Introduction

Scenario planning is a powerful tool that organisations use to anticipate and prepare for the future. By developing a range of plausible scenarios and exploring the potential impact of each one, groups can make better decisions and build more resilient strategies. To create effective scenarios, it's essential to identify the key drivers of change, develop multiple scenarios, and test and refine them to ensure they are robust and comprehensive.

There are several reasons why we use scenario planning. First, it helps us identify potential opportunities and threats that may arise in the future. We can develop more robust and adaptable strategies by considering different scenarios, enabling us to respond effectively to environmental changes.

Second, scenario planning promotes creativity and innovation within the organisation. It encourages leaders to think beyond their current assumptions and mental models, challenging them to consider broader possibilities.

Finally, scenario planning can improve communication and collaboration within the organization. By involving different stakeholders in the process, scenario planning can help build consensus and a shared understanding of the company's challenges.

This workshop aims to expose participants to new frameworks and methodologies that will be helpful when working with external groups, internal groups, or clients. These methodologies help stretch design scenarios into design responses to those scenarios.

Designing Scenarios

“No scenario is good or bad; they merely provide a set of drivers and/or constraints for teams to co-design a cogent response.” - Peter Durand

When designing these scenarios, the goal is to identify forces that push these scenarios or states of being forward and also constrain what is causing friction or limiting the process.

It is essential to avoid backcasting. Backcasting puts people in the future and works backward. With scenario planning, it is better to work in an open field and identify the drivers and constraints in a context for a group and use those to look at the future in different time horizons.

“The future is rational only in hindsight.”
- MG Taylor Axiom

It is always challenging to talk about the future. We either over or under-estimate the time frame in which something will happen.

An example of this can be seen through Peter’s work in the healthcare field. In 2018, he worked with a group of doctors that dealt with infectious diseases. One of the scenarios they proposed to a sponsor team was a global pandemic. The response was that they already had a plan and needed to focus on pressing issues. In May 2020, Peter checked in with one of the head doctors, and the plan was not working.

Backcasting is only rational in hindsight. Yes, we were able to see what could happen by looking backward, but we also want to expand into the big empty field of all the different possibilities.

Four Archetypes

When designing with sponsor teams, an important question is, “What is the big problem or big context in which you're trying to design within?”

Here are four different archetypes of the trajectory for how things could go for a specific problem:

Continued growth. Things are going great, and we must maintain and manage growth. For example, as a business increases, it needs to hire more people and develop incentives to keep them there. They need to attract and retain and keep productivity up. This is where many economies found themselves after the pandemic in 2021

Collapse. The system has become too big or tenuous. There are not enough resources and too much demand. Whatever the pressures were, the system collapsed.

Growth with discipline. This is the slow scaling, slow growth through the practice of a methodology that gets tweaked over time. An example of this can be seen through electric vehicles. They have been talked about for years, but Tesla has changed the game, and now every economy is making that transition to meet the high demand.

Total Transformation. This is a step-like change. A radical change from the current state creates a transformation—the entire system changes. This can be caused by birth, marriage, divorce, etc.

Stages of Enterprise

This MG Taylor model is helpful when working with a sponsor team to design scenarios.

This model has all four of the archetypes mentioned above embedded into it. The grey circle in the middle is called the entrepreneurial button.

This refers to the junction point you encounter while working with a group, where the direction of progress becomes uncertain. At these moments, significant driver constraints and challenges arise. The entrepreneurial button, however, allows you to explore possibilities and explore the question: what might that look like?

It is critical to give scenarios that talk about this transformation.

The Shell Method

In Peter Schwartz’s The Art of the Longview, he presents The Shell Method. This method entails a comprehensive approach that involves gathering data and resources, particularly in the macro forces, aggregating the facts around them to use, and crafting scenarios over time.

There are three primary stages:

Stage one asks, “What are those big driving forces?”

Stage two questions, “What are the predetermined elements of those forces vs. the critical uncertainties?”

The pre-determined elements are things that we know are happening. These are slow-changing phenomena such as population growth, constrained political situations, or national investments already in the pipeline.

Critical uncertainties are highly unpredictable events or phenomena such as oil prices, war, and economic or social disruptions.

Creative 2+ scenario narratives. These are stories about the future in which we “imagine the world.”

This is where you bring your participants into the future. You can create a seemingly impossible scenario and have the group design around this.

The 2 x 2 method

This is a simple framework. It works to draft and audit scenarios along 2-3 axes quickly.

So, how do you build this?

The initial step in this process entails establishing a framework that consists of two axes, which facilitates the creation of a 2 x 2 matric. This will help ensure that the design scenarios formulated do not have four different scenarios that address similar dynamics. It is crucial to encompass all four archetypes: slow growth, collapse, total transformation, and rapid transformation.

