Strategic Leadership

172 Strategic Leadership

some call a TOWS matrix follows this form (see table 8.2, adapted from the East
Lancashire Training Council, n.d.)

Scenarios

Environmental scans and SWOT analyses are clearly one of the important steps
in a strategy process. Without trying to predict the future, they are able to moni-
tor and anticipate the way that various trends already in evidence are likely to
affect the organization. Yet even when there is no pretense to predict the future,
the anticipation of the influence of major trends is subject to error and distortion
since forces and events bring constant surprises. In order to deal with these con-
tingencies, many business organizations have turned to the analysis of alternative
scenarios to describe several plausible patterns for the unfolding of future events.
First developed by Hermann Kahn of the Hudson Institute, scenarios became a
celebrated feature of Shell Oil’s strategy process and its preparedness for the 1973
oil price shock (Van der Heijden 1996). The use of scenarios is beginning to
appear in higher education (Morrison and Wilson 1997).
As the term suggests through its use in plays and films, a scenario is a basic plot-
line out of which a full story or script can be developed. A literary scenario often
follows any one of an enormous set of recurrent patterns of dramatic interaction,
such as triumph over adversity, the solitary hero, love versus duty, loyalty and
betrayal, beauty and the beast, and rags to riches. Out of these themes a scenario
is developed that serves to outline the plot.
As they have come to function in organizational planning, scenarios have kept
something of this dramatic flavor. Their creators try to find evocative story lines
that can be easily remembered. Scenarios writers often use images or metaphors
borrowed from the animal world or mythology to capture a motif. So, avoiding or
ignoring problems is the ostrich scenario, while Icarus (the mythical figure who
flew too close to the sun), is the overly ambitious scenario in which the partici-
pants initially soar, only to fall to destruction (Schwartz 1991; Van der Heijden
1996).
Scenarios begin in much the same way as a standard PEEST and SWOT analysis,
with a careful analysis of driving forces in the environment and their likely impact
on the organization. Yet important innovations come into play. Scenarios recog-
nize the truth that the future always consists of factors and trends that are largely
predetermined, as well as developments that are uncertain and unpredictable. The
world, for example, is sure to run out of oil, but no one knows precisely when.

Table 8.2

Threats Confront Avoid

Opportunities Develop Consider

Strengths Weaknesses