key: cord-0045558-uengqti2 authors: Cairns, George; Wright, George title: A reflection on the mass production of scenarios in response to COVID‐19 date: 2020-06-07 journal: nan DOI: 10.1002/ffo2.34 sha: d05a6632aa859f451eea85d4ad3e277a205f7fe0 doc_id: 45558 cord_uid: uengqti2 In this short paper, we reflect on the recent accumulation of scenarios that have been developed in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. Will they be of use to worried individuals and organizations? Or, are they artifacts of the very recent past? We conclude that these quickly‐produced scenarios are not embedded in the realities of affected communities and that the scenario development process should be enhanced to either involve power‐holding stakeholders or, more straightforwardly, to activate local consideration of how the affected community might/might not wish to react to localized dilemmas. Both enhancements will provide action‐orientated insights, beyond that of simply appreciating possible global/regional futures. In the majority of applications, scenario activity tends to be reactive and to take place at the point of great salient stress/threat in/to the organization's activities (see Cairns & Wright, 2018, chapter 9) . In the face of current global threat, organizations that have never used scenarios before now seek to do so. We might speculate that the consultancies with some expertise building exemplar scenarios now do so to seek to generate business from these worried organizations. However, stressful/threatening situations may only be starting to unfold containing a string of outcomes of highly uncertain, perhaps unknowable, events, even in the short-term. As such, engagement in seemingly urgent scenario activity that is based on the reactive response to "delivered" generic scenarios may be misplaced and naive-since the outcomes of the driving forces that have been activated in the crisis situation are only just starting to unfold and become obvious. Additionally, the driving forces based upon broadbased, global scenarios may not be of direct or central relevance to the particular organizational setting. Information appearing on both organizations' and managers' radars is that of "late"-rather than "early"-warnings of events that may, or may not, become salient to those directly impacted by unfolding events. How should the vigilant organization react in such active and rapidly unfolding situations? Scenario planning conducted on a dayto-day basis, if that is possible? Should it seek to develop "antifragile" positioning-such that the organization tries to "clip" the downside risk and remain open to some unbounded upside (see Derbyshire & Wright, 2014) ? Scenario planning is not in essence a dynamic activity-evidenced by the already-out-of-date COVID-19-inspired scenario materials that are being rushed into print. While the almost-daily appearance of scenario sets might appear to offer guidance and advice on the possible nature of a future beyond COVID-19, we posit that there are some problematic aspects of their nature, namely: 1. While they present narratives of potential futures, they are by their very nature historical, in that they were written in the past (albeit recent) in a world that is changing almost by the minute. For example, as we write, in some countries (e.g. New Zealand, Australia) the COVID-19 virus appears to have been by and large controlled-and "lockdown" and social distancing restrictions are beginning to be lifted. In other countries, early views of the limits of control have been seen to be ill-informed 2. They are generally global in nature and do not take account of the subtleties and nuances that exist at the local-national or community-level in terms of potential and realizable societal and organizational futures. Importantly, the self-interested actions of the powerful (e.g. governments) are not modeled within the extant scenarios. As such, actions such as relaxing or reinforcing lockdown and social distancing are not incorporated. 3. Related to this, they are "delivered" by broadcasting to a general audience, often by commercial or academic organizations-whose thinking is necessarily bounded-rather than being developed within involved communities. For example, within the broad range of literature regarding a post-COVID-19 world, there are contrasting views about questions of when we might return to "normality" (e.g. Daley & Hewitt, 2020) and if there is a possible return to what might be termed "normal" (e.g. Albani, 2020) . But, normal for whom? Knowledge workers? Health care professionals? Manual laborers? Children in schools? Care home residents? Hospitality workers? And this list does not look beyond the geographic/cultural norms of our own context as authors of this piece. In short, the problems we see as inherent in many scenario approaches are that they: 1. are "designed and delivered" by external agents who are not embedded in or acculturated to the communities that are the subject (or, rather, object) of investigation 2. develop scenarios which tend to be either entirely "good", "bad" or "neutral" at all levels, from the global, through the regional to the local 3. provide narratives of what a range of futures might look like as informed by meta-level