In mid-May, FSG principals facilitated a scenario-planning exercise for the Port Commerce Department of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Under the guidance of FSG and our partner, Cargo Velocity, some 60 workshop participants devoted three days to exploring the strategic implications of five alternative future operating environments for maritime trade and logistics.
by Charles Thomas
The term “scenario planning” encompasses a surprisingly diverse range of activities. While there are many potential schemes for categorizing these activities, the discussion below presents a fairly comprehensive view of them, and indicates – if imperfectly – the relationships among the various approaches.
Paul Krugman’s column today induces us to create scenarios…it’s what we do.
“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 (Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (1940, Bernard DeVoto, editor).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.
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.