This method serves both as an audit and design tool and its effectiveness can be maximized by engaging the sponsor team so that they can map out and make sure they have all the bases covered.

5 Principles

The 5 Principles is a process that helps groups stretch and design scenarios leaning towards predictable surprises. There are five stages:

Help participants switch their perspectives. Give them a persona or scenario and force them to live in that. Give them two different drivers and a persona.

Push them further. Layer in other driving factors or constraints to move people out of what is right in front of them and have them look out further

Anticipating values. It is one thing to think about the macro changes happening around them but another thing to force people to predict how they will value life. What might be a value that is important today? What are the Value Shifts?

Find connections between values and drivers.

The goal is to identify predictable surprises that we might anticipate and begin to design our systems, products, and services around them.

These five principles are used to help build scenarios.

Working with scenarios

“The scenarios are not the point. It is not the endpoint. It is all about engaging people in a critical thinking exercise to build that capacity and that muscle memory for responding to these potential opportunities and threats and state changes etc.” - Peter Durand

Background

How many events have used rockets, race cars, mountains, or moonshots as a metaphorical theme?

Low-hanging fruit, swim lanes, scalable solutions, offline, bandwidth, ecosystem, bleeding edge, ducks in a row, think outside the box, move the needle, peel the onion, take it to the next level…all common, typical, business metaphors that we have heard.

If you are eager to enhance your visual communication skills, simplify intricate concepts, and captivate your audience, this workshop is designed just for you. Join us and learn how to harness the magic of visual metaphors to unravel complex, adaptive problems.

There are icons, and then there are symbols. As graphic facilitators, we often use both. An icon looks like the thing it represents. They are used a lot with user experience and interface design. A symbol can be a simple drawing, a couple of lines, dots, arrows, or circles, but a symbol requires cultural knowledge. A symbol has embedded knowledge in it. You have to be taught what a symbol is, whereas an icon is more universal.

So, what is a metaphor?

A metaphor connects an unfamiliar or abstract concept to a familiar and concrete image.

Let’s take the example of the metaphor, catching a whale. Often, we associate whales with something grand or large, maybe dangerous or a rare site to see, and we know that this metaphor means something is a big deal. Using something familiar, such as a whale, we create a psychological, social, or metaphysical connection to them.

As facilitators, we use metaphors to connect the unfamiliar to our audience and as a tool to help the audience think, feel, or do something. Metaphors are tools that work to connect people to big ideas, values, or a set of emotions. The goal is to help our audience think, feel, and do something different.

Why might we use metaphor as a story?

Most people in the technical fields start with data and work their way down. They use the numbers to make decisions or take action and evaluate whether those actions/decisions are good or bad based on their values (freedom, stability, or sustainability).

But it is better to start at the bottom; start with your values and then move up the line. Using metaphors is a great way to frame those thoughts, feelings, and actions that are our values.

Exploring birds as a metaphor

Birds are great metaphors. When using a metaphor, we can ask/invite people to think through how this metaphor applies to them, us, or the situation.

During the session, participants went into breakout groups for three minutes. They discussed what comes to mind when they think of birds. They then came back to the group and shared their thoughts.

Flocking rules.

Flocks of birds were used as a metaphor in a corporate leadership session to help the leadership group identify their own rules for how they were going to coordinate their efforts with their separate teams around the globe.

There were three aspects of flocking rules that they wanted to embed as values: cohesion, alignment, and agility. These values became a group document that they could point back to and check whether they were engaging in behaviors that expressed the values of cohesion, alignment, and agility and helped reinforce them.

The goal is to make progress, gain clarity, and make collective decisions together.

Metaphor for change

Birds are easy to identify, but what happens when we look at words like transform, growth, or change? Participants went back into groups to describe what transformation is and what it looks like in three simple words. Some examples were to change form, shapeshift, or evolve. There are a lot of ingredients in the abstract notion of transformation.

Why is change so hard yet so easy?

According to Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, some things change naturally, with no external pressure, whereas in organizations, it takes a lot of energy, time, focus, and intention to drive change.

How can we help when a change is needed or wanted?

The metaphor used in this book is the rider and the elephant. The elephant is whatever the structure is. It is a system that is large and powerful. It does not move quickly, but when it does, it affects everything around it, whereas the rider has no physical power over the elephant. An elephant can be conditioned and raised from an infant to think it has to listen to the rider.

So, how does the rider inspire or motivate the elephant?

As a rider, you determine the difficulty of the path for the elephant. As facilitators, we attempt to direct the rider, who is interested in change through facilitation tools and methods and by creating the right environment to influence decision-making. It is crucial to motivate the elephant.

What are the key motivators of an elephant?

Creating a psychologically, financially, and sociologically safe environment.

This is a memorable metaphor because it becomes embedded in the pattern language.