PESTEL (political, economic, social, technological, ecological, and legal) driving forces, but lack input to illustrate the impact of local agency and action Taking account of all of the above, our focal question is: Realistic scenarios should incorporate the actions/reactions of the powerful and the less-powerful as they act to enhance and preserve their own interests-as best they can-within the unfolding futures which are modeled at the macro-(i.e. PESTEL) level. There are, we believe, two ways to achieve local realism and relevance, and to promote self-interested actions from involved participants. The first is to adopt the method identified by Gordon (2020). Gordon analyses the scenario process that produced the "Mont Fleur" scenarios at the point of the transition to black majority rule in South Africa. He shows how the emergence of a "normative" desired future scenario, to become the actualized external reality, was enabled by the deliberate construction of the scenario-building team-both in terms of representative stakeholder diversity and the current (and future) access-to-power of the team membership. In this way, Gordon argues, a desired future was facilitated, aided by future unfolds along the continuum between these extremes, there will be opportunity (in most countries at least) for exercise of local agency and action. This might result in: a) either maximization or waste of opportunities in the best case future and, alternatively, b) either seizure of or resignation to reduced opportunities in a worst case future. Overall, we see a need for involvement of affected communities and organizations in the development of scenarios that are relevant to-and take account of-local needs, wishes, and culture. The relevance of local responses is particularly evident in the present COVID-19 crisis, where communities within countries and regions are demonstrating responses-e.g. refusing to lockdown or maintain social distancing-that are in conflict with global and national advice and guidelines, and where the latter are subject to change on a daily basis. In times of rapid, and seemingly random change, this need for local agency is one that requires scenario development to be an ongoing, "living" process of involvement and engagement, reacting immediately to evolving circumstances in order to both "very best guess" the immediate future and to inform a meaningful prospective in longer-term futures scenarios. While such continuous-but less regular-scenario planning may exist in the domain of major organizations like Shell, or national governments like Singapore, we not aware of examples where such thinking has been embedded into local communities to enable them to practice day-to-day development and refinement of the types of scenarios outlined in the second tier of Figure 1 , and to be continuously prepared to respond to the questions at the foot of each scenario outline. Moreover we recognize obstacles to development of the required skill and knowledge sets in communities across the world. First, successful development of meaningful scenarios within a community requires skills to seek out and acknowledge global/ generalizable knowledge that is relevant, while embedding local knowledge and wisdom. Second, both global and local myth and misinformation ("alternative truths" and "fake news") must be recognized and countered. Third, development of the required skill sets in communities requires programs of education and training for which there may be limited resources-financial and intellectual-in a post-COVID-19 world. Fourth, any program to implement such skills nurturing will open the door to the "snake oil salesmen" of futurism and false promise. Finally, we must question whether academics will be willing/able to commit to necessary long-term engagement in communities from within their own world of short-term, publish-or-perish, metrics-based reward? In summary, we believe that communities can be enabled to work autonomously to both recognize and respond to different circumstances and behaviors at global/regional/local levels and then to apply their own agency and action toward achieving A1 and B1 outcomes, avoiding the A2 and B2 outcomes outlined in Figure 1 . The question is, are scenario "experts" willing and able to engage in enabling and supporting them to do so? https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6231-8060 George Wright https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0867-1266 There is no returning to normal after COVID-19 Combining participatory scenario planning and systems modeling to identify drivers of future sustainability on the Mongolian Plateau Participatory scenario planning for developing innovation in community adaptation responses: Three contrasting examples from Latin America Scenario thinking: Preparing your organization for the future in an unpredictable world Promoting articulated action from diverse stakeholders in response to public policy scenarios: A case analysis of the use of 'scenario improvisation'method Branching scenarios' seeking articulated action for regional regeneration-a case study of limited success When will we return to normal after coronavirus? The data will tell us. 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