Using a longer lens

It’s been twenty years since the publication of Peter Schwartz’s insightful primer about scenario planning, The Art of the Long View. In the book, Schwartz makes a convincing case for using scenario planning in approaching strategic challenges of various kinds.

Schwartz, who led scenario planning efforts at Shell, Motorola, and Pacific Gas and Electric, concluded that the technique could be applied to handling the emergent complex threats that companies were confronting in the 90′s.

Since then, the world has grown radically more complex, more uncertain. Globalization and the Internet have woven together our institutions so that a crisis in one corner of the world can spread virally with far-reaching consequences.

Cascading consequences

We now live in a world where an unknown street vendor in an obscure Tunisian village sets himself on fire and a few weeks later the dictatorial regime in Egypt collapses. Those events triggered spiraling oil prices which boosted worldwide food and commodity prices with a cascade of far-reaching consequences.

While leaders can’t predict the next cataclysmic event, they must now contend with a wider range of plausible, discontinuous threats. Failure to do so can imperil their institutions.

In a world where traditional, linear thinking is inadequate, scenario planning is a platform for enabling problem solvers to explore the question: “Given what we know, and what we don’t know, what should we do now?”

That’s a significant question, but it’s not enough to simply ponder significant questions. Problem-solvers must also overcome the internal barriers – psychological as well as physical – which can paralyze organizations when the stakes are high. Scenario planning provides a context for examining assumptions and biases, and for avoiding the denial that ensues when facing existential threats.

Schwartz observes, “When decision-makers begin to look at the future, denial acts as an automatic shut-off valve: ‘I can’t consider that…’ A good scenario asks people to suspend their disbelief long enough to appreciate its impact.”

The Singapore Miracle

One of the more celebrated scenario planning cases is the Singapore story. That nation’s government first used the technique to help build its nascent entrepreneurial society in the 70’s and 80’s, and later to cope with a string of discontinuous shocks that threatened its economy including the Asian financial crisis of the 90’s.

Since then, Singapore has embedded the technique in its strategic planning efforts. Scenario thinking helped its leaders to recognize that in a region increasingly dominated by its giant neighbor, China, their nation must become an innovative technology hub. (Singapore’s mantra says it best: Anticipate change, stay relevant.) As a result, the government is investing $12 billion USD in technology R & D over five years — a 20% spending increase — to attract gifted engineers and entrepreneurs.

Lessons from the field

My own experience with scenario planning in a variety of settings has been overwhelmingly positive. It remains one of the more advanced tools in the strategic arsenal. My appreciation of the practice has only grown over time.

I’ve learned this: Convene the right problem-solvers under the right circumstances and they’ll reach a shared understanding, despite differences in perspective. Scenario planning helps organizations to recognize threats, opportunities and weak signals, and it often leads to practical solutions that everyone in the room can support.

When The Art of the Long View was published in ’91, scenario planning was deemed a novel technique for organizations facing rare and unusually complex issues. Today, most of our pressing challenges are laced with complexity — that’s our new reality.

If we’re going to prepare for what’s next, let’s bring in our sharpest minds and give them the tools to move the enterprise forward. I’m pleased to report that scenario planning is still the right tool for the job.

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As always, I’d appreciate hearing your views…

Want more info on this subject?

1. One of the more interesting critiques of Schwartz’s book is found in a video dialogue between Niall Ferguson and Schwartz
2. Here’s an insightful talk (video clip), The Singapore Miracle & Gov 2.0, by Peter Ho, Singapore’s former head of civil service, who explains his country’s work with scenario planning. Peter Schwartz is also featured
3. More on scenario planning is at Global Business Network (GBN), co-founded by Schwartz
4. Have a look at the World Economic Forum’s on-going scenario planning initiatives
5. Mats Lindgren’s ’09 book, Scenario Planning–The link between future and strategy
6. Bonus: An hour with Lee Kuan Yew, former PM-Singapore and author of ‘From Third World to First : The Singapore Story: 1965-2000′  on Charlie Rose (3/28/11)
7. Here’s a look at the Decision Support practice at my company, Osprey.

