p.13 Scenarios are narratives of alternative environments
in which today's decisions may be played out. They are not predictions. Nor are they strategies. Instead they are
more likely hypotheses of different futures specifically designed to highlight the risks and opportunities involved
in specific strategic issues.
p.14 The key to failure, on the other hand, is
the exclusion of people who are unorthodox, challenging thinkers from inside and outside the organization.
p.23 Studying the way the parts of a system interact can be a powerful
tool for exploring the logic of a scenario... If the scenario team is having a difficult time understanding the interactions
between different forces, it is often useful to have them map out the events, patterns and structure individually and then
together create systems diagrams of how different forces interact.
p.35 a good set of scenarios, scientifically developed, can reliably and predictably change minds...
As Arie de Geus notes, "Planning is about changing minds, not making plans."
p.38 Prior to the 1980s, scenario planning was essentially a guru-led practice. If you wanted to do scenario
planning, you couldn't find a textbook or a set of guidelines for how to do it.
p.40 Workshop after workshop, we find ourselves saying to one another, "It works! The method
is amazingly reliable and replicable!" Without floundering, or making it up as we go along, we arrive at a set of
different scenarios that lead to actionable insights and useful strategic options.
p.41 [Aristotle quoted] the most characteristic function of a man of practical wisdom is to deliberate well:
no one deliberates about things that cannot be other than they are, nor about things that are not directed to some end, an
end that is a good attainable by action.
p.44-45 [Hayden] White interprets Hegel as saying, "The reality that lends itself to narrative representation
is the conflict between desire and the law... Where there is no rule of law, there can be neither a subject nor the kind of
event that lends itself to narrative representation." [JLJ - we can substitute "power relations" or "driving forces" for law.
Hayden White stated in The Content of the Form, that "a genuinely historical account had to display not
only a certain form, namely, the narrative, but also a certain content, namely, a politicosocial order." Hegel insists that
the proper subject of such a record is the state]
p.44 The only way to make sense of this struggle [between law and desire] is to see it as the struggle of
an individual or collective subject who cares about what happens against an indifferent realm of law that doesn't.
p.47 What we've seen in Part One is that scenario planning should
not be dismissed as merely art; nor, as shown in Part Two, can it be admitted to the club of the sciences
if the membership committee raises the bar so high that only deterministic, predictive sciences can join. In Part
Three we saw how a new kind of science, influenced by complexity theory and enriched with story, can benefit by being supplemented
with stories called scenarios.
p.49 Hermeneutics is the discipline or philosophy of interpretation. In a world
filled with symbols and a plethora of different cultural contexts, we cannot hope to escape the need for
hermeneutics... Scenario planning provides alternative interpretations of the present as the first
chapter to several different futures
p.57 early indicators - of scenarios, and of the success or failure of [the things we care about] - are
much more to be desired than trailing indicators when remediation is inevitably too late... educators may listen and talk
forever without acting... engage them in the process of developing lists of early indicators.
p.58 it's difficult to anticipate technological breakthroughs - who knew they needed a Xerox machine before
it was invented
p.65 Hawley-Miles suggests the need for leading indicators of performance rather than lagging indicators
of failure. If we can find leading indicators... then we'll gain the "Ability to act quickly to support and
make necessary changes in failing [institutions]."
p.67 The power of the precision farming analogy is to stress the need for more accurate early indicators
and assessment tools in order to make nonstandard adjustments "on the fly"
p.79 By developing alternative scenarios that are explicitly linked to decisions facing executives,
we guarantee that the differences that divide our scenarios from one another are differences that will make a difference to
the decisions in question. We design our scenarios in such a way as to highlight the most important uncertainties
surrounding the outcome of today's decision.
p.81 As Aristotle formulated the paradox over two millennia ago, if you can know the future, then
you can't do anything about it; if you can do something about the future, then you cannot know it in advance.
p.82 the line of argument I am pursuing - away from a foundation on fact or scientific
theory and towards a more creative and willful endeavor - drives future studies toward becoming a kind of
collectively practiced existentialism.
p.83 the human sciences... are acknowledging their foundationlessness and accepting the finality of interpretations
in place of facts... several strategies and objectives must come together: the first, a justification for normative scenarios;
the second, the placement of future studies in the context of the human sciences; the third, [not ignoring our own values]
in shaping our visions of the future.
p.86 the purpose [of the sections that follow] is to see how researchers in several disciplines
that may be regarded as more mature than future studies have already abandoned their pretensions to the kind
of predictive science to which some futurists still aspire.
p.88 Geertz calls his concept of culture "essentially semiotic." Semiotics is the theory of signs,
of how they signify and mean what they mean... We are the results of our dedication to our symbols.
p.89-90 there is no foundational essence or human culture that is incontestable. On this and other issues,
rival interpretations will continue to contest the proper reading of whatever evidence is brought to bear.
