Scenario Planning - Use of Scenarios

Use of Scenarios

It is important to note that scenarios may be used in a number of ways:

a) Containers for the drivers/event strings

Most basically, they are a logical device, an artificial framework, for presenting the individual factors/topics (or coherent groups of these) so that these are made easily available for managers' use - as useful ideas about future developments in their own right - without reference to the rest of the scenario. It should be stressed that no factors should be dropped, or even given lower priority, as a result of producing the scenarios. In this context, which scenario contains which topic (driver), or issue about the future, is irrelevant.

b) Tests for consistency

At every stage it is necessary to iterate, to check that the contents are viable and make any necessary changes to ensure that they are; here the main test is to see if the scenarios seem to be internally consistent - if they are not then the writer must loop back to earlier stages to correct the problem. Though it has been mentioned previously, it is important to stress once again that scenario building is ideally an iterative process. It usually does not just happen in one meeting - though even one attempt is better than none - but takes place over a number of meetings as the participants gradually refine their ideas.

c) Positive perspectives

Perhaps the main benefit deriving from scenarios, however, comes from the alternative 'flavours' of the future their different perspectives offer. It is a common experience, when the scenarios finally emerge, for the participants to be startled by the insight they offer - as to what the general shape of the future might be - at this stage it no longer is a theoretical exercise but becomes a genuine framework (or rather set of alternative frameworks) for dealing with that.