Great post! As someone with experience in strategic foresight/scenario planning, I want to push back a little on the "scenario planning on tap" idea
tl;dr: value of the process often > value of the output
The outputs of scenario planning exercises are useful (how often people actually read them is a different question...) but the main value frequently comes from just getting a bunch of relevant people in the room and having them think about the future for a while.
If this process was automated away, you may:
1. Atrophy the skill of key decision-makers at creatively exploring possible futures
2. Reduce the subconscious/intuitive/emotional "closeness" of future generations in the minds of key decision-makers
3. Artificially narrow the range of options considered as humans with key contextual/tacit knowledge are no longer involved: "The computer has handled it, these are the 4 options"
(1.) and (2.) are true for both individual futures exercises and the broader process of upskilling people in anticipation of these exercises; in the UK civil service, for instance, many policymakers and analysts (especially seniors) get a fair bit of training in futures techniques. I'd be surprised if this didn't improve decision-making generally by making sure (senior) people have the future impacts of their day-to-day decisions closer to the forefront of their minds than they otherwise would. If that's no longer needed, the training will become an unnecessary expense, and the benefits may disappear.
None of the above is fatal, just something to be considered.
Our (peripheral) colleague Gordon has a similar perspective, and I’m very sympathetic to it. The implications are that you ought to be aiming to produce tooling which supports and enables much more scenario planning to be done, rather than thinking of it as an output to be commoditised per se. See Gordon here:
I agree with this intention, I just wonder how a given tool may be used in practice in a time/funding-constrained organisation. Will people use their new-found efficiency to do more scenario planning, or to use the freed-up time to do something else?
Great post! As someone with experience in strategic foresight/scenario planning, I want to push back a little on the "scenario planning on tap" idea
tl;dr: value of the process often > value of the output
The outputs of scenario planning exercises are useful (how often people actually read them is a different question...) but the main value frequently comes from just getting a bunch of relevant people in the room and having them think about the future for a while.
If this process was automated away, you may:
1. Atrophy the skill of key decision-makers at creatively exploring possible futures
2. Reduce the subconscious/intuitive/emotional "closeness" of future generations in the minds of key decision-makers
3. Artificially narrow the range of options considered as humans with key contextual/tacit knowledge are no longer involved: "The computer has handled it, these are the 4 options"
(1.) and (2.) are true for both individual futures exercises and the broader process of upskilling people in anticipation of these exercises; in the UK civil service, for instance, many policymakers and analysts (especially seniors) get a fair bit of training in futures techniques. I'd be surprised if this didn't improve decision-making generally by making sure (senior) people have the future impacts of their day-to-day decisions closer to the forefront of their minds than they otherwise would. If that's no longer needed, the training will become an unnecessary expense, and the benefits may disappear.
None of the above is fatal, just something to be considered.
Our (peripheral) colleague Gordon has a similar perspective, and I’m very sympathetic to it. The implications are that you ought to be aiming to produce tooling which supports and enables much more scenario planning to be done, rather than thinking of it as an output to be commoditised per se. See Gordon here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/subconscious/p/deep-future-on-the-orthogonal-bet?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Interesting, will take a look!
I agree with this intention, I just wonder how a given tool may be used in practice in a time/funding-constrained organisation. Will people use their new-found efficiency to do more scenario planning, or to use the freed-up time to do something else?
Just requires careful design, I suppose.