page numbers from Strategy: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management, Volume 2, David Faulkner
p.115 What was required was not the application of a new formula for planning but rather a new way of thinking.
p.116 Most executives do not like to face alternatives. They yearn for some kind of "definiteness" when
dealing with the uncertainty that is the business environment
p.117 scenarios must come alive in... the manager's microcosm where choices are played out and judgment
exercised.
p.117 Scenarios... Their purpose is to gather and transform information of strategic significance
into fresh perceptions.
p.117 Scenario analysis demands first that managers understand the forces driving their business
systems rather than rely on forecasts or alternatives (that is, someone else's understanding and judgment crystallized
in a figure that then becomes a substitute for thinking)... Scenarios must help decision makers develop their own
feel for the nature of the system, the forces at work within it, the uncertainties that underlie the alternative scenarios,
and the concepts useful for interpreting key data.
p.129 surprises in the business environment almost never emerge without warning.
p.131-132 As Roberta Wohlstetter points out, "To discriminate significant sounds against this background
of noise, one has to be listening for something or for one of several things... One needs not only an ear but a variety
of hypotheses that guide observation" (emphasis added).
p.132 Problems resulted from a crisis of perception rather than from poor strategic reasoning.
