Future-focused thinking: Combining scenario planning with decision analysis

This paper first describes current practice in decision analysis and argues that nothing in the technique's application is likely to challenge the strategic decision maker's current worldview of the course of future events that are modelled in the decision tree. By contrast, a scenario planning intervention in an organization has the potential to increase perceived threat and thus lead to a step change in strategic decision making. Strategic decisions are made against a backcloth of the operation of psychological processes that act, it is argued, to reduce the perceived level of environmental threat and result in strategic inertia. For this reason, it is recommended that scenario planning should be adopted as a standard procedure because of its ability to challenge individual and organizational worldviews. The use of scenario planning prior to conventional decision analysis is termed as ‘future-focused thinking’, and parallels are drawn between the current advocated approach and that of Keeney's value-focused thinking. Both serve to prompt the creation of enhanced options for subsequent evaluation by conventional decision analytic techniques.