“Metaphors have legs ( this is a metaphor for a metaphor) they can travel far and make it easier for people to remember, think, feel, and connect. It also makes it easier to communicate with others. “
- Peter Durand

Group Reflections

It is important to choose a metaphor that connects to the values of the community to influence, motivate, and help.

A lot of metaphors are gendered and male-centric.

Start the session with a metaphor and have groups explore that metaphor. Then have them come back and point the direction of how it relates to the work they are doing.

Forced metaphors. Create the metaphor in the moment. For example, tell the group, “Creativity is like spaghetti. Why?” It forces them to create a connection.

Have the sponsor provide the metaphor to help us to better understand the challenge that they are going through.

By having the sponsors create their metaphor, it becomes more memorable and meaningful.

Metaphors are sticky. This stickiness is a part of their power to involve and create shared values and languages.

They get sticky because they assume there is a static beginning and end and not that transformation is an ongoing process.

Making sure that the metaphor and language we use are relevant to the time we are in right now.

Introduction

If you've ever found yourself in a workshop that has derailed or hit a snag, our virtual workshop on "When Things Go Off the Rails" is your compass back to success. Join us to master the art of getting your design thinking workshops back on track...or at least off a cliff!!

In this session, participants shared stories about how things have gone off the rails in the context of a facilitative process and working with groups. Going off the rails means things did not go as planned and the situation is potentially dire.

The inspiration for this comes from thinking about complex problems, testing out ideas, and thinking about rapidly prototyping solutions together in the spirit of making life and the planet healthier and better for all. This is on the grand scale.

On the micro-scale, as facilitators, designers, teachers, and solution designers we typically have a plan on how to work with others. That plan rarely survives contact with reality.

The Three Cats

In an MG-Taylor model, they talk about the three cats.

1. One is the idea of the “cat”

2. The second is the handmade or person-made version of a schematic of a cat

3. Finally, there is the lived experience of the cat.

The point of the model is that there is the ideal, the prototype, and the lived design or experience. These are three very different things. As humans, we gravitate toward one of those three versions of the cat and believe “That’s it, that's what a cat is” and we don’t see it from the other perspectives.

When we think about things going wrong it is important to remember that it is all a part of reality. Each person has a different perspective. What is considered “going wrong” for you may be going right for someone else.

Storytelling

Participants went into breakout rooms to tell stories and discuss their personal experiences of when things had gone off the rails during a facilitator process.

When this happened to Peter, he would go down a set of questions to process what happened.

About 20 years ago Peter was working in Miami with a large multinational company on creating a strategy for what was to happen in the next 3-5 years. This day also happened to be September 11th, 2001 when a national tragedy occurred that had global ramifications.

As the facilitation team, they had to figure out what to do next. It was up to them to figure out what everyone needed individually, what the client team needed to do, and what the facilitation team needed to do.

They made the decision to keep the meeting going. This is an extreme example due to the fact that there was an unexpected event.

But no matter the reasoning behind why we go off the rails, it is our job as facilitators to respond.

How we might design better?

Participants went into breakout rooms to discuss the following (guided by the directions):

How can we be better solution designers and collaborators to prevent certain dynamics or issues from derailing the process?

Designing well can help prevent things from going off the rails.

What can we do to design and prevent these issues from arising? What are the interventions that are helpful at the moment?

The Debrief

Trust our processes, believe in our experiences, and even though you’ve prepared, everything is not going to go as planned.

Create prevention. At the beginning of a session, name behaviors and rules of agreement. Name the behaviors that occurred when things were aligning. Form an opportunity to see common humanity in a room.

Deezer playlist. Music can shift the emotion in a room and can help guide the participants. For example, plugging the song “Imagine” into Deezer and it will generate a list of songs that have a similar message or tone.

Changing the pace in the room. Changing the energy, changing our posture, and the way they see us. Making space and acknowledging that exploring different topics breeds uncertainty, lack of control, and other sources of fear and anxiety. As facilitators, we are here to hold that uncertainty.

Building trust with sponsors and your team can help build trust for when something goes off the rails.

Use sensitive language and have a level of empathy.

How to structure conversations

Designing for the objectives. What are the goals and what are the sticky bits that are in the room?

Facilitation is not a part of the process, it is the process. It is the strategy. Facilitation is being able to facilitate the leadership team to be aware and help them understand their role at different points of the process.

It is important to educate the client on how things function and show them the roles and the importance those roles play- including the role of process facilitation. Without it, we cannot guarantee success.

What are the design constraints? Time, budget, people, geography, materials. Within these design constraints, how might we address them to build the most successful intervention?

Lack of diverse perspectives: how do we address that?

Building the right sponsor team is key. Make sure that they are diverse. At the end of the conversation ask the group “Is there anyone that we should involve in this conversation next time and why?”

If you realize that there is someone missing while leading a team, name it instead of ignoring it.