More About Scenario Thinking

Scenarios as a Tool for Collective Strategising

We live in a world characterised by increasing dynamic, social, and generative complexity. In this context, our most common approaches to grasping and addressing our challenges—piece-by-piece, top-down, best practice-based—are no longer adequate. We need to learn uncommon approaches that are, in contrast, systemic, participative, and emergent.

Scenarios are a tool well suited to this complex context. They are simple, even primal: a set of stories about how our future might unfold. At the same time, they are subtle and sophisticated: a critical and generative discipline for individual and collective reflection on what we see and believe about what is going on around us, our role in it, and what it demands of us.

Scenarios are a tool for improving the quality of collective strategic thinking and conversation. They can be used by any group - a team, an organisation, a nation - that needs to talk together about what is happening around us and amongst us, what might happen, and what we should do about it.