Executive Development Programmes

Fast Track to Managerial and Organisational Success

Scenario thinking is purposeful and effective in driving strategy and organisational development towards managerial and organisational success.

The courses are focused on organisational survival: the reasons why private-sector organisations do not always survive, and what can be done about it. Within public-sector organisations, our focus is on the failure or ineffectiveness of policy development

Survival means creating value for stakeholders, and the survival problems starts with uncertainty, change and the need for organisations to adapt to shifting needs and market conditions. The key question is "Why are organisations slow to change and adapt?"

Unsuccessful organisations are distinguished by their failure to overcome thinking and behavioural flaws at personal, organisational and community levels. In these courses, we explain what these flaws are and how the scenario approach helps senior managers and organisations to overcome them. Our approach is based on reasoning, research, real world observations - and a long track record developing scenario-based thinking, combining the most effective elements of the many scenario approaches that have been tried over time.

The CSPFS Scenario Methodology

Members of the CSPFS have been involved in future studies for many years, and our work traces its origins directly to the pioneering work in scenario planning in Shell going back more than 30 years. Our approach is based on policy makers gaining knowledge "by participation", through being active in exploration of future pathways from multiple viewpoints and keeping an open mind towards new ideas that may throw new light on the ways in which the future could unfold.

Scenario thinking opens the future to multiple perspectives - rather than a single, business-as-usual, view of what the future will hold. Our scenario approach is an inclusive methodology, providing space for input from stakeholders, expert and non-traditional - even maverick - views. Our methodology is capable of integrating this multitude of seemingly unrelated, often chaotic, inputs into a limited number of coherent, internally consistent stories about the future. This provides a basis for building successful strategies and organisations.

Our approach identifies where understanding of the situation is incomplete and provides a framework for the straight-forward incorporation of both desk-based research and expert opinions such that new innovative perspectives are generated to provide an integrated understanding of the future. Scenario thinking is the ideal preparation for putting you in the position to design strategy and propose policies and helping you evaluate whether current decisions are future-proof.

Alongside technology development, globalisation, and economic and intellectual growth, the world is becoming more interlinked. Multiple vocal stakeholders increasingly insist on being heard. The challenge is to embed technical analysis within processes that can deal with multi-disciplinary perspectives in order to better reflect the complexities of real-world issues as they present themselves to us today.

To remain effective in strategy and inter-active policy and to avoid policy disasters the policy makers need to be able to handle this increasing level of dynamic complexity. Being able to notice "dots on the horizon" and bringing possible future developments into the strategic conversation in a timely manner is a key skill. Our scenario thinking methodology enables policy makers and strategists to:

• Explore multiple, plausible, pathways into the future
• Approach the issues from multi-disciplinary perspectives
• Tap into relevant disciplinary expert knowledge and embed this in the broader policy perspective
• Tap into new and non-traditional views on the issue
• Involve a broad spectrum of key stakeholders in the strategic conversations