What is Scenario Thinking?

In a rapidly changing world, the ability for an organisation to critically review its assumptions on external developments and to incorporate thinking about external uncertainties in a structured way is of key importance. Scenario Thinking, introduced by Shell Group Planning in the 1970s, has evolved as a powerful methodology to enable groups to structurally anticipate change and incorporate external uncertainty into the internal decision making process.

Why Scenario Thinking

Accountable decision making requires a high element of certainty - an adequate level of knowledge and confidence in our assumptions about that knowledge. Decision making today is far more complex than ever before, taking place in a fast changing, highly uncertain information driven environment. Compounding this, the illusive interlacing of shifting values and policies, social structures and behaviour increasingly undermine predictions on how the future will look. On their own, familiar planning and forecasting practices that have served us well in the past, cannot deliver the insights and answers we need now.

What is Scenario Thinking

Scenario Thinking is a structured process of thinking about and anticipating the unknow future, without pretense of being able to predict the future or being able to influence the environment in a major way. Instead, it navigates through the uncertainties and large-scale driving forces that are impacting on the future. The objective is to examine possible future developments that could impact on individuals, organization or societies, in order to find directions for decesions that would be most beneficial no matter how the future unfolds. The philosophy is to proactively think and plan for future developments in stead of being a passive victim of change.
Scenario thinking always includes a number of possible future scenarios, thus preparing for many possible future events. Succesfuly used by many organizations and governments, Scenario Thinking has proven it's worth in the past thirty years.
This little introduction doesn't start to describe what Scenario Thinking really is. On this page there is room for many more, possibly contradictory, descriptions of what Scenario Thinking really is.

Benefits of Scenario Thinking

The benefits and applicability of this process and methodology are broad and deep. Scenario Thinking establishes a thinking process that enables change anticipation and preparedness, and evaluation and risk assessment across possible environments. Every decision making context – product development, marketing, finance, investment, strategic planning, human resources, policy – faces the challenge of responding to external factors, be they economic, social, political, technological or environmental. Scenario Thinking informs decisions by evaluating them in the context of possible futures.

Scenario Thinking Processes

The process of scenario thinking is widely recognised as a tool for informing planning under uncertainty. There are many different methodologies that go by this name and they vary considerably.

A Scenario Cycle is a presentation of a full scenario cycle, from articulation of the focal issue to the way scenarios are used to change an organisation and to transform strategic uncertainties from liabilities to assets.
A sequence of steps however is not thinking process. This cycle is simply a sketch of scenario process, rather than a thinking template. The world is complex and complex situations require complex representation.