Leadership – Engendering Transformation Using Scenario Thinking
Discovering the role of leadership in achieving changes through environmental analysis, scenario thinking and futurology.
Rulzion Rattray
Oil & Gas Academy of Scotland
We live in extraordinary times with the speed of change accelerating and the global business environment evolving and developing in increasingly complex ways. The international commercial and economic environment is a key part of this increasingly complex and interconnected world; a world that severely challenges leaders’ ability to understand the dynamics of their organization’s environment and to be able to think through and beyond the obvious.
Anticipatory leaders appreciate the subtleties of their organization’s environment by thinking laterally. They explore changes that are happening in other industries and are relentless in their drive to understand changes and emerging trends.
They are accomplished both in understanding and communicating how interaction between forces in the external environment shape their organization’s context and they study the relationships between the forces that are key to the patterns that describe their world.
The organization must acquire or develop competencies in external-environment intelligence, technology innovation, planning under uncertainty, experimenting with new products and services, and executing change.
A key outcome of the scenario process is the belief that develops throughout the organization; making better strategic choices in a dynamic environment means having a change-oriented culture and a commitment to changing things for the better. Before the organization can act however, it must value having superior insights about how the future might evolve and be prepared to move ahead of the competition.
This workshop will focus your attention on the leader’s role to involve and communicate as part of the approach to developing a flexible responsive organisation. During this session we will explore the logic behind scenario thinking and you will be involved in developing scenarios and evaluating some of the impacts that might come from these scenarios.
Reading: Text Book
Ringland, G., (2006) Scenario Planning Paperback , Wiley & Sons, London
Reading: Articles (articles about scenarios)
Adam Kahane, (2012),”Transformative scenario planning: changing the future by exploring alternatives”, Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 40 Iss 5 pp. 19 – 23 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10878571211257140
Anika Savage Michael Sales, (2008),”The anticipatory leader: futurist, strategist and integrator”, Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 36 Iss 6 pp. 28 – 35 Permanent link to this document:
Steven H. Kenney Bryan A. Pelley , (2014),”Stories that drive the future: how narratives can improve scenario planning”, Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 42 Iss 5 pp. 28 – 33 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/SL-07-2014-0053
Note: Participants will be directed to further reading through the workshop.
