Create your own scenarios

Overview

Scenarios are an excellent way of gaining a shared understanding of a situation in a way that is easy to grasp - and a convenient way to explore issues affecting your organisation. Creating your own scenarios gives everyone the chance to buy-in to a group activity and have their say. This simple scenario planning method will get you started.

Benefits

Bespoke scenarios are highly useful because the process of creating them is as valuable as the scenarios themselves. They provide a space to explore all issues facing your organisation, in a way that is easy to share and discuss. They help confront our assumptions, recognise uncertainty and widen our perspective on what may happen - so we can be better informed and prepared as an organisation.

Preparation

• Review our 6 scenarios.
• Form a group that can participate from beginning to end (it may take quite a few sessions to work through each step).
• Consider how good facilitation can help some of the decision points and prepare with materials and tools to support you.
• This is an in-depth process. Further guidance can be found here: www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/tools/scenario-planning/scenario-planning.pdf

What you do

Work in a group that can break down into four smaller groups so that some of the research can be divided between you.

Stage 1 - defining your issue

• Decide on an issue to be explored via the scenarios (e.g. finding the best long-term school re-design).
• Frame the question to focus your issue and discussions (e.g. How do we ensure a school re-design that will still work 30 years from now?).
• Explore all the issues you can think of; consider several sessions to fully explore the issue.
  • Mind mapping tools may help. Each member provides input, helping to capture, sort and categorise the issues between sessions.
  • Use external prompts to encourage everyone to think broadly; try reviewing these Be prepared future trends to see if they prompt further issues.
• Agree a definition of your issue:
  • Everyone should agree what the issue (e.g. food security) means.
  • Share the agreed definition.

Stage 2 - questioning, summarising and prioritising

• Use the key themes and uncertainties (see Stage 1.3) to examine your question. Refer to these Be prepared future trends to prompt participants to think of a wide range of possibilities. Spend time researching, then reconvening and sharing your findings.
• Approach the question from as many perspectives as possible - as Rumsfeld famously said, "there are known unknowns... there are also unknown unknowns" - we need to look for the unknowns as broadly as possible.
• Pick out and agree 8-14 key themes that have emerged and that you all agree are important.
• Summarise uncertainties/tensions around each key theme (this will give you around 40-50 uncertainties).
• Vote to identify 2 key uncertainties that you all agree are a major priority.
• Next consider all the major issues around these 2 key uncertainties.
• Represent the 2 key uncertainties on an axis and brainstorm what they might mean; exploring their implications in practice.

Stage 3 - different points of view

• Create four scenarios - turn each quadrant from your axis diagram into its own world using the uncertainties which will be either more or less prevalent in each world.
• Gather into 4 groups, with each group examining one scenario.
• Adopt a point of view. Each group votes on a role to adopt which will define their perspective (e.g. a teacher, a student, a parent).
• Analysis and research: groups explore their scenario.
• Each group presents their scenario in turn.
• The whole group now discusses all 4 scenarios, aiming to conclude where on the axis is the most desirable situation.
• Share the four scenarios along with the desired future on the axis.
• Now create an action plan on a timeline to get the group towards their desired future scenario, anticipating issues arising along the way (see Anticipate issues activity).

Top tips for your group activities

• Be well prepared
• Consider changing your usual meeting environment
• Know what you want to come away with before you start
• Break the ice with a warm up
• Give people enough time to get into and do the activities
• Keep people engaged and motivated
• Encourage and proactively get input from everyone
• Think about how your going to capture the notes
• Use flip charts, coloured post its, coloured pens, paper, stickers
• If possible use a flexible and effective facilitator