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.”
The Actual has its revenge upon the Virtual…
A hypothesis: our current terrible state of political dialogue could be an equilibrium that satisfies far deeper emotional longings than any consensus ever could.
Jonathan Haidt thinks we’re weird. And as scenario consultants, we have to agree.
A future scenario of mass wealth redistribution to a generation that just did not save enough for retirement.
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.
Scenario planning requires imagination. Everyone likes to pretend that imagination is fun and games. But really, imagination is often very difficult and painful, because it requires us not just to take incremental steps along a pre-existing path, but to make up an entirely different path.
Scenario consulting has rarely had a better promotional material than Europe has been pumping out the past year or so. Uncertainty abounds.
Sunday’s election in Greece has once again caused the Very Serious People in Europe to breathe a sigh of relief. “New Democracy, the mainline conservative party that wants to stay in the euro, won the election and can form a government! We’re saved!”
Say you have a strategic decision to make. And you have several experts giving you different expert opinions about how you should make that decision. And you are not an expert. What do you do?
May job numbers come in weak for yet another month, after some hopeful signs in the first quarter. Some scenarios for the election campaign are coming into focus.