ABOUT THE AUTHORS.
INTRODUCTION.
The Quest for a Clear Vision of the Future.
Unknown Variables, Uncertain Future.
The Significance of Scenario Thinking.
Developing the Sixth Sense - the Approach to Scenario Thinking.
How this Book is Organized.
1. PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
Understanding Organizational Success.
Success and Failure are Inevitable.
Understanding success by understanding failure.
Explaining the Sharpbenders Research: Why Organizations Fail.
Maintaining Organizational Performance: Problems.
Sustaining Competitive Advantage - the Battle of Canon and Xerox.
Yahoo! - Competing in Fast-moving Markets.
Building a Colourful New Future Brick by Brick - the Story of Lego.
Success Stories.
Providing Customer Value - the Rise of Tetra Pak.
Entering New Markets and Maintaining Growth - Nokia Answers the Call.
Barriers to Strategic Success.
Lessons Learned.
Creating Value - The Difference Between Success and Failure.
Value is Created in a Domain of Scarcity.
Summary: Understanding the Barriers to Scenario Planning.
2. HOW MANAGERS THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE.
Understanding Management Thinking.
Routines in Management Thinking.
Over-reliance on Routines: Success Formulas and Managerial Thinking.
Biases in thinking.
The Relevance of Framing Flaws.
How a Failed Product Launch Actually Boosted Sales: the Sparkle of New Coke.
Confirmation Bias.
Hindsight Bias.
The Problem of Overconfidence.
The Limitations of Judgemental Forecasting. Decision Avoidance.
Escalation of Commitment.
Bolstering, Procrastination and Buck-Passing.
Example of a Management Team Facing a Decision Dilemma.
Thinking Flaws: A Synthesis.
Overcoming Strategic Inertia: the Potential Benefits of Scenario Planning.
A Scenario is not a Forecast of the Future.
Scenarios Focus on Key Uncertainties and Certainties About the Future.
Scenarios Help Identify Information to Anticipate How the Future will Unfold.
Typical Outcomes of the Scenario Planning Process.
Summary: Overcoming Thinking Flaws with Scenario Planning.
Summary Checklist - the Limits to Managerial Thinking.
3. HOW ORGANIZATIONS THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE.
Flaws in Organizational Thinking.
Communication Difficulties.
Group-think in Organizations.
Fragmentation in Organizations.
Limitations Imposed by Identity.
Balancing Change and Constancy.
Overcoming the Limits of Organizational Identity: the Example of IBM.
Organizational Lock-in.
Understanding Organizational Lock-in.
The Consequences of Organizational Feedback Loops and Lock-in.
Behavioural flaws.
Learning and Action.
An Organizational Dilemma.
Management and Action.
Overcoming the Pathologies of Organizational Life.
Using Organizational Processes.
The Benefits of Scenario Planning Interventions.
Summary: How Organizations Think About the Future.
4. THE IMPACT OF CULTURE AND CULTURAL ASSUMPTIONS ON STRATEGY.
Understanding the Impact of Cultural Issues.
The Significance to Strategy of Globalization and Cultural Issues.
From Mickey Mouse to The Lion King: the Tale of Disney in France.
Defining Culture for Pragmatic Purposes.
Recognizing Differences in Others.
The Value of Scenarios in Assessing the Impact of Cultural Factors.
National Cultural Differences and the Role of Scenario Thinking.
Global Organizations and Local Service Offerings: IKEA Shelve Their Universal Approach.
How Can We Explore Differences in National Cultures?
Differences in Organizational Cultures.
A Clash of Personality: The Merger of Daimler-Benz and Chrysler.
Organizational Culture and the External Environment.
Differences in Professional Cultures Within Organizations.
The Call of the Wild: How Varying Interpretations of Management Intent Divided Senior Executives in an ITC Business.
Moving Beyond Cultural Preconceptions and Stereotypes.
Understanding Cultures Across Boundaries.
Language, Meaning and Overcoming Ambiguity.
Increasing Diversity in a World of Similarity.
The Starting Point for Cultural Appraisal.
Developing Multiple Perspectives.
The Application of Scenario Thinking to Cultural Understanding.
Applying the Defining Factors of Organizational Culture to Your Organization.
Developing a Scenario Culture.
Key Questions.
5. SHAPING THE FUTURE: THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN SCENARIO TECHNIQUES.
Scenario Planning: the Human Dimension.
Bringing the Future into the Present: The Story of Margareta Lonnberg.
Memories of the Future: Scenarios Filter What We Perceive.
Scenarios: A Cornerstone of Human Thought.
Scenario Thinking and War Games.
Uncertainty and Crisis.
War Game Preparations.
A Natural Scenario Planner: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke.
Crisis Management Training.
The Era of Possibility: the Makeable Post-war World.
