Understanding the Future: An Introduction to Scenario Planning

Organizations today face an increasingly complex contextual environment. The intensity of what is recognized as a VUCA world has changed how they view the world, interact with each other, and respond to this environment. Understanding the Future shows individuals and organizations how to develop scenario planning, using the Intuitive Logics (IL) model, to perceive what is happening in the business environment and how to improve strategic decision-making to plan for uncertainty. Ronald Bradfield, a renowned scenario planning practitioner, traces the origins of scenario planning from its evolution to associated techniques and details the IL development process from Stage 1 to Stage 5. He includes an insightful chapter on how people think, describing the role of heuristics and biases, reviewing some of the commonly known ones, and concludes with the pros and cons of the IL model. This book includes extensive reference material: appendices, a list of Foresight and Scenario organizations, Futures journals and magazines, published scenarios, select readings and guides, and the author’s unique case material directly from his world-leading consulting work of the past 30 years. Understanding the Future is an exceptional, comprehensive guide for postgrads, practitioners, leaders, policymakers and anyone involved in organizational development or management risk who needs to understand the IL scenario framework and its value in addressing organizational challenges amidst complexity.