Like Water on Stone

In the year 1970, Shell realised that the world of crude oil was going to change. Shell is known for ‘scenario planning’; the company not only forecasts how the world would change, but by giving importance to uncertainty, they come up with a few possible scenarios.

In 1970, every scenario they came up with showed that if they did ‘business as usual’ they would sink like the titanic. The scenario planners were happy that they found this out and when they showed these scenarios to senior and middle management, they were given a metaphoric standing ovation. But much to their dismay, nothing changed. Business continued as usual. The ship began to sink.

This is when the pioneer and leader of scenario planning in Shell, Pierre Wack, realised something. He says, “…we no longer saw our task as producing a documented view of the future business environment five or ten years ahead. Our real target was the microcosms (mind-sets) of our decision makers: unless we influenced the mental image, the picture of reality held by critical decision makers, our scenarios would be like water on a stone. This was a different and much more demanding task than producing a relevant scenario package.”

Without working on people’s mindsets, you can never truly change the direction of a business. In the current climate, ‘disruption’ is the only buzzword that counts. The digitization of business operations has meant business and organizations are in constant flux.

How will your organization or start up remain afloat? How will you avoid all the icebergs? Including the icebergs in your minds?

Optimist mindsets will help you unpack what goes into the formation of an existing mindset and how we can go about changing it with a shared vision. The program will challenge and affirm your in-built optimistic identity, character, values, and ethics to achieve your full potential and vision. This transformative journey allows the leader in you to be creative, gain experience and guide change. This workshop will help us see who we truly are.

Sources:  – The shell scenarios are from the following article on Harvard Business review, written by Pierre Wack – https://hbr.org/1985/09/scenarios-uncharted-waters-ahead?gig_events=socialize.login – This article borrows its ideas from The Fifth Discipline, a ground-breaking book on systems thinking by Peter Senge

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