This is the first book to offer detailed guidance on how scenarios can be used to help organizations make their toughest decisions in a world of ever-escalating crisis and opportunity.

To reap the full benefits of scenarios, you have to be able to apply them in the real world. This groundbreaking book goes beyond the theoretical to clearly explain different ways scenarios can be used in business decision-making—from strategic planning and financial modeling to crisis response. Connecting scenarios to strategy and action can have many benefits, including the ability to react quickly, anticipate major changes in the environment, and identify major opportunities.

Thomas Chermack, a top expert on scenario planning, offers seven specific ways organizations can use scenarios and provides a wide variety of examples, along with proven processes, exercises, and workshops that have been used successfully in organizations across industries and countries for more than fifteen years.

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This book is the most comprehensive treatment to date of the scenario planning process. Unlike existing books it offers a thorough discussion of the evolution and theoretical foundations of scenario planning, examining its connections to learning theory, decision-making theory, mental model theory and more.

Chermack emphasizes that scenario planning is far more than a simple set of steps to follow, as so many other practice-focused books do—he addresses the subtleties and complexities of planning. And, unique among scenario planning books, he deals not just with developing different scenarios but also with applying scenarios once they have been constructed, and assessing the impact of the scenario project.

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Pierre Wack was head of scenario planning at Royal Dutch / Shell Oil in London for just over ten years. He died in 1997. He was a pioneer of what we know today as scenario planning — an alternative and complement to strategic planning.

Pierre was a unique man with interests in Indian and Japanese cultures and traditions. He traveled extensively and led a unique life that involved long periods of visiting gurus in India and extended sabbaticals in Japan. His experiences with Eastern thought no doubt shaped his ability to evolve the scenario method at Shell, and as a result, he was able to lead a team that foresaw the oil crises of the 1970s and ’80s.

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