FSG partner Patrick Marren chronicles a century of late-summer anxiety…and wonders what it all means for the pressing worries of 2011. 

August 1911: The specter of Anarchism grips America. Anarchist Ben Reitman, disciple of Emma Goldman, counsels a rally of New York laborers to commit murder if necessary to bring about change: “If the rich thought that you would destroy their property or injure them, they would pay attention to the unemployed…. Your hope, I tell you, lies in your ability to injure society.” (N.Y. Times, Aug. 31, 1911)

by Patrick Marren and Peter Kennedy  

Alas, we are not manufactured, in our current edition of the human race, to understand abstract matters — we need context.

by Patrick Marren

The November 2009 issue of the McKinsey Quarterly includes an article by Charles Roxburgh entitled “The Use and Abuse of Scenarios.” It includes a number of good tips about scenario-based strategic planning, based on his experience in building scenarios over the past 25 years. It also highlights some important distinctions between his understanding of scenarios, and the way in which FSG has gone about creating and using them over the past few decades. And finally, it brings to the surface the urgent concerns of executives as they go about leading their organizations under uncertain conditions.

by Patrick Marren

As the economy fails to recover instantaneously, and foreign enemies bluster, President Obama is taking increasing heat from expert critics. It is clear that his administration has made many missteps already in its handling of the economy, foreign policy, and virtually every other area. Some of these mistakes will take years, if not decades, for the United States to recover from.

All that remains uncertain is exactly what those mistakes will turn out to have been.

by Peter Kennedy

It’s early April – not even 100 days into the Obama administration – and already it’s been a turbulent year.

At this moment, a modest rally is buoying Wall Street and investor hopes that maybe – maybe – the worst may be over, as leaders of the G-20 nations meeting in London pledge hundreds of billions more dollars and coordinated action in the face of the greatest financial mess since the Great Depression.

by Robert Avila

FSG welcomes Robert Avila as the contributing author of this month’s FSG Outlook. Robert, an economist and former colleague, is an iconoclastic thinker, with a keen eye and a sharp wit. Robert warns that a soft economic landing looks less and less likely this time around.

by Patrick Marren

One of the more interesting things I have found in my life and business experience is that numerical measures, or “metrics,” as we consultants are forced by law to call them, start to lose their usefulness on the day they are dreamt up.

by Peter Kennedy

The strategic decisions that corporations have to make are of mind-numbing complexity. But we know that the more power you give to a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will be made.

Few people think more than two or three times a year. I've made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. - George Bernard Shaw

What exactly does the Futures Strategy Group do? We help excellent organizations make better decisions under conditions of uncertainty -- mainly through the use of scenarios.

Despite our leeriness about extrapolation from the past, we do read a lot of history at FSG in order to write our scenarios. As Mark Twain wrote, "It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man's character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible." (Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (1940, Bernard DeVoto, editor). 

"Silos" are an inevitable part of any organization; indeed, of any human activity. Even if you confine yourself to individual action, your own mind is thinking within certain categories, usually operating off a mental model that tells you what to expect - "If I do X, then Y will happen" - and what NOT to expect - Z or W or something completely different.

Some quick and dirty scenarios about this past weekend's EuroChaos in France and Greece.

In election season as in any other season, when making business decisions in conditions of uncertainty, ideologies can be deadly - and we all have them. Scenarios can help.

Another quick and filthy Friday Scenario Planning exercise.

Someone is holding a gun to your head and asking what the impact of the 2012 election will be on your organization.

Here's your answer: Austerity -- either moderate or less moderate. 

Damnable 2 x 2 consultant matrix for today: Obama vs. Romney on one axis; Keynes Is Right vs. The Austrians Are Right on the other.

Frank Newman's book, Six Myths that Hold Back America, exposes what he says are six false beliefs that are widely held in the United States – even or especially among people who are in a position to make policy.

So far I have soft-peddled my actual politics on here. It's only seemed like the sensible thing to do on the website of a commercial enterprise to keep my political opinions to myself.

But there comes a time when you just have to say what you really believe.

There are two types of people in the world: the sensible ones who can see that we are headed down a very bad path, and the nutty ones who want to hit the accelerator until we fly right off a cliff.

Today we examine the second “myth” from Frank Newman’s book Six Myths That Are Holding Back America – the belief that treasury bills compete with private sector organizations for available capital.

"What we have here is... failure to communicate."

Today we examine the fourth “myth” from Frank Newman’s book Six Myths That Are Holding Back America – the presumption that increased saving will drive increased investment.

Today we examine the sixth and final “myth” from Frank Newman’s book Six Myths That Are Holding Back America – the worry that U.S. Treasuries could come to have the same problems of lack of demand due to fear that it will not repay the bonds coupled with escalating interest rates.  As with all the myths, Mr Newman attempts to present the mechanisms that drive international finance.  The policy implications are rich and varied and the subject of legitimate debate.  Scenario planning can and should be used to evaluate alternatives.

July 21, 2042 (Fox/MSNBC News): The nation reacted with a mix of horror, outrage, calls for new laws, and debate over the Second Amendment as the scale of the latest mass murder came into focus over the past two days.

