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Midway through theinterview Rafael Ramirezmakes a shockinggesture. He illustrateswhat can happen if

scenarios are not adequately planned.Like the baddie in The 39 Steps he holds

his hand aloft to reveal missing fingers. “Iwas a bad carpenter in the frozen Canadiannorth,” he deadpans.

Woodwork did not really work out. So itwas time to plan what to do next. Startingwith how to plan properly — because thebest plans themselves begin with goodplanning technique.

And in Rafael’s case the method becamethe conclusion. Because planning for the

If I were a carpenter . . .

Continued on page 99

Richard O Smithmeets scenarioplanner RafaelRamirez, OxfordUniversity’s onlyFellow of Strategy

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future is what he is good at. Very good at. Muchbetter than carpentry.

Rafael Ramirez is a scenario planner. Yes,that is a proper job. In fact, not only is it a job,it is a role essential for future-proofing globalorganisations.

Culturally we all feel a conformingcompulsion to be seen ‘working’ by displayingvisible industriousness. When was the last timeyou sat down with eyes shut in the workplaceand answered your manager’s inevitablequestion this action prompted with, “I amthinking and planning”.

It turns out that thinking and planning in theworkplace is a good thing. Who knew?

Certainly very few managers I have everworked for, preferring to promulgate thelooking-busy-equates-to-working orthodoxy. AsAlbert Einstein once remarked: “People lovechopping wood. In this activity oneimmediately sees results.”

A scenario planner is someone who has theability to see both the wood and the treessimultaneously, then focus on the changes tothe chopping environment those trees are mostlikely to encounter in the future.

By way of an introduction to the subject,Rafael has written: “Scenario planning saw itsorigins with the possibility of nuclear war. Itborrowed the term ‘scenarios’ from the arts, butconsidered the serious implications of ‘what if ’in one of the most terrifying possibilities ofhuman history.”

Now occupying a muscular position in themainstream, scenario planning is only around50 years old. However, it is estimated that 75per cent of all the produced literature on thesubject has originated since 2001— specificallypost 9/11.

As Rafael has pointed out: “Since 9/11 wehave seen a steep increase in the production ofscholarly work on scenario planning. Currentlysome 2,400 peer-reviewed papers arepublished on scenario planning in Englishalone every year; and Amazon lists more than1,500 books whose titles include ‘scenarioplanning’.”

Rafael Ramirez is Oxford University’s onlyFellow of Strategy. He is used to the solitudethat being the first, and thus only one, in a fieldbrings: “I was probably the only one who did amasters on the subject of aesthetics,” he recalls,“it made me unemployable for a long time!”

However his employment hiatus was endedwhen Shell courted his expertise andappointed him Visiting Professor of Scenariosand Corporate Strategy. He recalls theirapproach included the memorable line: “Iunderstand you have been writing aboutclarity?” Nonetheless, Rafael soon learnedclarity is an aesthetic construct. “Shell treatedme [immediately] as a team member, the sameas Shell lifers.”

Shell’s approach to adopt scenario planninggradually became fashionable, and is nowreplicated throughout organisations — fromgovernments to conglomerates.

Rafael co-authored what is considered to bethe standard text on scenario planning: BusinessPlanning for Turbulent Times — New Methods forApplying Scenarios. In the book’s introductionBusiness Secretary Vince Cable, a former Shellemployee, writes about a world buffeted by“many intense forces, pressures andcross-currents”.

Scenario planning is seen as the storm

windows for protecting organisations againstsuch a buffeting from an increasinglytempestuous future.

As far back as 1965 Shell beganexperimenting with an innovative way oflooking at the future christened ‘scenarioplanning’, enabling organisations to reboot howthey view, plan and relate to the future.

According to Angela Wilkinson and RolandKuper’s book The Essence of Scenariosdocumenting scenario planning’s conception atShell, this new tool allowed “corporations tobreak their dependency on short-termforecasting and manage disagreement as anasset, overcoming group think and exposing theorganisation’s world view”.