Where meaning is concerned, it is not a matter of converging on closer and closer measurements...
alternative contexts can determine widely divergent significances for the same physical entity... divergent contexts are determined...
by other interpretations which are the symbolic products of an unpredictable human creativity.
p.90 [Geerz quoted, in Interpreting Cultures] the proposal that cultural phenomena should be treated
as significative systems posing expositive questions... is a result of the growing recognition that the established
approach to treating such phenomena, laws-and-causes social physics, was not producing the triumphs of prediction,
control, and testability that had for so long been promised in its name.
p.91 Manfred Eigen finds games with rules a fruitful way to organize the play of determinism and
chance in a whole range of phenomena from genetics and evolution to economics and the arts
p.92 we need... a new diagnostics, a science that can determine the meaning of things for
the life that surrounds them. It will have, of course, to be trained on signification... and treat with ideas...
the... sign gains meaning through its setting in its... surroundings... Forget about the laws-and-causes approach toward a
predictive science. Focus instead on multiple interpretations of the present. This, after
all, is what a set of scenarios amount to: alternative interpretations of the present as the first chapter of several very
different narratives. Today's decisions and events take on different meanings depending on the different
tomorrows that are their possible consequences.
p.99 the meaning of the present is a function of the future, yet the future that in fact unfolds
will be very much a function of human choices based on several different "readings" of the present... Multiple scenarios
can reflect both the descriptive and evaluative dimensions of uncertainty.
p.99 psychology... regards the self as established... through its relationships.
This shift in emphasis from things to relationships is important.
p.110 Hermeneutics is the theory and practice of interpretation... To those who grant a plurality
of interpretations, each including slightly different experiences of the same... objects, then the theory of interpretation
becomes very important.
p.111 The world is apprehended and organized through the mediation of our concepts, categories,
structures of thought. To say this is to say that all knowledge is perspectival. Anything we know is known as something...
In this view we cannot know what reality is in any absolute or objectivist fashion; instead, all we can know is our
symbolic constructions, the symbolic realities that are defined by our particular paradigms or frames of vision...
Both the artist and the scientist... are seen as having a basic affinity: They are creating
paradigms through which experience becomes intelligible. [JLJ - put in current paper]
p.113 the world of human beings insists on being ever interpretable from different perspectives, no one
of which can claim definitive priority to others... our models... our paradigms define what we take to be reality.
p.114 Each signified becomes a signifier of some further signified... it's signifiers all the way out.
p.115 preoccupation with the physical will lead one to focus on identities; preoccupation with the semiotic
order of symbols demands that one focus on differences... To know a symbol is to know how it relates to what is outside
p.116 Paul Ricouer, author of the monumental three volume Time and Narrativity, has done most to
show how narration does a better job of capturing the meaning of human actions than explanations that would reduce those actions
to the interactions of simpler elements described by the hard sciences... Narrativity is essential to scenarios.
p.117 Wittgenstein and Foucault offer different but equally unsettling perspectives on the semiotic turn:
the realization that almost all of our distinctly human experience is mediated by symbols, almost never raw or immediate
p.120 Now that we have fallen into time we must figure out... how to find, create, and maintain
norms that are appropriate to the times.
p.133 Frederich Schiller... "Man is most truly human when he plays, and when he plays, most truly man."
p.145 the upward trickle of information representing the wants and desires... make the economy go 'round.
p.150 As long as academia sees its mission as remote from practical concerns; as long as we see the university
as a place for basic rather than applied research; as long as we see the university as an ivory tower rather than a service
institution, then the professor's proper place is in the library or laboratory, not in the streets.
p.150-151 Strategic planning is as close as any intellectual discipline could be to the overall mission
of Marxism: the effort to create a better future for humanity.
p.155 New products or new services must serve some want or need if they are to survive in the marketplace...
The creative individual left to his or her own devices may be nothing more than a crackpot. Not all innovations
have a market. Part of the role of the scenario team will be to articulate different scenarios that define plausible market
needs (or desires).
p.156 The point of including these individuals [in scenario planning workshops] is
not so much to draw on their expertise in any particular field as to provoke unconventional thinking, perspectives
that are out of the ordinary, jolts to incipient group think, out-of-the-box reflection that can reframe the issues
and redraw the mental maps executives use to chart their futures.
p.159 Philosophy is not a science.
p.160 Scenario planning is a practice in search of a theory... practice needs to come prior to theory in
designing the future.
p.161 What do we want? And 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?
p.162 the larger the organization, and the longer term the scenarios, the more important does sustainability
of profits become. And as soon as sustainability becomes an important criterion for normative scenarios, then planners
are thrust into thinking about the web of interrelationships among our... natural systems. Even the fittest cannot
survive if they destroy the environment they feed upon... the minimum unit of evolutionary survival is neither
the individual, nor the species, but nothing less than species plus environment.
p.163 if we are to accept responsibility for the degree to which we are the creators of our cultures and
the developers of our natural environment, then it falls to us to accept a certain amount of authorship for our values...
