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2.1. The CEO fires himself: a tragedy
This was a bitter experience for me, in which a scenario planning process aimed at
helping managers make decisions eventually cost one of them his job.
The project was a series of top-management workshops, scenario-planning style,
which could ultimately lead to the closure of a large factory and a significant number
of staff redundancies. I led a team of young researchers and was the facilitator for the
workshops themselves, in a process lasting half a year. I was commissioned to
conduct three half-day workshops every forty to fifty days with the management team.
The task and objective of each workshop was agreed beforehand, and well known to
the participants. Voices representing the factory workers were not invited, but
indirectly their opinions were well listened to.
A huge number of man-hours were mobilized, as the research team tried to explore
every option
to keep the factory open, but the team failed to arrive at any convincing
scenario which allowed the factory to keep operating in the long term. Indeed, the
possible closure was a long-standing issue for the company, so that our research and
discussion was often overwhelmed by data and insights from previous studies. We
were working under pressure: there was consensus amongst the executives that the
time had come to hammer out a final decision.
The workshop discussion was choked with competing interests, and offered little
space for exploring new things. I, as the facilitator, definitely needed this space. The
idea I threw to the workshop was this: ‘think how your competitors could play their
business games after our factory closes.’ This question worked, and some innovative
ideas emerged. The management team talked intensively and thoroughly, fighting
and bargaining with each other.
At the end of the second workshop, the discussion converged on the closure option,
which emboldened me to design the third and last workshop for ‘option generation’,
considering how best the company could execute the difficult job of the closure, from
preparation to shut-down and aftercare. Some managers started to call researchers
under me, to commission a detailed study preparing for the closure.
Here, a tragedy hit the company. Just two days before the third workshop, the CEO of
the company suddenly resigned. The CEO had been one of those who hadn’t wanted
to close the factory, and had been asking me to come up with ideas to defend it.
Behind him there was an internal interest group, which had been strongly opposing
the closure.
I realised that the research and discussion, which was transparent and rational,
gradually drove the CEO into a tight corner. The CEO had had the courage to employ
scenario planning and to face its implications, but at the end of the day he was forced
to lose his manoeuvrability in the decision making process. With his position
untenable, he resigned.
The workshop, the third and the last, took place as scheduled. I facilitated this
almost-unwanted event in a frosty climate. The executives were not a unified team
but a constituency with winners and losers. What they had to do was devastatingly
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clear, however. Having come to a decision, they had to speak with one voice, and
they did so. Later a young researcher asked me with resentment whether I had
ignored the CEO’s anguish. “I have noticed it”, he said.
On reflection, four points should be borne in mind:
First, the theme of the scenario project was to be the objective assessment of the
factory under several different business environments in the long term. However, top
management came to the workshops with their own pre-determined opinions,
underpinning a well-distilled Aye or Nay position on the closure.
Second, the scenario planning was expected to provide the discussion arena with
analytical thinking, and transparency in the decision-making process. In this regard at
least, it worked as planned.
Third, having observed the pressure for a decision, I tried to exercise my facilitation
to nurture common sympathy among the management team.
The integrated execution
of the closure would be a big task requiring the skills of the whole company, but in
between the second and the third workshops the internal power-games came back to
life. I was duly concerned about this, but could not intervene, and this left me feeling
powerless and marginalised.
Fourth, during that six month process I actually changed my client. In the beginning
the client was the CEO who had initiated the project; however, gradually the client
turned out to be the whole management team. In general, scenario planning is a
process designed to create collective understanding and wisdom. I tried to be loyal to
this idea but in the process I betrayed my original client, the CEO, and still I feel very
sorry for him. A good scenario practitioner can act as a personal counsellor for the
decision maker. I did not.
2.2 Nuclear power: the scenario as weapon and work of art
I will now move on to discuss my scenario projects for the Japanese public sector,
largely the central government, where I have most experience. Four in particular
stand out: “Nuclear Power scenario 2005”, “Energy 2030”, “Urban Mobility 2040”
and “China Scenario 2007”. Each project had different sponsors, with different
reasons to employ the scenario planning methodology, and each project taught me a
different lesson.
‘Nuclear Power scenarios 2005’ is the next story I want to share. This project was
carried out in 2004/05 obviously before the earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima
Nuclear power incident in March 2011. This was a failed project, and a negative
personal experience. The scenario study in question would be abandoned, never to
see the light of day.
I was working with a Japanese quasi-governmental research institute, which initiated
this project. Top experts were mobilized from the nuclear and energy industries, and
from academia and public bodies. The team diligently carried out its research and
analysis, but gradually the president of the research institute’s motives for sponsoring
the study became clear.