In other words, scenario planning is aboutcollaborative enquiry alongside exposing andquestioning deep-seated assumptions. Or asPierre Wack — whose archive is preservedamong the 5,000 items forming The OxfordFutures Library (the scenario planning resource

at Egrove Park in Kennington) — once phrasedit: “Scenario planning is the gentle art ofre-perceiving.”

In his office at the Said Business School,Rafael explains: “Good scenario planningallows us to see something differently you havebeen looking at for a long time in a new way,helping leaders to identify critical changelevers.”

One visual metaphor deployed in teaching isto encourage students to literally remove theirglasses and hold them to the side.

“How different is the view from elsewhere?What is the view going to be like from multiplevantage points in ten years? Twenty years?Thirty years?” A lot of scenario planning is“creating alternative points of view,” heconcluded. It turns out that safe assumptionsare often not safe at all.

“As opposed to futurists looking for trends,

“Good scenario

planning allows

us to see

something differentl

y you have been

lookingat for a

long time in a ne

w way.”

Continued on page 101

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From page 99

we are looking from the future, enabling apoint of view to be formed.”

Scenario planners tend to favour plausibility,whereas futurists side with probability — orpreferable — futures. I am keen to ask: “How doyou gauge plausibility in scenarios?”

“Plausibility is co-constructed and co-established,” he replied. “We aim for ‘least’plausible, yet ‘plausible-enough-to-be-useful’.This is because ‘too’ plausible a reframingequals not a very challenging frame to theestablished one.

“And ‘too implausible’ will be rejected asunusable. We aim to co-produce re-framingsthat are plausible enough to challenge and tobe used.”

A recent working visit to Singapore helpedformulate a descriptive weight-bearingmetaphor. “In Singapore bamboo scaffolding iscommon. Scenario plans are like bamboo notmetal scaffolding. It allows bend. And once theconversation is up and running we can take thescaffolding down.”

Jointly-based at the Said Business School andGreen Templeton College, corporations andgovernments all venture to Oxford Universityto recruit his expertise. It is certainly animpressive consultancy register.

Recent clients Rafael has helped equip fortheir difficult climb into the future includetrade unions, banks, NGOs and professionalbodies.

In a long list of organisations he hasworked with, the following names sparkle— Eurotunnel, Royal Mail, BMW, NYCDepartment of Juvenile Justice, Nissan,Prudential, O2, Nexen (the largest operator ofNorth Sea oil platforms), Royal College of GPs,Standard City Chartered Bank, HP (as inHewlett Packard, not the sauce) and thegovernment of Panama. All have comeknocking for some bamboo scaffolding erectionjobs.

Yet this work only constitutes one of thethree circles on the Venn diagram he draws onhis office whiteboard. The other two are

headed ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’. Ideally aproject encompasses the shaded areaoverlapping all three.

“There is a lot of bad scenario planningaround that doesn’t understand how outputrelates to helpful input,” he cautioned. “We docontingency forecasting.”

He cites an interesting real life occurrence.“It takes several years to train and qualify as

a certified gastroenterologist. But are wetraining them for the future or yesterday’smedicine? Are we fighting yesterday’s war?”

His questions became poignantly relevant inHolland recently. In one area of medicine 76specialists graduated after years of training foronly three available jobs — the mismatchedfigures flashing like a warning light for theabsence of adequate scenario planning.

The Dutch had failed to predict theprogression of keyhole surgery, combined withthe advancement of other treatments allowing

Continued on page 103

“It takes several years totrain and qualify as acertified gastroenterologist.But are we training themfor the future or yesterday’smedicine? Are we fightingyesterday’s war?”

Dr Rafael Ramirezat the Said BusinessSchool, Egrove Park,

Kennington

Photograph: Jon Lewis

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From page 101

nurses, not costly doctors, to administer themto patients.

Scenario planning appears to be aboutintroducing a counter thought, then addinganother counter thought and seeing how theyinteract. Assumptions, it seems, clot traditionalthinking.

