Scenario Development - A Duel between paradigms
Worldview dependent, this duel continues today
I was reading a paper recently about quantitative ‘scenario planning’ (which I now call scenario development), and I shuddered. Not because the paper wasn’t good, but because it seem to eliminate people from the analysis process. It relied on finding a range of existing scenario narratives from which change factors were extracted. These factors were analysed using a specific statistical approach - and Chat GPT - before being reduced to four scenarios (the often assumed ‘right’ number of scenarios for strategy development) which were then discussed by people in the strategic planning process.
If you search for ‘strategic planning’ on this site, you can read my earlier posts about the perils of that form of strategy development. Here people are involved at the end of the process, and not involved in using their imaginations to create possible futures.
There is nothing wrong with this quantitative approach in general. It relies on data as a primary source of information about futures, seemingly in preference to data direct from humans. The reality is, I think, that it saves time for busy executives. And perhaps more importantly, the scenarios were not created on the basis of our interpretations of that data - no challenging of assumptions in an overt way in conversations, and no use of our abilities to use our imaginations to expand and deepen those interpretations and conversations.
I have a qualitative worldview which relies primarily on human input and imagination. Data is not excluded but it’s an input, not the guiding force. The two worldviews have very different assumptions when it comes to research - and scenario development. They can be merged of course in a more mixed methods approach, using both quantitative and qualitative data.
My assumptions and beliefs will surface now. Data from existing scenarios* that draw only on change factors and create futures narratives from data are constrained in terms of finding new ideas and new actions in the present - conversations based on this data is likely to be superficial at best unless people in the room are futures conscious. And since people create our futures by using their imaginations to expand and deepen their conversations about futures, my preference will always be to work with people.
I used existing scenarios for the futures of universities in my PhD and analysed them using a number of criteria to find the most useful ones (and acknowledged my bias), and then categorising their future images by worldview, which I then merged and analysed across worldviews to find new possible futures. I had already identified the assumptions underpinning each worldview and my intent after categorisation was to show that not only did the worldviews share possible futures, it was also possible to merge them in potentially new conversations about futures. You can use existing futures but the aim should be to reframe them into something new, merged as a result of expanding them with our imaginations. Not used to create more of the same which can only be used futures.
Here I was focusing on the output of people in the form of scenario narratives rather than the change factors but like the paper I read, both approaches used existing scenarios with different outcomes. For me, the value of outcomes of scenario processes relies for both approaches on finding new ideas in the present. Working towards a desired future is impossible if you only rethink how we think in the present in your processes.
All of this leads me to think that scenario development is moving further and further away than I thought from Pierre Wack’s desire for mindset shifts to reperceive the present, and what Andrew Curry (2009, p. 119**) comment that scenarios are effective when they have “those moments when a different insight emerges in the room, or a new way of interpreting the world.” That is, a person’s mental model shifts as a result of carefully designed processes that include specific activities to challenge individual and collective mental models. I’m not sure that quantitative approaches, used alone, can achieve this.
*I include AI outputs as data from the present when used in scenario development.
**Curry, A 2009, ‘From foresight to insight: Using scenarios well’, Journal of Futures Studies, vol. 13, no. February, pp. 119–122.