12.01.2009

London Libraries View the Future

Scenario Planning is often viewed as both a viable process for thinking about strategy and an extreme use of organizational resources. I think these viewpoints are direct decedents of Royal Dutch Shell and its much publicized use of scenarios beginning back in the mid 1970’s. Shell used scenarios to address major systemic issues that the multinational company might face within the next 25 years. Shell also had access to resources that enabled the organization to spend a great deal of time and money on its scenario design. That is a model that does not transfer well to smaller organizations; the same organizations that could also profit from scenario planning.

In late September RedQuadrant turned that time and money concern on its head when it hosted a 1 day scenario planning workshop for 34 members of the London Library community. The group produced four plausible scenarios about the future of London Libraries and they did this work in about eight hours time. Many scenario planning experts would term this an “implausible scenario.”

This team of 34 people pulled this work off because they entered the room that morning having already answered the four critical questions that an individual or a team must address if progress is going to be made on a challenging problem. Those questions are:

1. How do you define the gap between where you are today and where you want to be in the future and what is producing the gap?
2. Are you willing to share your view and your reasoning behind your viewpoint?
3. Are you willing to listen to others’ viewpoints and receive feedback from other people?
4. Are you willing to take action?

Answering these questions is the beginning of scenario work because they get to the heart of scenario planning. Designing plausible futures are an output of scenario planning but the fact is that few if any of these plausible futures come to pass as designed. The real value of scenario planning is revealed in the social interaction that takes place between people. It is here that people discover their mental models and how those models shape what they see, produce limits and constrict action. Peter Drucker refers to this condition as “banging against the glass ceiling.”

The process of designing scenarios is embedded with multiple opportunities for a person’s thinking to be challenged. For the person who is willing and open to exploring her world view, scenario planning is often a liberating change experience. This is a change of professional or personal identity. An identity that is now more open, more curious and more likely to see the world as it is.

The London Library Scenario Planning session did not solve all the challenges the library system faces but participants did leave with a better understanding that the world is an invention made up by people whose only limit is how they see that world. Or how they see the future of libraries.


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