Pierre Wack was head of scenario planning at Royal Dutch / Shell Oil in London for just over ten years. He died in 1997. He was a pioneer of what we know today as scenario planning – an alternative and complement to strategic planning. Scenarios explore a variety of possible futures for examining decisions in organizational planning. Pierre was a unique man with interests in Indian and Japanese cultures and traditions. He travelled extensively and led a unique life that involved long periods of visiting gurus in India and extended sabbaticals in Japan. His experiences with Eastern thought no doubt shaped his ability to evolve the scenario method at Shell, and as a result he was able to lead a team that foresaw the oil crises of the 1970’s and 80’s. This new volume will cover the basic context of his life timeline and attach it to the development of his thinking about scenario planning over the course of his career. After his death, Wack’s materials, papers and documents were collected by Napier Collyns and have recently been made available at the University of Oxford where the Pierre Wack Memorial Library has been established. These documents contain a variety of clues and stories that reveal more about who Pierre Wack was, how he thought and will provide details about scenario planning that have never been seen or published. They also reveal a curious man and include a timeline written by his wife, Eve, which details their relationship over the course of 40 years. Written for management and business historians and researchers, this book will uncover unseen contributions by a scenario planning pioneer shaped by significant events in his personal life that helped him to see the world differently.

This is the first book to offer detailed guidance on how scenarios can be used to help organizations make their toughest decisions in a world of ever-escalating crisis and opportunity. To reap the full benefits of scenarios, you have to be able to apply them in the real world. This groundbreaking book goes beyond the theoretical to clearly explain different ways scenarios can be used in business decision-making—from strategic planning and financial modeling to crisis response. Connecting scenarios to strategy and action can have many benefits, including the ability to react quickly, anticipate major changes in the environment, and identify major opportunities. Thomas Chermack, a top expert on scenario planning, offers seven specific ways organizations can use scenarios and provides a wide variety of examples, along with proven processes, exercises, and workshops that have been used successfully in organizations across industries and countries for more than fifteen years.

Scenario planning helps organization leaders, executives and decision-makers envision and develop strategies for multiple possible futures instead of just one. It enables organizations to become resilient and agile, carefully calibrating their responses and adapting quickly to new circumstances in a fast-changing environment. This book is the most comprehensive treatment to date of the scenario planning process. Unlike existing books it offers a thorough discussion of the evolution and theoretical foundations of scenario planning, examining its connections to learning theory, decision-making theory, mental model theory and more. Chermack emphasizes that scenario planning is far more than a simple set of steps to follow, as so many other practice-focused books do—he addresses the subtleties and complexities of planning. And, unique among scenario planning books, he deals not just with developing different scenarios but also with applying scenarios once they have been constructed, and assessing the impact of the scenario project. Using a case study based on a real scenario project Chermack lays out a comprehensive five phase scenario planning system—project preparation, scenario exploration, scenario development, scenario implementation and project assessment. Each chapter describes specific techniques for gathering and analyzing relevant data with a particular emphasis on the use of workshops to encourage dialogue. He offers a scenario project worksheet to help readers structure and manage scenario projects as well as avoid common pitfalls, and a discussion, based in recent neurological findings, of how scenario planning helps people to overcome barriers to creative thinking. “This book is about action and performance. Compelling and thoroughly researched, it offers every business executive a playbook for including uncertainty in the organizational change process and driving competitive advantage”. -- Tim Reynolds, Vice President, Talent and Organization Effectiveness, Whirlpool Corporation

Transformative scenario planning is a way that people can work together with others to transform themselves and their relationships with one another and their systems. In this simple and practical book, Kahane explains this methodology and how to use it.

Traditional strategy assumes stability and predictability. Today's world is better characterised by turbulence, uncertainty, novelty and ambiguity - conditions that contribute disruptive changes and trigger the search for new ways of coping. This book aims to become the premier guide on how to do scenario planning to support strategy and public policy. Co-authored by three experts in the field, the book presents The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach (OSPA). The approach is both intellectually rigorous and practical. Methodological choices and theoretical aspects in practice are detailed in reference to the relevant literatures and grounded in 6 case studies the authors have been involved with. The book makes several contributions to the field, centred on how learning with scenario planning is supported by re-framing and re-perception; how this iterative process can be embedded in corporate or government settings, and how it helps those that it supports to do well in today's world. The book is written in an accessible style and will be a useful introductory text as well as a useful guide for the more experienced scenario planning practitioner and scholar.

In a world characterized by increasing complexity and volatility, managers must be able to flexibly adapt their strategies to changing environmental conditions. Traditional strategic management frameworks often fail in this context. Therefore, we present "scenario-based strategic planning" as a framework for strategic management in an uncertain world. Previous approaches to scenario planning were complex and focused on the long term, but the approach developed by Roland Berger and the Center for Strategy and Scenario Planning at HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management is different. By designing appropriate tools and integrating scenario planning into strategic planning, we have made our approach less complex and easier for firms to apply. We illustrate the approach with examples from different industries.

This text provides a straightforward account of scenario planning making this important area accessible to business decision makers, as well as corporate planners.