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GILBERT STEIL, JR., AND MICHELE GIBBONS-CARR

Large Group Scenario Planning

The revolutionary idea that defines the boundary between modern times and the past is the mastery of risk: the notion that the future is more than a whim of the gods and that men and women are not passive before nature.

—Peter L. Bernstein

Real-Life Story

Keeping air traffic moving efficiently while preventing midair collisions is a lot more vital and imperative than deciding on computer software standards for the next decade. So it came as no surprise in February 2003 that the Chief Information Office (CIO) of a large aviation administration was falling behind on its commitments to an “Enterprise Architecture.” Making things more difficult was the fact that all of the operational information technology departments—the groups that would implement any new strategy—lived within fairly autonomous divisions of the agency. Their autonomy was based on some excellent reasons: the critical real-time nature of controlling national airspace, heightened security needs in an era of increasing terrorism, and the rising sophistication of cyber attacks. At the same time, the agency was about to face the implications of an Electronic Government Initiative, begun at the highest level of government, to increase productive use of electronic technology while simplifying the applications that already existed.

The main tool available to the CIO was the CIO Council, a cross-functional team that dealt with standards and strategies for the management of technology for the future. If there was to be change, every member of the CIO Council needed to be in enthusiastic agreement.

A two-day off-site meeting was planned for March 2003. Success would entail: a clear understanding of how the agency’s enterprise architecture would serve its divisions; the identification of specific areas of collaboration across divisions; and a set of principles to be employed in those collaborations.

The ability to agree was being limited by considerable uncertainty in the environment in which the agency had to operate (not within the agency itself). Would the demands for airspace continue to climb or would terrorism and the use of the Internet for business meetings lead to a decline? Would higher levels of government impose their own architecture on the agency? Would the needed platforms and other technology exist in time?

The heart of Large Group Scenario Planning is the characterization of four plausible future worlds outside the client system for which there is supportive data in current trends, and which are starkly different from each other. The CIO Council meeting began with a brainstormed list of trends in the government outside the agency, and in the world outside the government. Next, the resulting trends were divided into those that could be predicted and those that could not. The council then selected the two unpredictable trends that were the most important, which in traditional scenario planning are called the critical uncertainties.

One of the two critical uncertainties chosen was airspace demands, which could drop as larger aircraft came available and jet fuel price climbed, or which could rise dramatically as small jets became cheaper and as the economy supported a resurgence in single-engine pleasure aircraft. The other big uncertainty had to do with IT reform at the broader government level. Would the government impose new standards on all agencies in the short-term future? Or would the Electronic Government Initiative focus first on application simplification and issues with little impact on the agency’s enterprise architecture?

A matrix of these two critical uncertainties led to four possible future worlds:

1. Pressure and Conflict: If the combination of strong requirements for the Electronic Government Initiative and high airspace demands occurred simultaneously.

2. President’s Agenda: if the airspace demands dropped in the context of strong requirements for the Electronic Government Initiative.

3. Mission Focus: If Electronic Government was focused elsewhere while airspace demand soared.

4. Agency Opportunity: If neither airspace demand nor strong requirements to comply with Electronic Government became a reality in the five years ahead.

The CIO Council went on to grapple with probable and desirable futures for the agency, in the context of the four possible worlds. And then in that shared understanding, they began their work on areas of collaboration. The planners were unstuck, and the next year was characterized by successful collaborative work across the agency.

Frequently Asked Questions

HOW DOES LARGE GROUP SCENARIO PLANNING DIFFER FROM (TRADITIONAL) SCENARIO PLANNING?

The first generation of large group interventions, based on developments in social psychology between 1946 and 1990, changed forever how we think about participation in decision making within our organizations and communities. With these new tools, we discovered how to structure inclusive and effective interventions that utilize the wisdom of 35 to hundreds of people representing whole systems meeting face-to-face. Scenario Planning (chapter 34, “Scenario Thinking”) also dates from the mid–twentieth century and is a unique and valuable tool for thinking about the future. Large Group Scenario Planning brings the rich tool of traditional scenario planning into the family of social psychology–based interventions, where whole systems meeting in real time can use scenarios to enhance their planning for the future.

WHAT VALUE DOES SCENARIO PLANNING ADD TO LARGE GROUP INTERVENTIONS?

The use of Scenario Planning in large group interventions adds the discipline of careful thinking about the world in which the client organization or community will live. It precludes the risky assumption that the future will be an extrapolation of the past and present. The goal is not to create an accurate picture of tomorrow, but to challenge assumptions and expand perspectives so that better decisions about the future can be made in the present. The power of scenarios is that they take competing ideas—a variety of perspectives and interests that may clash—and considers them in a way that makes everyone face up to those aspects of future possibilities to which they may have to respond (see figure 1).

Figure 1. LGSP Activity Flow

Large Group Scenario Planning (LGSP) provides an answer to the question: How should an organization or community plan long-term strategy in the face of significant uncertainty about the future of the world in which that organization or community must live?

LGSP is based on the work of traditional scenario planners Schwarz, Ogilvy, Ringland, Schoemaker, and van der Heijden, who pioneered the development of several different but plausible views of the future as a way of setting direction when the character of the future environment is in doubt. LGSP compensates for the natural tendency of an organization or community to think of the future as an extrapolation of the present and the past, which in uncertain times can be a serious blunder. See chapter 34 for a fuller discussion of traditional scenario planning.

Table of Uses

About the Authors

Gilbert Steil, Jr. ([email protected]), principal of Gil Steil Associates, is an organization and management consultant specializing in the development of strategies, plans, and designs through the engagement of whole systems and their key stakeholders. Gil holds degrees in mathematics from Case Institute of Technology and in organization development from The American University.

Michele Gibbons-Carr, Ph.D. ([email protected]), is an organization consultant specializing in the area of organizational change and transformation, strategic planning, and use of large group interventions to initiate vision-driven change. Michele holds degrees in psychology from the Pennsylvania State University and in clinical psychology from Boston University, where she also studied organization development.

Where to Go for More Information

REFERENCES

Schwartz, P. Art of the Long View. New York: Doubleday, 1991.

Steil, Gilbert, and Michele Gibbons-Carr. “Large Group Scenario Planning.” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 41, no. 1 (March 2005).

INFLUENTIAL SOURCES

Fahey, L., and R. Randall. Learning from the Future, New York: Wiley, 1998.

Schoemaker, P. Profiting from Uncertainty. New York: Free Press, 2002.

ORGANIZATION

Gil Steil Associates—www.gilsteil.com