Our natural environment... place[s] limits... on which value sets are sustainable... [these value sets allow] a certain
amount of freedom and creativity
p.163 The point of this essay has been to argue that scenario planning is a crucial tool for playing this
biggest game in town, the shaping of human history... Scenario planning provides a medium for sorting our hopes and
our fears, and hence, a medium for investing our plans with our values.... a medium for collectively choosing our course toward
better futures.
p.165 I remember the day I realized the world was getting weird - so strange and unpredictable that conventional
approaches to market forecasting would not work.
p.166 corporations are now looking for the kinds of strategic tools
that can accommodate real uncertainty. An existential economy, in short, demands existential strategy.
But what does that mean? For starters, it's a philosophy that stresses
the importance and robustness of individual choice. In a world where it sometimes seems like there are too many choices,
and too little authoritarian guidance in making those choices, existentialism provides a viable approach to strategy - perhaps
the only viable approach.
p.168 existentialists think of the future, as an open-ended, indeterminate
field of untried possibilities.
For existentialists, existence precedes essence... essence, for free
humans anyway, is achieved rather than prescribed. You become the results of the decisions you make... You make
yourself by making decisions.
p.168 Scenario planning... gives executives a way to rehearse different
futures in the relative calm of a meeting room rather than in a war room set up for emergencies... And even better: once
you've scoped out a range of alternative futures, you're in a better position to nudge reality in a direction you'd prefer.
p.169 Once you abandon an essentialism for which the future
is in principle predictable, and adopt an existentialism for which the future is in principle unpredictable, you're
bound to need a robust set of guidelines for making decisions that will be effective in any of a range of futures that might
unfold in ways that cannot be predicted in advance.
p.170 As a philosophy, existentialists stress that human beings have almost
unlimited choice. The constraints we feel from authority, society, other people, morality, and God are powerful largely because
we have internalized them - we carry the constraints around within us.
p.170 In their classic management text In Search of Excellence,
Tom Peters and Robert Waterman argued that the job of a manager is "meaning making".
p.170 The existential philosophers crafted some ideas that have fairly immediate
relevance to strategic practice. The 5 principles of existential strategy
1. Finitude - You can't be all things to all people. If you are not saying
"No" to some possibilities, then you're not acting strategically.
2. Being-towards-death - No one is too big to fail, to die, to go bankrupt.
Gliding on momentum can lead to a crash.
3. Care - Define your interests more precisely than
"ROI" [Return on Investment] or return to the shareholders. If you don't know where you stand, you'll fall for anything.
4. Thrownness - You have a past; you have core competencies. Know them,
don't forget them, and use them.
5. Authenticity - Don't be bound by your past. Feel free to re-invent yourself
and your company for an uncertain future.
p.173 Heidegger focused on care as a feature of human beings that differentiates
us from purely cognitive, Cartesian creatures. Sure, we think, we calculate, we cogitate. But we do so in a way that is different
from computers. My computer doesn't give a damn. It doesn't care. And so much the better: It is unbiased; it is unswayed
by desire; it can do the wholly rational, objective calculations I want from a computer. I, on the other hand, have
biases, I have desires. And so much the better again, for my desiring, my caring, gives meaning to my life. [JLJ - actually,
your computer does give a damn - it aims to do 100% of what it is told to do. It does not care what what it does does.]
p.173 In a world that's gone from slow and predictable to fast and weird,
you have to be free to re-invent yourself... or you die.
p.173 It takes a dancing existentialist to see such vast possibilities.
p.175 Learning and evolution are the first two legs of the three-legged stool being fashioned in
this essay. Scenario planning is the third leg. Why bring in scenario planning? Because we need a tool, a
method, a practice that can take these Darwinian/Batesonian insights and apply them in the context of organizational
learning.
p.176-177 Like evolution, scenario planning is a process of variation, adaptation
and selection - variations on a single-point forecast or an "official future"... Think of scenario planning as virtual
evolution. We test different strategic options for their adaptive power first in the imaginative contexts of
different scenarios.. In evolutionary terms, this amounts to highly directed rather than random variations... organizations
need a way to learn to distinguish between foolish experiments and adaptive innovations before they spend
scarce resources on new ventures.
p.177 As evolutionary theory tells us, very few mutations are adaptive...
Scenario planning... provides an opportunity to imaginatively model the adaptation of the organization to each of
those environments - a classroom for virtual evolution by way of modeling adaptation to
different imaginary environments.
p.190 By stressing the importance of an organization's environment,
scenario planning teaches the importance of compossibility and co-evolution. [JLJ - (Wikipedia)
Compossibility is a philosophical concept from Leibniz... A possible world is made up of individuals that are compossible
— that is, individuals that can exist together. Possible worlds exist as possibilities in the mind of God.]
