Why creating scenarios is like cooking
Make a Future Scenario in 3 steps
Hey there,
‘Do you have a crystal ball at home?’ people sometimes ask me.
No, of course I can't predict the future. In fact, I'm at the bottom of the Euro Cup football pool.
So no crystal ball. But what then? I use scenario planning. This is an excellent method in my work as a futurist.
In this newsletter, I share a step-by-step plan to create good future scenarios, as a follow-up to the previous newsletter about exploring trends with the future triangle.
Enjoy reading,
Peter
PS. If you prefer watching, watch this video about scenario planning. Including a role for Harry Potter (!?):
For English subtitles: select the icon of a sprocket (settings), and then subtitles. 🇺🇸
Scenarios as Superpower
Scenario planning is an excellent method to better prepare for the future. But to create relevant scenarios, you first go through a number of steps. From gathering trends and thinking about their implications to creating and using the scenarios.
First, a step back. What is the advantage of scenarios? It mainly helps to be better prepared for an uncertain future.
Jane McGonigal is associated with the American Institute for the Future (IFTF). She states:
It's better to be surprised by a simulation than blindsided by reality.
In a scenario, you imagine the future as it could be, without the pretense of predicting the future.
This can take the form of a short description, story, animation, drawing, or even a video, computer game, or play.
The Four Cs
If you can't predict the future with a scenario, what good is it? Jan Nekkers shares the 4 Cs of what scenario thinking delivers:
Cognitive: working on a scenario helps to organize the complex reality;
Communication: working together on a scenario creates a common language and collective images of the future;
Creative: scenarios take you out of the here and now. This helps to come up with new ideas and innovate;
Commitment: making a scenario together creates more support for the choices and actions that follow from that scenario.
In short, the added value of working on scenarios often lies not only in the end result but also in the process. Working together on stories creates a common language, support, and shared insights.
Step-by-Step Guide
To explain the steps in scenario work, I use the metaphor of a chef. How does he come to a tasty dish? By these steps:
Gather ingredients;
Determine taste and cook;
Serve the dish.
PS. Read in my previous newsletter the three previous steps: exploring trends, finding relevant issues, and preparing scenarios.
1. Gather Ingredients
The first step is to gather ingredients. These are relevant developments or choices that influence the subject of the scenario.
For example, a municipality is working on a scenario for tourism and recreation in the year 2035.
Developments include climate change, aging population, and new technologies such as virtual reality.
Choices include whether the municipality wants to focus on a particular type of tourism, for example in the luxury segment. Or whether they actively want to try to attract an amusement park to the municipality. The groups must already make an initial choice here.
Depending on the subject, you arrive at 10 to 15 ingredients in this way.
Implication Tree
I then challenge the participants to think through first and second-order effects of a development or choice. This comes from a well-known model in futures research, the implication tree.
Example:
A relevant development is aging.
A first-order effect might be that older people travel less (privately and for work).
An implication of this could be that there are therefore fewer traffic jams. That's a second-order effect.
This is what makes it difficult: the effects can influence each other again, as the model below shows. Nevertheless, it is an important exercise to be aware of possible consequences of choices and developments.
2. Determine taste and cook
In the second step, you first determine which ingredients you want to use as a starting point. Then you get to work. Choose, for example, 3 to 5 developments or choices and at least one element from the implication tree.
The scenario is usually a short story about what the future looks like. Helpful questions to come up with the future story are:
How did we get here?
What happened? How does the story feel? What is the taste? With a beautiful German word: what is the Zeitgeist?
What does a day in life look like? Depending on the assignment: a consumer who buys our product, a user of our service, or a citizen of our municipality?
This step requires quite a bit of creativity and imagination. One way to stimulate this is by not organizing the workshop at the company itself or in the town hall.
A place does quite a lot. If you do this exercise at your workplace, you will automatically think more from the here and now because you are constantly reminded of it.
Come up with an Appealing Name
One of the fun parts of this step is coming up with an appealing name. The name should preferably evoke an image or feeling.
Think, for example, of:
Data Driven Dynamo. Scenario about the future of mobility in which users continuously share data with car manufacturers.
The Tuscany of Belgium. Scenario for Belgian Limburg about the future of nature conservation and restoration.
Finally, a good scenario is plausible, relevant, and radical. In my experience as a workshop facilitator, the last criterion of radicality is the most difficult. My role is usually to stimulate and challenge the groups to make their scenario even more extreme.
3. Serving the dish
Time to taste the scenario. Once you have created a scenario, you can start using it. Scenarios usually have the following goals:
If we apply our current strategy to this scenario, what happens?
Do we need to adjust our strategy? What are innovative ideas that this scenario brings up?
If you have created multiple scenarios: what are plans or strategic choices that work well in most scenarios?
If you express a preference for a scenario: if we have new proposals or plans, is that in line with that scenario?
Scenarios often serve as input for a future vision, such as for municipalities.
What I personally enjoy is if a municipality later also wants to involve the residents. What do they think of the scenarios? What appeals to them? What does not? How would they live, work, and recreate in those scenarios?
For this, you can use the so-called Cone of Plausibility. It shows that scenarios offer multiple possibilities for the future. With scenarios, you do not only focus on the expected line, but also on plausible or possible futures. After all, we cannot assume that everything will remain the same as now.
Deep Dive
Articles, books, podcasts, videos, documentaries, and more on this theme.
1. READ / Working with scenarios is one way to become future-proof. Usually, you work intensively together in a small group.
How do you ensure that everyone is actively engaged with the future? The book Futures Cultures by Scott Smith and Susan Cox-Smith delves into this.
2. READ / Scientist George Day (University of Pennsylvania) wrote a concise and engaging article on how to be more vigilant as a leader or manager for trends affecting your organization.
3. WATCH / As I often write: science fiction helps to generate ideas for scenarios.
For example, Susan and I watched the first season of the series 3 Body Problem on Netflix (7.5 on IMDb), based on the fantastic trilogy by Cixin Liu. Interesting for a scenario: how do people react to extreme conditions and unknown threats (such as the arrival of extraterrestrial life)?
There is some criticism of Netflix's adaptation, but I still enjoyed watching the series. A prominent role for physical science, special storylines, and more attention to human emotions (than in the book).
🙏 Thank you for reading
This newsletter is free, but not cheap to make.
You can help me in a number of ways: forward this newsletter to someone who likes it, subscribe to my YouTube-channel, or hire me to speak.
Interested to hire me? Feel free to fill this form!