Rafael continued: “We ask, ‘are you aware ofassumptions you have been putting intoyour models. Can you create alternativescenarios?’. ”

This rings true — the global financialearthquake that struck in 2008 was partlybased on the erroneous assumption USproperty prices would go up unhindered everyyear. Nobody interjected a “but what if they donot?” scenario. And we are still shedding vitalpublic services as a consequence.

“Have alternative models that disagree witheach other,” he said. It illustrates a key point ofscenario planning that assumption of futureoutcomes must be attentive to multiplescenarios.

Known as a founding father of “theories onthe aesthetics of business, work andorganisation,” Rafael arrived in Oxford in 2003and was tasked with starting a programme inscenario planning.

Between 2008 to 2010 he was Chairman ofthe World Economic Forum’s Global AgendaCouncil on Strategic Foresight. Probablynecessitating a larger-than-normal sizedbusiness card, he is also a Senior ResearchFellow in Futures at the Oxford Martin School,Director of the Oxford Scenarios Programmeand Associate Fellow at the Smith School forEntrepreneurship and the Environment.

Defining home is difficult for tri-lingualRafael.

Born in Mexico, he has lived in five countriesincluding 15 years in France where he was aProfessor of Management (the Frenchgovernment were early adopters of scenarioplanning), a decade in Canada, plus a spell inSweden and he completed a PhD inPennsylvania.

You need to get on with people if you are atop scenario planner. Especially if you areexpectant of persuading them to implementyour conclusions too. So how does a leadingscenario planner gain the essential trust ofhis/her clients?

“Empathy without capture. Understand auser’s world view. How do they frame theirunderstanding of their context, whilstmaintaining a critical distance from thatviewpoint, for example” he replied.

“Also co-develop with the user how they willactually use the scenarios and the reframingthis allows in their work. A good scenarioplanner has the scenario user test and ifneeded [will] re-set this trust repeatedly, openlyand explicitly.”

Good scenario planning challenges differentaspects of how business is experienced, fromthe way conference rooms are set up to hospitalarchitecture.

Recently a hospital ward was re-designedafter gaining the insightful realisation thatplacing nurses in a central workstation — ratherthan marginalised in corners — maximisedefficiency whilst crucially ensuring patientswould be more visible.

Hence what role does architectural designhave in scenario planning?

“Some scenario planners believe they have tobuild a prototype to ‘see’ what they areimagining and then describe it; others thinkthat they need to write up [and/or] describewhat they imagine first; then build a prototype.This dilemma we explored at length in the2014 Oxford Futures Forum,” he said.

Originated in 2005, the Oxford FuturesForum convenes every three years whenOxford becomes a hive of the world’s leadingscenario planners and future practitioners— assembled to tackle a selected subject.

“I believe that building prototypes andmodels to share with others what one imaginesand sees as plausible — to help them assess it— can be tremendously helpful.

“For example, as has been said many timesin Oxford already, if a full prototype of theCastle Mill development had been demandedby the planning authorities, and shared forviewing and critique with all stakeholders priorto planning consent having been granted, theresidences would have been built differently— and the current situation would have beenaverted.”

What does Rafael like and dislike aboutOxford?

“I live in Oxford by choice, and choice itself— like living in Oxford — is a privilege. I like

the city’s variety and I like how what has beenleft natural (Port Meadow, Christ ChurchMeadow) and the built (mostly, but not always)help each other. I am concerned that thisbalance is now under attack. I do not like howthe ‘strategic conversation’ on the future of thecity is conducted. Clearly we need to do betterin this respect.”

Scenario planning has been responsible forminting the wonderful phrase “canaries in themind”.

Just as canaries were installed in coal minesas alarms for forthcoming endangerment,scenario planners provide an early warningmechanism for potential jeopardies miningmankind’s future.

Finally there’s just time to ask Rafael what hefeels is his proudest achievement?

“I am hoping,” he said, “that my proudestachievement is still in the future!”

When he attains that future scenario I amsure it will be immaculately planned.

View an example of scenario planning here:https://www.ueg.eu/research/gi2040/

The Oxford Futures Library is based at the EgrovePark campus of the Said Business School and openby appointment to researchers.

LE