We have already shared some thoughts about the power of imagining alternatives but looking at the questions people raised at the UK Theatre/SoLT seminars last week we thought that a deeper dive might be helpful. In this blog we have tried to offer some practical help in the context of working from home rather than being in a workshop/office setting.
Good luck with your future stories!
Susan
Scenario planning comes in lots of flavours with varying levels of detail from the broad brush to the highly detailed with accompanying spreadsheets. This approach is designed as a quick, creative process to help you think more widely and deeply about how the future might play out and therefore what you might want to include in your plans. It is not designed to produce a detailed model of a hoped for future.
The process has four steps:
- Generate a list of the big uncertainties or drivers of change that you are facing. Choose two.
- Use the two factors to create a matrix of four possible scenarios (see below). Consider how each scenario might look and feel.
- For each scenario think about what it would take for your organisation to flourish in that alternative future.
- Look at the ideas you have generated. Choose the ones that you want to include in your future plans.
Step One
Think about the forces that might shape your work or your organisation’s future, the big uncertainties that are making planning so difficult. They might be about the economy, how your audiences will respond once buildings can re-open, who your clients are, where your partners and collaborators will be or what the priorities of your funders might be. Some factors might be national and others local and specific to the communities you work with.
Draw up a list and choose the two that you want to play with. Don’t worry about making the right choice; you will find that the other factors will come back into play when you start mapping out your four scenarios.
You could use instant messaging (WhatsApp or chat in Teams), or chat in video conferencing, to create the list and use an online poll to vote for the top using something like Microsoft Forms or Survey Monkey.
Step Two
Map your two factors onto a two by two matrix. Agree descriptors for each end of the two spectra. You are aiming for extremes to stretch your thinking not realistic nuance.
This example looks at the possible interaction of two factors: economic performance and audience behaviour.
Spend some time thinking about each scenario. You could ask different members of your team to take one scenario each and share their thinking in video conferencing breakout groups or via google docs or shared documents in Microsoft 365.
Step Three
Once you have a shared, broad understanding of what each alternative future might look like, think about what your organisation would need to operate to succeed in that world.
In the webinar we suggested three ways that you could do this. You could choose one, two or three of these approaches or come up with your own lenses. Work with whatever frameworks you find most fruitful.
Approach One – basic post its
Just look at the four scenarios and brainstorm what it would take to be successful in that possible future. You can use an online whiteboard to record and share your ideas.
As you work through each scenario try and focus on just that one alternative future. Imagine what it would be like to live and work in that world.
- Ask yourselves what your customers would want and need. What would they want you to offer them?
- Who would share your aims and values?
- Who would you want to partner with?
- How would you need to operate as an organisation?
- Where might your income come from?
- What would be your major costs?
Approach Two – personas
You may be familiar with the idea of personas from marketing or from user experience design.
A persona is a fictional, yet realistic, description of a typical or target user of the product. A persona is an archetype instead of an actual living human, but personas should be described as if they were real people. (Harley, 2015)
Develop a persona for each scenario. This can easily be done by individual team members developing one persona each. Use a common template so you can share your thinking easily.
Discuss each persona/scenario:
- What would this person need/want from you in the given scenario?
- What would they be willing and able to pay for?
- How would you need to operate as an organisation to meet their needs whilst remaining financially viable?
Help with developing personas quickly:
Empathy Map:
Approach Three – business model canvas
This approach asks you to design, at the level of a ‘napkin sketch’ a business model for your organisation that should deliver both impact and financial viability in each of the four scenarios using the business model canvas visual tool.
A business model describes the rationale of how an organisation creates, delivers and captures value. (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010)
The business model canvas is a tool for mapping out your business model, at a high level, on one (large) sheet of paper; or, in this case, on a shared screen. Dawn and I have found it to be a great tool. Do not spend hours on each canvas: your focus should be the big picture not the detail.
Review the four canvases and see which elements of your possible business models you might want to include in your future business model. Here’s some ‘how to’ guides for the canvas
Step Four
Look at the ideas you generated.
- Identify the themes that are common to more than one scenario; if they are common to most scenarios or the ones you think most likely, they are probably worth developing further.
- Which ideas are in real conflict? These represent areas where you will have to make choices around which ideas to prioritise for further work.
The whole process can take as much or as little time as you have available. You can get good results from only an hour or so.
Dawn
Susan’s given a great overview of the process so I only have a few things to add.
News of the day: another approach I use with scenarios is to write the news headlines of the day. Take each of the four alternatives and imagine what the key news stories might be in that context. It’s another good way of bringing the possible futures to life and thinking about what you’d have to do as a freelancer or organisation to respond.
Size doesn’t matter: As we covered in yesterday’s blog you don’t have to be a big organisations with tons of resources to use these tools, I often use them as a sole trader and I have seen them work well with teams of two or three. Just be realistic about what you can achieve.
Groupthink: if you are able to do this kind of activity with a group be aware of how the people in group work together. If you are used to working as a team and there is a tendency to agree with each other you may have a touch of groupthink. Basically, where the group drives everyone towards consensus. This can feel secure and comfortable, particularly in the current environment but it doesn’t always generate new ideas. If you want some more radical ideas bring in other perspectives or try out the Six Thinking Hats we mentioned yesterday.
Susan & Dawn
References
Harley, Aurora (2015) Personas make users memorable for product team members. Nielsen Norman Group. Available at https://www.nngroup.com/articles/persona/
Osterwalder, A. and Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers and Challengers. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.