Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation

What the scenarios did was to enable Shell's manufacturing people to be more perceptive, appreciate events as part of a pattern they recoqttised, and so appreciate their implications. As

of oil. So planners had to consider what was predictable and what was fundamentally uncertain in the price of oil. That meant they had to examine what drives oil price, and, therefore, the whole question of supply and demand.

direct instructions, but by using scenarios to set the context within which decisions are made down the line.

The idea of the Kahn scenario approach was that predetermineds would be reflected in all scenarios in the same predictable way. Uncertainties, on the other hand, would be reflected through the different ways they play out in various different scenarios.

number. The aim is to develop projects that are likely to have positive returns under any of the scenarios. The

make do with anything less. They are fully aware that if the quality of a strategic decision has been whittled down to one single indicator, important knowledge about thefundamental uncertainty in the project has been filtered out. In this way the first objective of scenario-based

at its core an entirely different central idea. This type of scenario-based planning relies not on probability but on causality. As such it appeals more to the intuitive needs of the typical decision makers in their search for enhanced understanding of the changing structures in society. Shell,one of the pioneers of scenario analysis,

techniques we formerly used" (Benard 1980). Better quality thinhinq about the future became the second objective of scenario-based planning.

• The need to take existing mental models of the decision makers as the starting point.• Creating a refraining of the situation, through the introduction of new perspectives. The essential link between successful strategy and "seeing" the world in a new way. The new unique insight.• The need to understand predictability and uncertainty.•

planning became the generation of projects and decisions that are more robust under a variety of alternative futures.