A confirmed total of 212 people, most in the greater Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, but some as far away as New York and Seattle, are apparently victims of yet another technologically sophisticated, targeted DNA/GPS/UAV attack.

Jonathan Haidt thinks we're weird. And as scenario consultants, we have to agree.

Actually, he thinks we're WEIRD - as in, "Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic." Or at least you live in a country that by world standards corresponds to such adjectives. And if you live in such a country, you may fall into the trap of believing that all moral questions ultimately can be resolved through rationality. That is wrong, according to him.

Guest blogger Andrew Large gives us a scenario of EXACTLY 400 words: nature's possible revenge on an antibiotic-happy human race.

The Actual has its revenge upon the Virtual...

After decades of trying to help clients anticipate the widest range of plausible possible future events, the following quote rings quite true to us: “Those who know more forecast very slightly better than those who know less.  But those with the most knowledge are often least reliable.” 

Daniel Kahneman, a winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, published this conclusion in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow after extensive research including numerous statistical analyses. 

Your scenario consultants imagine the future of Apple products to 2020...so you don't have to.

[Sometimes the best scenario planning we scenario consultants can do is based on scenarios that will never actually occur.] 

JIM LEHRER: Good evening and welcome to the first 2012 presidential debate. This is the 413th debate I have moderated, and quite frankly, if there's a 414th, I will shoot myself in the eye with a nailgun. So independently of the debate organizers, I took it upon myself to break into the green rooms of the contestants and drop some truth serum into each of their elitist Evian water bottles. I'm looking forward to this - I hope you are as well.

Scenario consultants have an advantage over single-point forecasters like Nate Silver: we're not restricted to single point forecasts. 

Don't get us wrong: Nate Silver is as good as it gets when it comes to single-point forecasts, and as honest about their limitations.  But that undeniable fact just further dramatizes how dangerous point forecasting can be.

Just to illustrate, let's take the current ongoing presidential hoo-hah. 

This has been a ridiculously busy and stressful week for three of our recent scenario-based strategic planning clients: the United States Coast Guard, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Now that the happy horserace of the election is over, on to some grimmer scenarios. 

Sometimes leaders do not have the luxury of taking the long view; sometimes high-impact events compel hard decisions to be made now. 

DECEMBER 10, 2012 (QLS News) Hang on to your hats and forget the Mayans: scenario-based planning may suddenly have become a much simpler game. The world is ending December 31, 2012. 

News of the impending apocalypse was revealed by analysts at the University of South Vegas Department of Calendricalosity.

January 21, 2013. Two men warily approach each other in front of tens of thousands of people.

The Manti Te'o events of this past week have caused your scenario planning consultants to think bad thoughts about the future.

Too many hands.

WIll the great institutions of society learn how to live with transparency before transparency destroys them?

Scenario planning is necessary because things happen all the time that have never happened before.

Some people see things that are and say "Why?" We see things that never were and say, "This would make a good scenario-based planning exercise."

The more things change, the more they create new and unexpected scenarios.

Every day something happens for which a lot of experts did not do scenario planning.

Some are born scenario planning; some achieve scenario planning; others have scenario planning thrust upon them by the Futures Strategy Group. We hope you will soon be among the latter.

Things that happened on March 1 through history with which scenario planning might have helped.

Scenario planning (or its lack) through history - March 3.

Scenarios mean never having to say you're sorry.

Scenarios are about now...and then. Some things that happened now, back then.

March 9th, if you can't march tenth or eleventh. 

Hello mother, hello father/Here's scenario planning fodder.

If these things had not happened on March 13 in the past, they might have made darned good scenarios.

If Julius Caesar had done scenario planning, Shakespeare might have been a little more funny and a little less stabby.

Your St. Patrick's Day March 17 scenario planning fodder.

After a week off for vacation, scenario planning fodder returns.

1306: Robert the Bruce becomes KIng of Scotland, seven months and two days after William Wallace is hanged, drawn and quartered in London. It will take him eight years to establish de facto control via the Battle of Bannockburn; then he will invade Ireland and northern England in attempts to establish a "Pan-Gaelic Greater Scotia." It doesn't really catch on, most historians believe due to the haggis. 

That...scenario...did NOT...just...happen. But it happened on this date.

The past is prologue for scenario planning.

Scenarios that occurred on this date through history.

Some scenarios that may or may not have occurred on the first of April through history.

Things that might inspire scenario planners to commit scenario planning that happened on this date. 

With the Internet revolution already established, are the best days of productivity growth – and therefore income growth – behind us?  That worrisome question is popping out of the trends in growth in non-farm output.  But it’s possible the best is yet to come. 

Scenarios of the future! Only, we have to pretend they didn't already happen on April 6 in previous years. 

The past is prologue to scenario consultants. Things that happened on April 10 through history.

Things that happened on April 8 through history that might cause one to say, "Hmmm."

Reading a book about 1913 Vienna illuminates a 2013 book about a future of inevitable progress.