The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World

This book is important for developing long-term strategic visioning through scenario building. With it, you take trends and then not merely extrapolate them, but also examine what might happen if there were significant changes to the trends. In the end, you craft "stories built around carefully constructed plots that make the significant elements of the world stand out boldly" and unlock fresh perspectives about the future.

This book will help you to learn the scenario planning process. At the beginning, the author presents a short but insightful example how scenario playing an important role for starting up a gardening tool company. The author also shares an "information hunting and gathering process" which tell you where to get some helpful data. Various factors influencing the futures are also discussed (including socials, politics, economic, technologies, and environment). In addition, at the end of the book, the author provides a user's guide (eight steps of how to hold a strategic conversation) and eight steps to develop scenarios which I found very useful. The book enables us to use scenario planning as a tool to deal with uncertain futures. Scenarios help us to awake and "reperceive" others possible and impossible alternative futures including both short and long term. The author also believes that a good scenario leads you to ask better questions. The point of scenario-planning is "to help us suspend our disbelieve in all the futures: to allow us to think that any on of them might place. Then, we can prepare for what we DO NOT think is going to happen." (p.195)However, one annoying thing in this book is that the author keeps referring to chapters (e.g. look in chapter 7) but physically, there are just no chapters number indicated in the book. There are just short titles in the table of content and at the beginning of each chapter. You have to go back and forth between the TOC and chapters to to see which one is actually being referred. However, I consider this is a minor issue comparing to what you will learn from this book. You may find this book useful if you are preparing for your strategic plans, making decisions having critical impacts to your firm or your personal life, or even you are just an ordinary reader, this book will open your mind to a new level of critical thinking and imagination about unfolding futures. Highly recommend.

In "The Art of the Long View," Peter Schwartz, one of the world leading futurists introduces the concepts of scenario planning. He argues that scenario thinking is an art not a science, and people in general has an innate ability to build scenarios, and to foresee the future. From the book, the readers can learn how to build their own future scenarios. They are neither predictions nor mere extrapolations of the present trends. They help us to know the shape of unfolding future reality. A good scenario must have surprised elements with power to break the stereotypes.The general principles of scenario planning are neatly summarized in the appendix, "Steps to Developing Scenarios." They compose of: Step One: identify the focal issue or decision; Step Two: list the key Micro-Factors relevant to that issue or decision; Step Three: list the key Macro-Driving Forces; Step Four: cross-rank Factors and Forces in terms of importance and uncertainty; Step Five: select Scenario Logic; Step Six: flesh out Scenarios; Step Seven: identify Probable Implications; and Step Eight: select Leading Indicators and Signposts. However, the order of the steps may be muddled in some cases.For me, as a former employee of Shell in Cambodia, it is an eye-opening reading. I wish I had read this book before I started to develop the promotion plan for Shell Cambodia. The great pleasure of adopting a constant futurist's perspective on things is that it forces you to think of different possible ways things may happen and have at hand the answers to the "what if...?" questions either plausible or implausible. Then comes a mindshift that leads to the change in behavior in managing organization, let it be global corporation like Royal Dutch Shell or AT & T and small family businesses. It is an excellent read if you want to liberate your insights from your existing "mental map".

Chairman of the Global Business Network, Schwartz is one of the world's leading futurists. As also indicated in the more recently published The Long Boom, his writing is as clear and crisp as his thinking. Schwartz's comments and suggestions are anchored in extensive real-world experience. His objective is to explain the process of what he calls "scenario-building" which enables managers to "invent and then consider, in depth, several varied stories of equally plausible futures" so that they can make (in his words) "strategic decisions that will be sound for all plausible futures. No matter what future takes place, you are much more likely to be ready for it -- and influential in it -- if you have thought seriously about scenarios."Managers of companies (regardless of size or nature) are already aware of constant change within their competitive marketplace. Recent developments, notably use of the Internet to expedite globalization, suggest that change will occur progressively faster and have progressively greater impact, both positive and negative.Meanwhile, for obvious reasons, managers of companies face daily situations and circumstances which require immediate attention and, more often than not, they must quickly make decisions which have profound implications. As a result managers find it very difficult to see "the larger picture", to maintain a "long-term perspective."Schwartz suggests how. Like Drucker, he avoids making predictions. Rather, he helps his reader to formulate the degree of probability of certain events yet to occur...and then to prepare accordingly.

With all of the uncertainties and unknowns, how can an organization plan effectively and take actions? Peter Schwartz shows how through the elegant use of "scenarios". Peter is one of the giants of systems thinking who has implemented his ideas. He explains his approach this way: "You can tell you have good scenarios when they are both plausible and surprising; when they have the power to break old stereotypes; and when the makers assume ownership of them and put them to work. Scenario making is intensely participatory, or it fails."