Scenario Planning in Organizations: How to Create, Use, and Assess Scenarios: 14 (The Berrett-Koehler Organizational Performance Series) - Softcover

"All CEOs, university presidents, leaders of national nonprofits, and politicians face the same problem: coping with uncertainty. Scenario planning addresses this central problem. One cannot attend a planning session in any large organization without the topic of scenario planning arising. Professor Chermack puts the various approaches to scenario planning in a highly readable and useful context. For those of us who have used a variant of scenario planning for many years, there is much to learn in this approach. Professor Chermack is well on his way to becoming a major resource for this important planning tool."
--Vance Opperman, President and CEO, Key Investment, Inc.; Audit Committee Chair, Thomson Reuters; and former President, West Publishing Company

"With extensive expertise, Tom Chermack spotlights scenario planning as a fundamental tool used by organizations to achieve long-term sustainability. This book helps me guide diverse management teams through strategic decision and problem-solving processes using a collaborative and forward-thinking approach."
--Carla McCabe, Director of Human Resources, Technicolor

"Scenario planning has benefitted our entire organization by helping us understand a volatile environment and how to move forward. Scenarios have helped us think through options, create insights, and spark innovative ideas. Chermack's approach held us accountable and emphasized creative thinking as well as assessing where and how the scenarios added value."
--James Steven Beck, MBA, CPA, Vice President--Administration, Eltron Research & Development, Inc.

"Professor Chermack has made the mysterious process of scenario planning available in a format accessible for both leaders of large corporations and small business owners. Creating a common working language about the future is essential for the long-term success of any enterprise. Tom's clear guidelines provide practical tools for organizations to create scenarios that will help them discover new ways of thinking, planning, and being."
--Kim Cermak, President and COO, KDC Management, LLC

"Compelling and thoroughly researched, this book offers every business executive a playbook for including uncertainty in the organizational change process and driving competitive advantage."
--Tim Reynolds, Vice President, Talent and Organizational Effectiveness, Whirlpool Corporation

"It has been forty years since we first started developing scenarios at Shell to help steer us into an unknown future. This is the fullest description I have seen of how the theory and use of scenarios have developed since."
--Napier Collyns, cofounder, Global Business Network

"Chermack is well on his way to becoming a major resource for this important planning tool."
--Vance Opperman, President and CEO, Key Investment, Inc., and Audit Committee Chair, Thomson Reuters

"With this book, scenario artists can learn to muster the analysis they need for credibility, and scenario academicians can get a sense of the artistry they will need."
--Art Kleiner, Editor-in-Chief, strategy+business

While there are several books that cover portions of the topic of scenario planning, none of them cover it in its entirety. The key weaknesses shown in most competitive titles in publication:

1. None address the complexity (practical and theoretical) of the scenario planning process.
2. Recent books are edited volumes that do not incorporate a unified perspective and are rather disjointed collections of chapters unconnected from each other.
3. None of the books currently available provide any mention of evaluative techniques. Thus, there are multiple gaps in the literature that remain unaddressed.

This book will add important new knowledge and fill in the information gaps by providing a comprehensive view of scenario planning within the larger organizational and national contexts. The work will address scenario planning as a system itself, its role and connection to organizational strategy, and will provide discussion of the importance of theory and provide a theory of the system.

The goal is a book that will discuss theory in a way that is useful to practitioners, describe research studies that bring academic rigor, and yet, also inform practice in that they demonstrate the effectiveness of scenario planning. Evaluating scenarios and scenario planning projects will also be discussed, as well as a phased process for conducting, managing, and framing scenario work. The key contribution of the proposed text is that it will genuinely bridge theory and practice, research and implementation, and generally serve as a text suitable for graduate courses, and thoughtful practitioners seeking understanding beyond a “how-to” manual.