Scenario fodder for the week: Raghuram Rajan's "Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy" won many awards as best business book of 2010. A couple of years on, it's worth examining Rajan's major theses to see how they have played out.
“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.
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 (Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (1940, Bernard DeVoto, editor).
Possibly frightening scenario fodder culled from the papers over Saturday morning coffee…
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.
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.
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
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).
For more than a year, FSG and its partner Hassett Willis & Company have been busy supporting a scenario-planning exercise sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as part of its Strategic Foresight Initiative (SFI). Launched in 2010, the SFI is a community-wide effort to anticipate emerging challenges and opportunities in emergency management and disaster response.
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.