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“The formula is simple and it’s reduced to four words every kid in the world knows: Tell me a story. It’s that easy.” -Don Hewitt

Last week, Don Hewitt, founder and long-time producer of 60 Minutes, died.  He’ll be remembered, among other things, as an impresario who created one of TV’s most successful programs.  There’s a potent lesson for all of us in his “storyline”.

Hewitt’s vision and instincts culminated in a new, highly successful form of entertainment known as the “news magazine”. As important as that accomplishment is, his greatest feat may be his proving that story-telling is the key to success, not only in TV, but in every medium.  We, in business, have much to learn from Hewitt’s dogged pursuit of the story.

Before 60 Minutes came along in 1968, few people in the news business recognized, let alone harnessed, the power of story-telling to register with the audience.  “Hard news” was treated as serious and important, and it was distinct from lighter, but more popular programs.

Hewitt, aiming for high ratings, wanted to present news-based information that also resonated with viewers.  Like Shakespeare and Chekov, he understood that the shortest distance to an audience’s heart is through telling stories, especially about people.

On Sunday, 60 Minutes devoted its entire program to remembering and appreciating the man whose singular focus was “making the story better”.  It was an informative, touching tribute.  That program offers an object lesson for any of us who want to carry our message to a wider audience.

Making the Story Better

For 36 years, Hewitt ran 60 Minutes like an independent fiefdom within CBS. Every correspondent had his or her own producers who competed with one another to find and present material that mattered to viewers.  Hewitt pushed, cajoled, and corralled his staff to uncover, organize and present evocative stories.  And they did.

The correspondents didn’t focus on the issues; instead, they featured the people swept up by the issues. The most effective pieces involved people telling their own stories.

My favorite segments spotlight people convicted of crimes they didn’t commit.  Rather than merely recount what happened, the correspondents interview the subjects from their jail cells. They also talk with their family members, associates and accusers.  Each individual tells the story from their perspective. Over the course of the segment, a “narrative arc” emerges, and we, the audience, empathize with the subject. Typically, we want these hapless people vindicated.

That’s precisely the effect that Hewitt was determined to get.  He believed that well-crafted stories inspire audiences to feel differently and intensely — one way or another — about the subject. Turns out his beliefs are grounded in science.

Hard-wired for Stories

Stories are powerful because we’re “hard-wired” to respond to them. Psychologist Jerome Bruner said that kids as young as two years old, “understand the stories that their families tell them, and they start to tell their own stories, and in particular start to tell stories to themselves as part of their first efforts to make sense of their lives.”

Brain imaging now shows that people are highly stimulated when they experience a story.  In fact, individuals construct mental simulations as they experience and find meaning in stories.

We flock to films, theater, and novels because we respond deeply to their storyline.  The most successful fiction and non-fiction writers know this. Their stories answer the questions, “What happens to the hero, and why?”

To our detriment, many of us in business don’t fully appreciate the power of story-telling. Even our better reports — exacting and accurate — lack a storyline and fall short of capturing the reader’s imagination. Hence, we often fail to motivate the reader to take the action we desire.  Wasn’t our aim to move the reader to action?

Lots of books and blogs exhort us to tell stories. But, the story of Hewitt’s single-minded pursuit of telling the good story and the effect it has on audiences is far more persuasive. His story illustrates that it’s not enough to merely inform the audience to resonate. We ought to tell them a good story…

As always, I’d love to hear your views. What’s your story about story-telling?

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Want more information about story-telling?

Take a look at Seth Godin’s piece for Ode Magazine, “How to Tell a Great Story”. Or, read the book, Made to Stick- Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die… by Chip and Dan Heath.

Don Hewitt’s 2002 autobiography is Tell Me a Story.  It begins: “New Rochelle, New York, could have passed for a small town and did when George M. Cohan wrote about it and sang about it in the 1906 musical.”

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