Given your legitimacy, and given a working planning architecture, then there are three broad steps which are involved in making scenarios.
· First, you need to find out what matters to the target audience, and to those who grant legitimacy. It is often the form of words ("globalisation") that is as important as the actual concern, insofar as the people who are worried are often referring to white spaces on their mental maps, rather than objective phenomena. If 'globalisation' evaporates from your analysis, and is replaced by something close to 'enhanced competition and outsourcing' you should nevertheless be careful to link these back to the original concerns.
· Second, once you have a sense of the canvas on which it would be useful to paint, you need to engage in analysis. The bulk of this chapter is given over to the methods by which to do this, so suffice it to say that you should generate draft scenarios, test these on senior stakeholders and then move to a refined conceptual product.
· Third, you need to generate the deliverables of the project, which in turn encapsulate the scenarios, the analysis behind them and the concerns of the stakeholders in the process. It is a mistake to believe that one deliverable is enough, at least in all but the most simple project. A useful output will typically consist of a physical object (a book, for example) and also a set of presentations. These are typically aimed at different audiences: at senior management and at 'cascade' audiences, for example, or at those engaged in innovation and research as well as line managers more concerned with resilience and continuous improvement.
Staffing for scenario generation is extremely difficult. One needs people who combine social intelligence, credibility within the organisation with formal skills that are relevant - for example, with economics or a background in technology or markets. On top of this, the team need to be open minded, eager and possessed of the peculiar mindset that likes big pictures, systems and structures. This is a combination which is generally rare and extremely uncommon within large organisations. The answer, of course, is the team. The scenario team should be picked with these characteristics in mind, but also with an eye to the currently-crucial issues. If technology is a dominant factor, for example, then it is important that such knowledge is reflected within the team.
The importance has two facets: the team needs the knowledge, but the organisation's technologists need to feel represented by someone that they respect. However, one also has to make sure that each specialist has the capacity to articulate their knowledge, and that they will be useful in subsequent facets of the work, such as promulgation. People of too high a level of seniority often cannot give the time when it is needed, or may be better used elsewhere. The solution to this is, frequently, to make the consultation period a time of rapid self-education for someone with an appropriate background but with an all-round ability that goes beyond their area of specialisation.
Such people run workshops with their specialist peers during the consultation, so as to be seen to engage and so as to earn ownership. This is also a way of rapidly developing people of high potential.The scenario team leader has a particularly onerous task. He or she knows in broad terms what is needed, and when it has to be delivered. However, both the nature of the deliverable and its content has to be teased out of the process as it goes forward. Creative staff are not always the most tractable team members.
It is, therefore, doubly important to make roles and boundaries concrete, to install proper project planning tools and to make the process of generating the deliverable the job of people who are technically good at the task. The content of books, in particular, need to be negotiated like international treaties; and whoever fulfils the editorial role usually wields a bloody scalpel if the output of an entire enthusiastic team is to be made accessible. The team leader must apply stern judgement and soothing oils to this turmoil.