Transformative Scenarios

How stories of the future help to transform conflict in the present

This is an excerpt from my article published in the Berghof Handbook on Conflict Transformation in 2018. To read the full piece, please go to the Berghof Foundation website.

Scenarios are stories of possible futures. Human beings have always used stories to talk about things that are difficult, complex, or even taboo, to encourage a change in thinking, illuminate pathways, and inspire right action. Creating and telling stories about possible futures allows us to lift our gaze above our current stuck situations and polarized conversations into a longer time horizon and ask ourselves “what if?”

The Transformative Scenarios Process (TSP) was originally born out of a project in South Africa called the Mont Fleur scenarios, which took place in 1991–92 at a time of significant uncertainty and turmoil. The effectiveness of the adaptive approach to scenarios — the value of understanding what could happen in the future so as to more easily adapt and succeed — was already well known for international corporations and governments at the time. But the Mont Fleur scenarios had a different nature: Here, the scenario planners were not experts developing scenarios for management or a client, but rather stakeholders from the entire political spectrum developing scenarios for themselves and other leaders like them. The intention was not just to adapt to the context but to shape the future of the country. The impact was not just a more robust strategy to stay ahead of the competition but transformed intentions and relationships of a group that were to play a central role in leading the South African transition.

A key condition for engaging in a transformative scenarios process is that a core group of stakeholders see the situation they are in — or the direction they are moving in — as unacceptable and/or unsustainable, and believe that they can’t carry on as they have been. This discomfort is not always well defined, nor is there usually alignment among the stakeholders about what the problem is. Different people will find the situation problematic for different reasons, but they share a discomfort with the status quo and a sense of potential that things could be different. This offers them a common starting point. In these conditions, scenarios offer a shared task around which to build a team comprising opposing interest groups — people who would not otherwise agree to come together to collaborate.

Not all scenario planning is transformative. Often, scenarios are used to inform strategies to reinforce existing power structures and give priority to intellectual and conceptual knowledge of experts rather than to the practical wisdom of other stakeholder groups. The label “transformative scenarios” begs the question of what makes scenarios not just useful to decision-makers, but actually transformative to society?

Steve Waddell (2016) distinguishes between incremental and transformative approaches to change. Incremental approaches aim to improve performance and replicate best practices within existing rules, mindsets, narratives, and power structures. Transformative approaches, on the other hand, cause shifts in rules, mindsets, narratives, and power structures.

The question that is often posed to scenario builders in TSP is: “What are the stories that need to be told?” This question implies that we are seeking stories which the “system” or the society needs to hear and absorb and attend to, so as to fundamentally shift rules, power structures, and mindsets towards a better future.

Transformative scenarios processes are inspiring, rewarding, and impactful, while at the same time messy, complex, and imperfect. The key promise of TSP is that it lowers the barriers for key stakeholders to step through the door and into a room with their adversaries. It is an invitation to a journey that they can accept to embark on. It is a journey where they don’t need to “enemify” each other, where they can face reality together, lift their gaze to a new horizon, and discover each other as whole persons. Each of them holds a valuable piece of a wider puzzle, not only in their knowledge but also in their agency and sphere of influence. Over the course of the journey, they build vision that is reality-infused and powered by an awareness that shifting their problematic situation depends on them.

For more information on TSP, see the Reos Partners website.