Includes bibliographical references (p. [293]-297) and index.

The Quest for a Clear Vision of the Future -- Preparing for the Future -- Understanding Organizational Success -- Maintaining Organizational Performance: Problems -- Success Stories -- Barriers to Strategic Success -- Summary: Understanding the Barriers to Scenario Planning -- How Managers Think about the Future -- Understanding Management Thinking -- Biases in thinking -- The Limitations of Judgemental Forecasting -- Decision Avoidance -- Overcoming Strategic Inertia: the Potential Benefits of Scenario Planning -- Summary: Overcoming Thinking Flaws with Scenario Planning -- How Organizations Think about the Future -- Flaws in Organizational Thinking -- Limitations Imposed by Identity -- Organizational Lock-in -- Behavioural flaws -- Overcoming the Pathologies of Organizational Life -- Summary: How Organizations Think About the Future -- The Impact of Culture and Cultural Assumptions on Strategy -- Understanding the Impact of Cultural Issues -- Defining Culture for Pragmatic Purposes -- National Cultural Differences and the Role of Scenario Thinking -- Differences in Organizational Cultures -- Differences in Professional Cultures Within Organizations -- Moving Beyond Cultural Preconceptions and Stereotypes -- The Application of Scenario Thinking to Cultural Understanding -- Shaping the Future: The Emergence of Modern Scenario Techniques -- Scenario Planning: the Human Dimension -- Scenario Thinking and War Games -- The Era of Possibility: the Makeable Post-war World -- Challenging Established Thinking: the Development of Scenarios in the 1970s -- Royal Dutch/Shell and the Problem of Predictability -- The Development of Scenarios and Strategy During the 1980s -- The 1990s: Scenario Planning and Organizational Learning -- Summary: the Benefits of Scenario Planning -- Developing the Skills for Long-Term Survival and Success: Principles of the Scenario Process -- The Need for a Scenario Process -- Scenarios and Scenario-based Organizational Learning -- How Scenarios Tackle the Problems of Organizational Thinking -- Organizational Learning -- Summary: Developing the Skills of Survival -- Scenario Planning in the Organizational Context -- Introducing the Scenario Method -- Scenarios for the Future of e-Government and the Impact of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) -- Structuring the Scenario Process -- Exploring the Scenario Context -- Developing the Scenarios -- Stakeholder Analysis -- Systems Thinking -- Impacting Organizational Thinking and Action -- Summary: Effective Scenario Planning -- Scenario Planning: Taking Charge of the Future -- The Energetic Problem Solver -- Making Sense of a Puzzling Situation -- Developing Strategy -- Improving Organizational Anticipation -- Building an Adaptive Learning Organization -- Rethinking the Future--the Value of Scenarios in Developing Competitive Advantage -- Developing The Sixth Sense.

Survival means creating value for stakeholders, and the survival problem starts with uncertainty, change and the need for organizations to adapt to shifting needs and market conditions. The key question is 'Why are organizations slow to change and adapt?'

Unsuccessful organizations are distinguished by their failure to overcome thinking and behavioural flaws at personal, organizational and community levels. In this book, we explain what these flaws are and how the scenario approach helps senior managers and organizations to overcome them. Our approach is based on reasoning, research, real world observations -- and a long track record developing scenario-based thinking, combining the most effective elements of the many scenario approaches that have been tried over time.