creating scenarios
Stage 1: Redefining a sense of purpose
i.e. articulating and making the focus explicit, ideally by people from diverse backgrounds and different perspectives — but with a common purpose.
Stage 2: Understand the driving forces
a) predetermined forces: those forces that we are almost certain will happen (e.g. x% of today's 20 year old will be parents in 10 years' time, there will be a US Presidential election within four years)
b) uncertain forces: those forces that we can only guess at (e.g. outbreak of war in which we are involved, investors moving to developing countries, food supplies)
The predetermined forces set the boundaries. The art of picking key uncertainties leads to the most usefully mind-stretching scenarios. (For a method of doing this, see here.)
Stage 3: Scenario plots
Consider the classic stories of possible futures. Rather than considering their likelihood, care instead about whether the story illuminates your understand — and this can be done well on a highly implausible (but nonetheless possible) future.
Stages 4: Strategy and rehearsal
This is the most important stage with several steps.
- With a minimum of 3-4 scenario plots, consider each in turn. Label them, giving each a memorable tag which will also identify collective assumptions.
- Play (and I mean play, so make it playful and imaginative) a typical event that might happen in such a scenario, so that you have a taste of the living possibility of such a future.
- Articulate what would it feel like to live and breathe in such a world.
Stage 5: Conversation about strategies
Discuss, perhaps even determine what strategies would be effective no matter what scenario came to pass . . .