Executive Development Programmes
The Three and a Half Day Practical Introduction to the Practice of Scenario Planning
The course is based on gaining knowledge by participation and is highly interactive.
Participants work in groups, select a case "client" - one of the delegates - and analyse the case in some depth using the components of our scenario thinking process. As such, delegates will gain confidence in the use of tools to deal with uncertainty, ambiguity and risk in policy /strategy development.
Course aims and description
Participants gather for dinner and programme launch on Tuesday evening. The following 3 days are spent developing the case in a number of programmed steps, and reflecting on experience gained. Final presentations take place on Saturday morning followed by a "learning points" session. The course breaks up at lunchtime.
During the course, delegates will develop multiple scenarios and strategy analysis for the selected case and present these outcomes to the whole class for discussion and analysis. Members for the Centre for Scenario Planning and Future Studies will provide tuition, facilitation, and analysis of each group's work. In this way, participants will experience and explore issues in carrying out a scenario planning analysis of a strategic issue.
Overview of course content
- Evening: general introduction, case selection
- Session 1: business idea development
- Session 2: 1st generation scenarios
- Session 3: 1st generation scenarios, continued
- Session 4: systems analysis of driving forces, questions for analysis
- Session 5: 2nd generation scenario cycle
- Session 6: business idea windtunnelling, strategic implications
- Session 7: presentation of results, learning points, next steps
Knowledge outcomes
- Awareness of practitioner approaches to policy/strategy development that explicitly allow for uncertainty and ambiguity in the business environment.
- Understanding of the limitations to organizational perception, and ways to increase the range of vision of organizations.
- Awareness of intervention possibilities, their purposes and approaches.
- Understanding of the relationship between organizational policy/decision processes and uncertainty/ambiguity, and the relevance of scenario planning in this.
Skill outcomes
- Being able to initiate a scenario planning process in a practical setting in one's own organization.
- Being able to apply new tools for analysing the business environment more effectively.
- Being able to apply new tools for analysing the strategic characteristics of one's own organization.
- Being more effective in communicating on issues concerning organizational perception and learning.