Scenario Thinking

A future shared

Each of us comes to the table with our own stories of the past. However our sense of the past is or isn’t shared, the future we have together is the future we create together.

When it comes to creating our best possible shared future, the reality is that we can be better and smarter together. This is true for every generation and each to come.

Every marvelous innovation that has made life better came about because of people working together toward some kind of shared future scenario.

The short list is not unimpressive: electricity, the internet, renewable energies, women’s and children’s rights, disease-ending medications, poverty-diminishing strategies. None of these came about through individual efforts or by trying to create a common future by first demanding a common past.

Scenario thinking is one way for us to create a common future, building from and going beyond the lessons of the past.

Scenarios at the “top”

In conventional, hierarchical organizations and communities, there is usually an expectation that people “at the top”–executive level people–will set the direction and vision for everyone else. They might do this behind closed doors or with open engagement from others at some or all levels “below.”