the scenario process. For example: is there one
preferred or multiple explorative futures?
• The Normative method involves defining a preferred vision of the future and outlining different
pathways from the goal to the present.
• The Explorative method meanwhile involves defining drivers, assessing their importance and
outlining the scenarios.
Another important factor in the design process is whether new or contextualised scenarios are the goal. It is
time consuming to generate scenarios from scratch. It can be more effective therefore to make use of
existing generic scenarios, already developed and tested. Examples include the DTI scenarios produced for
their 'futures lab’ (futurefocus@dti) and the scenarios developed by Shell (see references). There are also
many other 'off-the-shelf’ scenarios.
A further factor for consideration is the extent of consultation that is desired and indeed possible. It may be
decided to present stakeholders with the finished scenario. This is swift but it can be hard for stakeholders to
engage with scenarios if they were not involved in their development. It is better if stakeholders can
participate in building the scenarios. This can be time-consuming but if well managed it is possible to move
from the first stage identification of raw drivers to final scenario generation within a couple of weeks (one of
the hardest tasks being identification of key individuals for the process).
Typical steps in scenario generation
1. Assemble the scenario team
• The core team will be responsible for project and workshop management, providing sponsoring
departments’ points of view and internal communications.
• Experienced scenario-planners should also form part of the team - to lead the process and ensure
clarity about the focus of interest.
2. Identify drivers of change
• It is often best to use workshops to do this. You should determine the 'mix’ of stakeholder groups
and size and number of workshops required (suggested bare minimum: 10 people, one half day
workshop).
• Ensure participants understand purpose, format and outputs from the workshop (and have good prebriefing
materials).
• Brainstorm on drivers of change: compiling an unfiltered list; disposing of obviously invalid drivers
and sorting and categorising the list.
Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Skills
Page 159