vii Scenario planning is not a tool for making predictions. The future remains as unpredictable as ever.
Rather, it is a tool for better decision making. The test of good scenario planning is not whether the scenario accurately
predicts the future. Rather, the measure of good scenario planning is whether we made a better decision as
a result of having considered the possible scenarios.
viii If we are to influence the future for the better, we need to have some idea of where we may be headed.
viii-ix Today, in an uncertain world woven together by elaborate networks of information,
it is the relationships among things and forces that matter most. Hence this book builds the case for a relational
worldview as a foundation for understanding how to frame coherent views of the future.
ix Scenarios... are simply ways of exploring possibilities.
p.4 The future is not predictable. Nor is it so open that absolutely anything is possible.
The past and the present place conditions and constraints on what is and is not possible.
p.4 strategy should not be based on a calculation for closing the gap between a corporation's single vision
of what it wants to be and a single prediction of what the future environment might force it to be.
p.4 Single-point forecasts are as risky for corporations as singular, all-consuming goals are for individuals.
Because time is real, and the future unpredictable, the challenge of carving a path into the future calls for a different
way of thinking than the old, mechanical methods of strategic planning.
p.5 Fresh thinking about the future calls for alternative scenarios based on new assumptions that differ
from the old... a new paradigm, a new way of looking at something we thought we knew.
p.8-9 I'll speak of the relational worldview. Why relational? Three reasons: First, at the heart of the
difference between the old paradigm and this new worldview is a shift in focus from things and substances to relationships
and structures... The second reason for choosing the term relational to describe this worldview is to highlight its
difference from relativism... The relational worldview features our connectedness, our relatedness... The third reason for
choosing the word relational for this worldview is its timeliness... I see the word relational popping up
in others' writings... Timing is everything... there are many stories for making sense of the past and present, and many stories
for the future.
p.49 In order to understand what learning is all about, it is best to think of it as a
process of trial and error - perpetual... modifications or mutations of behavior that either pay off or don't...
Behaviors that are rewarded by your environment become embedded in your repertoire of tricks. Thus, learning is...
about an ongoing interaction between self and environment... For evolution... experiments are essential to improvement.
You have to try things, and mutate in ways that may be random as well as planned. You have to break the chain of sameness
and come up with something not only different, but - ever so occasionally - better than the current model... experimentation,
mutation, and random modification are essential to the logic of evolutionary learning
p.57-58 Getting smart - whether in education or in marketing - is a matter of learning
what works. Species do it, kids do it, and so must corporations and communities. It is the job of strategic planners
to facilitate this process of evolutionary learning through strategic conversations among many members of a corporation
p.143 Ambiguity lies at the very heart of scenario planning.
p.144 As Michael Proust wrote, "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but [seeing]
with new eyes."
p.145 In order to interpret present meaning, we need to spin out alternative scenarios of future
use. As only a snapshot of the present, today's data is ambiguous. Many scenarios are necessary to interpret the
several possible meanings of these signs.
p.149 By triangulating the values of these two communities [consumers and the businesses that serve them,
but it might as well be two competing entities] with a third corner - what science tells us is physically possible - we can
frame scenarios that tell us not only what might happen, but what ought to happen... Tap into people's values,
find out what they value... over the long term you will have to supply something more sustaining.
p.175-176 The practice of scenario planning is not all that difficult to describe... Once the problem
has been identified, then it takes a group a couple of dozen people to brainstorm a long list of key factors and environmental
forces that might influence the outcome of the focal issue... the group then needs to settle on a small number of
scenario plots... Once the scenario team has settled on two to five basic plots, then the challenge is to return to the long
list of key factors and forces and use that list to give relevant content to the stories... If our community or company faces
a future in which any one of these scenarios could come true, what should we be doing today to prepare?
p.182-183 What do we want? How might we succeed in attaining what we want? What could happen that
would open up opportunities? What dangers are lurking just over the horizon? ...What are people worried about? What
keeps you up nights? If you could ask an oracle just one question about conditions five years from now, what would you most
want to know?
p.184 As soon as sustainability becomes an important criterion for normative
scenarios, planners are thrust into thinking about the web of interrelationships among our economic, social,
and natural systems... the minimum unit of evolutionary survival is neither the individual, nor the species, but species plus
environment.
p.210 Defining health is not easy... we'll do well to see health as ambiguous...
To the old medical care model, health is the absence of disease. To the new relational worldview, health is something positive,
not just lack of disease.
p.217 As becomes clear from even the cursory reviews of the key factors and forces affecting education and
health care, building better futures calls for a systemic perspective - a holistic approach that respects the complex
interrelationships among many players and many factors... Scenario planning offers a way to see
things whole.
p.218 the decision-making procedure used in scenario planning does not rely solely on technical solutions
that are expected to be free of bugs... What seemed like a good idea initially might not seem so when one looks at
the consequences of the consequences... using a range of different scenarios... you greatly reduce the likelihood of unintended
consequences. You are less likely to be blindsided by unanticipated problems.
p.219 scenarios are stories about what might happen.
p.221 information theory defines information as a difference that makes a difference
p.224 If we could only use our imaginations to spin out scenarios of better ways to play.