The Age of Forecasting and Systems Engineering.
The US Perspective.
The Rand Corporation: the Emergence of Scenario Techniques.
The Impact of Herman Kahn and the Hudson Institute.
The French Perspective.
Challenging Established Thinking: the Development of Scenarios in the 1970s.
The Club of Rome.
Royal Dutch/Shell and the Problem of Predictability.
The Development of Scenarios and Strategy During the 1980s.
Factors Affecting the Use of Scenario Techniques in Business.
Scenarios Become Popular.
Scenario Planning and Other Strategic Approaches.
The 1990s: Scenario Planning and Organizational Learning.
The Age of Complexity, the Limits of Certainty - and the Rise of Scenario Planning.
Organizational Learning.
The World of Identity, Experience and Change.
Summary: the Benefits of Scenario Planning.
Enhanced Perception.
Integration of Corporate Planning.
Making People Think.
A Structure for Dealing with Complexity.
A Communications Tool.
A Management Tool.
Summary Checklist - Building an Understanding of Scenario Thinking in Your Organization.
6. DEVELOPING THE SKILLS FOR LONG-TERM SURVIVAL AND SUCCESS: PRINCIPLES OF THE SCENARIO PROCESS.
The Need for a Scenario Process.
Scenarios and Scenario-based Organizational Learning.
Rationalistic Decision-making.
Cause and Effect Thinking.
Systems Thinking.
Mental Models and their Limitations.
The Strategic Conversation.
How Scenarios Tackle the Problems of Organizational Thinking.
Surfacing Mental Models.
Eliciting the Agenda.
Activating and Integrating Intuitive Knowledge.
Analysing Driving Forces.
Scenario Telling.
Organizational Learning.
The Process of Organizational Learning.
Scenario Planning as a Way Towards Adaptive Organizational Learning.
Memories of the Future - Creating the Jolt.
From Scenarios to Adaptive Behaviour.
Making it Happen.
Summary: Developing the Skills of Survival.
7. SCENARIO PLANNING IN THE ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT.
Introducing the Scenario Method.
Scenarios for the Future of e-Government and the Impact of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT).
Background.
The Story of the 'People's Kailyard'.
Stage 1: Structuring the Scenario Process.
Identifying Knowledge Gaps.
Building the Scenario Team.
Timing for the Scenario Project.
Stage 2: Exploring the Scenario Context.
Interviewing Key Players and Widening the Conversation.
Setting the Scenario Agenda.
Setting the Scenario Agenda: the Northshire Example.
The Role of the Remarkable Person.
Stage 3: Developing the Scenarios.
Determining the Driving Forces and Testing the Outcomes.
Clustering the Driving Forces: the Northshire Example.
Dealing with Impact and Uncertainty.
Scoping the Scenarios.
Setting the 'Limits of Possibility' for Alternative Futures: the Northshire Example.
Fleshing out the Storylines.
Beyond the Kailyard.
Stage 4: Stakeholder Analysis.
Stage 5: Systems Thinking.
Stage 6: Impacting Organizational Thinking and Action.
Looking for the Organizational Jolt.
Identifying the Early Indicators.
Action Planning from the Future to the Present: the Northshire Example.
Summary: Effective Scenario Planning.
Summary Checklist - Implementing a Scenario Planning Process.
8. SCENARIO PLANNING: TAKING CHARGE OF THE FUTURE.
The Energetic Problem Solver.
Observation - the Cornerstone of Strategic Success.
Purposeful Scenario Work.
Project 1: Making Sense of a Puzzling Situation.
The Analytical Approach.
The Limitations of Analysis.
Purposeful Analysis and How Scenarios Steer Attention.
Combining Intuition with Rational Analysis: the Iterative Scenario Approach.
Facing the Important Questions.
Project 2: Developing Strategy.
Defining Strategy.
The Stakeholder Game.
Strategic Aims.
The Business Idea.
Friction Forces and Barriers to Entry.
Developing Distinctiveness.
The Role of the Business Idea in Strategy.
Business Ideas and Scenarios.
The Strategic Journey.
Project 3: Improving Organizational Anticipation.
Multiple World Views - The Limits of the Rationalistic Approach.
The Mont Fleur Story.
The Role of Scenarios in Strategic Conversation.
Creating the Scenario-based Strategic Conversation.
Project 4: Building an Adaptive Learning Organization.
Action and Experiential Learning.
The Strategic Journey of Project 2 Revisited.
What is Adaptive Organizational Learning?
Building a Scenario Culture.
Team Empowerment.
The Across-team Strategic Conversation.
SUMMARY.
Rethinking the Future - the Value of Scenarios in Developing Competitive Advantage.
Developing The Sixth Sense.
GLOSSARY.
REFERENCES.
INDEX.
