Transformative Scenario Planning: Working Together to Change the Future

摘要

About forty years ago Shell was concerned it faced a turbulent external business environment. It began to develop scenarios of possible futures, recognising that the future is unknowable but resilience in the face of evolving events should provide important competitive advantages. And so it proved to be. The scenario process involved three main steps: first, people need to perceive that the current situation is unstable or unsustainable; second, stories of alternative possible futures need to be produced which encompass so far as possible a reasonable range of the uncertainties faced, without neglecting those possibilities regarded as remote but likely to have serious consequences for the business. This was the essential purpose: to prepare for changes in the external environment outside, or largely outside, what the organisation could influence. This is what Adam Kahane, who worked in Shell's scenario team between 1988 and 1993, terms 'adaptive' scenario planning.