FSG OUTLOOK

Too many hands.Read more

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

Five things that were "bound to occur," away from which we rashly predict the media will moonwalk at warp speed in 2013.Read more

Hot Breaking News on the Fiscal Cliff!Read more

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

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

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).

As of last night, reports from the Port Authority show that power has not yet been restored to port facilities in Newark, Bayonne and Brooklyn. A glance at the on-line Automated Information System shows that the only vessels at Port Newark and Port Elizabeth, the massive facilities that serve so much of America's shipping needs, are tugs...Read more

One more thought provoked by Nate Silver's thought-provoking The Signal and the Noise.

It's about the seductiveness of data and cool, overly precise models.

(In comparison, say, to scenario-based planning? Sorry, the scenario consultants in us always rear their ugly, pragmatic, self-promoting heads. We gotta work on that.)

Silver brought back to the surface an idea I (and others, such as Nasim Nicholas Taleb) have had before, but especially since the financial crash of 2008: accelerating advances in technology and data-gathering create a new sort of bias that...Read more

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. 

Silver's Five Thirty Eight blog, as of this morning, had President Obama's odds of winning the presidency at 70.4%. This is up from 61.1% a...Read more

Nate Silver's book The Signal and the Noise makes a darned good case for scenario-based strategic planning. 

In it, he raises the old distinction between "hedgehogs" and "foxes," from a fragment by the ancient Greek philosopher Archilochus via Isaiah Berlin: "The fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

"Foxes" in this dichotomy are nonideological and open thinkers not wedded to any one theory; they are comfortable with "nuance, uncertainty, complexity, and dissenting opinion."

"Hedgehogs," by contrast, are "Type A personalities who...Read more