Kees van der Heijden - The Sixth Sense

In his book The Sixth Sense: Accelerating Organizational Learning with Scenarios, van der Heijden offers a simple definition of scenario planning. He describes it as the capacity of organizations to perceive what is going on all around them, to recognize possible meanings and implications and then make a decision as to the best course of action to pursue before it is too late.

At the same time, van der Heijden stresses that the ‘objective of rehearsing the future does not mean that scenarios seek to predict the future.’[1] Van der Heijden sees predicting events as both impossible and dangerous, and feels that it implies inflexibility and locked mentality. This goes strictly against the purpose and practice of scenario planning, which places great value on recognizing the signs of change that inevitably affect every organization and understanding their significance and how the organization should prepare for and adapt to change.

Van der Heijden talks of scenario planning as an ‘approach based on reasoning, research and real world observations.’[2] In order to be able to do this, van der Heijden promotes scenario planning as an individual and organizational strategic thinking and learning process.

Van der Heijden argues that most serious risk to organizational success and survival is the inability of organizations to change and adapt to suit the evolving environment around them. He sees the survival of a company as dependent upon the ability to continually create value for stakeholders. The obstacles to achieving this, he believes, are due to managerial uncertainty, fear, and lack of awareness to ever shifting needs and market conditions. The only way to deal with this successfully is to change thinking at both individual and organizational levels.

It is in this regard that scenario planning is an extremely effective and powerful business tool. Van der Heijden argues that scenario thinking is becoming an increasingly important way of addressing problem solving, strategic communication and organizational decision-making, as well as organizational learning and development.

Part of the Culture

Van der Heijden’s primary focus is the process of establishing scenario thinking as an integral part of the culture of an organization, and the everyday decision-making of employees. Just as Pierre Wack, the man responsible for introducing scenario planning at Shell, concluded, something more was needed if the mental maps of managers and their reliance upon business-as-usual methods were to change.

It is this process of examining one’s own mindset and the culture of the organization, and making this an integral part of the company’s everyday operations that has seen the technique developed into the powerful business tool that Pierre Wack envisioned, making scenario planning something that companies simply cannot ignore.

Kees van der Heijden believes the first step in successful scenario planning is for an individual to conduct a thorough examination of their own mindset, eliciting how they make decisions, approach problems and plan for the future. In particular, the individual must try to identify any flaws in their thinking. This includes obstacles such as a locked mentality, personal biases, routines, procrastination, bolstering and buck-passing.

In addition to an examination flaws in personal thinking, organizational members should also look for flaws in organizational thinking. Indeed, though ‘thinking traps are often individual, the constraints and orders of the organization can make it difficult for individuals to think their way out.’[3]

The Scenario Planning Team

From the outset, it is vital that a scenario planning team acknowledges that the organization is full of complexity, uncertainty and paradoxes. The team should also embrace diversity of opinion and belief and try to understand how all these different views could affect the organization’s future.

Once the scenario planning team has come together to explore and open its collective mind, it should begin to identify gaps in organizational knowledge. Specifically, the group should look for business problems where there is some uncertainty about their possible impact. It is then necessary to conduct a discussion in order to elicit individuals’ views of the organizational future, present and past – in that order.

When the different views have been collated and discussed, the team should identify the driving forces, i.e. those forces most likely to bring about change. From this exploration of the business problems, team concerns and the driving forces, the group should work together to produce storylines of how these events may turn out.

At this point, a stakeholder analysis should be carried out to both validate and improve the various scenarios. Within each of the storylines, team members should draw up a list of the early warning indicators. The final step is to create an action plan, working from the future back to the present. This will allow the group to clearly see the steps it will need to take in order to prepare for future changes. This process is outlined in detail in the article entitled ‘Strategy for Implementing a Scenario Planning Process’.

Van der Heijden advocates that this is a proven framework for action as it frees thinking, promotes action, and breaks the constraints that bind traditional strategic processes. He also states that the method has proven to be effective in organizations of ‘all sizes, types and locations facing different opportunities and threats, both apparent and unnoticed.’[4]

Summary

The real beauty of the scenario planning approach, as van der Heijden has outlined, is that it is inclusive and allows strategic conversations to take place with diverse groups of stakeholders. The fact that a ‘richness of multiple perspectives is opened up, resulting in a deeper, broader perspective of the business environment and possible strategies,’[5] has made scenario planning the tool of choice for those organizations serious about acquiring the competitive edge.