would be likely to evolve in each scenario. In other words, we have to write a story of what life is like in that future. In a sense it is a fictional story because it has not yet happened. But the story will occupy a strange no-man’s-land between fiction and reality as it will be based on hard data and trends that we know are real and from which we can easily extrapolate. The aim here is to provide the sense of suspended disbelief that we are already in that future. That is very important because the emotions evoked must inspire the readers of the scenarios to act in the present to realise the best outcomes and avoid the worst. They must recoil in horror from the worst outcomes and work very hard at achieving the best. In this sense, good scenario sets often turn out to be self-fulfilling prophecies in that they inspire management teams, corporations or even countries to reach the best-case scenarios.
The final step is to identify a number of markers or indicators indicative of the likelihood of the current and most probable scenario changing to another. By tracking those indicators closely, there will be adequate advance warning of which scenario is going to happen.
At a recent investment seminar I set out four plausible outcomes for South Africa in 2024 and what their implications were for people with considerable savings and investments. A member of the audience, somewhat agitated, rose to enquire why I could not tell him which of the four would happen. I did tell him, but also recited all the warnings about the emergent property of complex systems and that, rather than obsessing over which scenario would materialise, investors might be better off accepting inherent uncertainty, developing an investment strategy for each scenario, and reading the environment very closely to shift strategy as circumstances in the country changed. Very few companies and organisations do that well, but it is essentially what sets strong strategic planning teams apart from weak ones and robust companies from less successful ones – especially those invested in volatile emerging markets.
Many of the companies we have worked with have found that developing a strategy for four scenarios is not actually much more demanding than developing a strategy for one. They can then confidently adopt the strategy that aligns most closely with the scenario they deem most probable. But they are securely positioned to switch strategy at a moment’s notice if there are sudden policy or market changes and another scenario becomes more probable. Compare their position with that of a company that rather chooses to rely on the single forecast of a consultant who has the confidence to say that he knows how the future will evolve. When markets shift and policies change, that company may find itself in a crisis. The forecast they choose to rely on has no value. They have to go back to the drawing board, do new research, and develop new strategies for the changed environment. However, the company that planned through scenarios will be many months, even years, ahead of them. The same applies to families planning for their futures in South Africa.
In this book we are going to follow the methodology given here. The outcome will be a set of precise descriptions of what life in our country will be like in 2030. Each will be accompanied by five easily identifiable indicators of which scenario it will be. The result will be to provide more than a decade of advance warning of where we are all headed – more than enough time to make a plan to capitalise on the best that South Africa will offer and hedge against the worst. There will be no excuse to say we did not see it coming.
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