A note from me

I feel rather elated, stressed and foolish at the moment. I am one of those slightly ridiculous people, mainly men, who passionately support a football team through decades of trials and tribulations. And I’ve just watched them win a hard-fought game in which they went ahead twice and were pulled back twice before scoring a very late winner! A roller-coaster of emotions!

My team is Everton, in the English Premier League, and I am a season ticket holder with my eldest grandson. They have a fine history. Established in 1878 and a founding member of the Football League, they have had many triumphs in the past, but have not won a meaningful trophy for almost 30 years and have been going through a very hard time lately. They started this season badly, have had points deducted, and were almost relegated from the Premier League at the end of the last two seasons. In fact, it was the passionate support of the fans over the last few games of those seasons that almost dragged good performances from the team to ensure their Premier League survival.  

There is some relation to the topic of this Newsletter.  Alongside our analytical nature as people, emotions, enthusiasm and excitement also play important roles in our lives and choices. Recognising this is crucial for what I call the social/psychological craft in scenario thinking.

5 Features of the Social/Psychological Craft in Scenario Thinking:

The scenario approach is aimed at surfacing important fresh insights and bringing these to life in the minds, hearts and actions of decision-makers.  

In the last Newsletter, I focused on the analytical craft (“Craft 1”) of building scenarios to help surface fresh insights. In this Newsletter, I consider the social/psychological craft (“Craft 2”) aimed at bringing such insights to life with decision-makers. I believe 5 features merit highlighting.

1.  The S-Curve:

Important new insights are initially fragmented and incomplete, and to be strategically effective they need to be matured until they are fully coherent. Similarly, they are initially held by just an individual or small group of people, and to be translated into effective action they must become widely shared. These developments can be represented as a journey along two axes of a chart, starting from the bottom left (fragmented, private) and ending at the top right (coherent, shared).  

The typical human reaction to this challenge is to work extensively on developing the coherence of the insights while keeping them private so there is no risk of losing face by presenting something that can be criticised as immature. Then, finally, there is a desperate attempt to sell the ideas to others.  This route generally fails.  Decision-makers dislike being “sold” unfamiliar ideas. 

In contrast, a much more effective pathway is to work on ideas until they are just coherent enough to be shared initially without being dismissed out of hand and then, through the process of sharing and engagement, refine them collectively until they are fully coherent. This is a social process, taking an S-Curve pathway on the chart from the bottom-left to the top-right.

2.  The Learning Perspective

In the S-Curve process, the strategic facilitator is effectively enabling a collective learning journey for both specialists and decision-makers.  While approached and accomplished thoughtfully, much of this needs to be done with great subtlety. Senior leaders of all shades proclaim they are “open to learn”, but my experience is that they detest any sense that they are being “taught”. After all, most believe they are senior because of their successes built on their intelligence and learning through experience and a good understanding of the world. So, instead of trying to explicitly teach fresh insights, conditions need to be created where leaders explore possibilities and sense they are learning for themselves.  

3. Conditions for Learning

Faced with unfamiliar ideas, people may be stressed or relaxed, and they may be engaged with what they are encountering or disinterested. If they are disinterested and stressed, they will simply ignore the ideas. If they are disinterested and relaxed, they will unthinkingly go with the flow. If they are engaged but stressed, then they will tend to be locked into stress reactions – fight, flight or freeze. Only if people are relaxed and engaged do they enter the “learning zone”.

One aspect of Craft 2 is, therefore, to create relaxed circumstances for engagement, e.g. through informal workshops and informal conversations alongside any formal requirements for decision-making. A second aspect is to meet people where they are, with what is already on their minds as important, even if it is intended that they will eventually journey well beyond this. Scenarios also need to be memorable, e.g. with striking names that convey the essence of the storylines and help people remember critical features.

4.  Strategic Conversations

Conversations and deliberations of strategic significance take place in all organisations, and are often part of planned processes. It is important that any significant fresh insights that can ultimately support wiser judgments become interweaved in these conversations. The challenge is that the focus of most leaders is on matters they already recognise as important. Insights that seem unfamiliar can easily become pushed to one side.  

Going back to the S-Curve, the top-right quadrant of the chart draws all the attention and the bottom-left is neglected. Of course, it is important for scenario practitioners to be engaged with the top-right, but they also need to be regularly filling the pipeline for senior attention from the bottom-left. Planned engagements on key external reflection areas and their implications for the organisation need to be formally woven into the process of strategic conversations.

5. Overcoming the need for Personal Affirmation 

The Austrian philosopher Schopenhauer noted that new truths are first ignored or ridiculed, then vehemently opposed, and then eventually taken to be self-evident. This is the type of journey the scenario practitioner is attempting to encourage others along, through the social craft.  

Therefore, on this journey, practitioners are first ignored or thought ridiculous, then considered an enemy, and ultimately believed to be irrelevant since their so-called insights are obvious and already known! At none of these stages will their work feel truly valued. If practitioners seek steady affirmation, they are in the wrong profession. The bulk of their personal satisfaction has to come from recognising how their work is ultimately reflected in wiser organisational judgements and strategic actions. 

Question of The Fortnight

Every fortnight I’ll be asking a thought-provoking question in hopes of sparking interesting and enlightening discussion.

I’d love to hear your response! You can do so by simply responding to this email.

Today’s question is:

How do we bring about change without raising resistance from those who do not support the cause?

Join The Dodo Club

I’m building a community and, of course, it’s called The Dodo Club.

Why? Because we all want to avoid the fate of that unfortunate bird. And by sharing some of the insights I’ve picked up over my four decade long career - including as Head of the Shell Scenarios team - I’m going to help you do exactly that.

I am building a space where we can have interesting and enlightening discussions on relevant topics that can have genuine impact.

I plan to host live, interactive seminars, run forums on relevant topics, and create a bank of materials that can be drawn from in times of uncertainty.

We’re still in the early stages of building, but if this sounds like something that might interest you, I’d be honoured if you would sign up below: