Interview: the leader's handbook to the future

Bill Ralston and Ian Wilson have written a unique resource for corporate leaders – The Scenario Planning Handbook: Developing Strategies in Uncertain Times (Thomson/Southwestern, 2006). Strategy & Leadership editor Robert M. Randall interviewed them to ask, for example, Why does scenario planning deserve special top management attention?

The interview covers such topics as: Do executives really need to get involved with the nuts and bolts of scenario development? Will that really help them with the management of strategy which is clearly their prime responsibility?

The authors of the Handbook believe that scenario planning is an excellent way to “rehearse the future.” By thinking continuously about the future, and how a business might react to major changes, managers will be better prepared to respond quickly to extraordinary events when they do occur.

Scenario planning can lead to true organizational learning if leaders facilitate four developments: executives, managers and staff must become convinced that long‐term, superior performance of the organization depends on anticipating and responding to future events, discontinuities, innovations and trends better than the competition; information – about internal and external developments –must flow freely so that the seeds of new businesses can grow as existing businesses compete aggressively for market share; the organization must acquire or develop competencies in external‐environment intelligence, technology innovation, planning under uncertainty, experimenting with new products and services, and executing change; and effective processes must be developed for scanning and monitoring, scenario planning, technology innovation, and decision‐making under uncertainty.

This interview taps the experience the two scenario planning consultants have accumulated from working on scenario projects over several decades.