FSG Blog

Seven Wrong Things People Think About the Future

All along the untrodden paths of the future I see the footprints of an unseen hand. – Sir Boyle Roche

We who inhabit the Land of Scenariotopia (as a former colleague termed our little realm) think that the best way to predict the future is not to.

What We Are On About Here

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

Revisiting “Types of Scenario Planning” and Old Blog Posts

With the launch of our new website, some of our legacy content has been moved to new places. Back issues of FSG Outlook can now be found in the Archives section of our new blog page (also conveniently named FSG Outlook).

Update on the USCG’s Project Evergreen

FSG scenario consultants had a busy summer facilitating scenario workshops. In June, FSG ran the second of two Evergreen scenario-planning workshops for the U.S. Coast Guard this calendar year. Evergreen, the Coast Guard’s long-term strategy and strategic-renewal process, is now in its third continuous cycle.

U.S. Healthcare Scenario Planning: Imagining the Future Shape of Reform

by Peter Kennedy  It already seems like ages ago that the healthcare reform legislation was the centerpiece of the nation’s political conversation. While the most vocal opponents of the Obama administration continue to call for a repeal of healthcare reform, most of the nation (based on the results of a May Wall Street Journal poll) …

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McKinsey, Scenarios and Us

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.

The Big Mistakes Obama Has Already Made

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.

Scenario Planning Bookshelf: Chasing Black Swan Tails

by Patrick Marren

Much has been made lately of “long tails” and “Black Swans.” The latter is a formulation of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an options trader and academic whose book, The Black Swan, lays out what Black Swans are and why just about everyone but him in the financial world is a fool.