Scenarios are a useful, versatile process to explore the future, and provide some increase in clarity and scope for choice. They can be used in many ways, including community projects, personal choices, and strategic direction for organisations.
Typically a scenario process involves creating a few different visions for the future, aiming to include possible surprises, as well as exploring both desired and feared directions. They should involve informed imagination, and are usually created by a group of people, who spark ideas off each other.
At the outset, the scope of exploration needs defining, for example:
- Time period.
- Geographic scope.
- Any specific organisation which is the ‘client’ and container.
- Any specific issues to focus on: for example, impact of technology, human relations, changing client needs.
It’s preferable to define the scope and agree the group of people who will do the process together a couple of weeks before you meet up. During this time, all participants are asked to notice and record any relevant ideas that bubble up, and also to note anything they see in the media or other sources which could be relevant.
A scenario process could last a couple of hours to a couple of days. The ingredients would typically include:
- Early on, a free-form period akin to a brainstorm, generating a long list of future possibilities.
- An initial refining stage, creating a few specific scenarios to explore further: four is often a good number to work with, providing diversity without being overwhelming.
- Subgroups develop more detail for the scenarios, giving them substance, and starting to assess their pro and con implications.
- The whole group reassembles, and is briefed on the scenarios by the subgroups.
- The group assess overall learning in relation to the chosen scope, and may identify further work arising.
For all this to work well, engaging the creative imagination is crucial. Picturing life and work generally in your chosen end-year can help, e.g. 10 years hence. Another useful guideline is that the speed of change is likely to double in future, so the scale of change over the past 10 years is a clue to the scale over the next five. As with brainstorming, it’s important not to suppress ideas, even wacky ones, especially in the early stages – you are trying to include the unknown and unexpected!
If a scenario process leads to a vision for change and progress, sharing the scenarios that led to this can be a powerful way of explaining the vision to others not involved in creating them, and getting them on board with the vision.