Scenarios make a great "front end" to a change process. They loosen up the group, allow for large scale participation, create the perceived need for change. Not from experts or a planning group, but from the participants themselves.

If we work together we will be focusing on the climate for your organization for the rest of the first decade of the 2000's and perhas a little ways beyond.  So please be thinking about your best intuitions about what might affect the way you work and the way your organization might be affected.

In any organizational development project,  its desirable that more staff or employees have a more holistic picture of the organization and its environment. In the old organization, it was considered that the big job was at the top and then it breaks down to the front line. In the new organization, where those on the front line (or internal equivalent) must innovate in response to changing conditions, the only way they can innovate accurately is by understanding the resources and goals of he organization.

The language of "learning organization" or "knowledge creation" is responding to that need. The use of wide participation in scenarios is a great way to frame those efforts and get them off to a good start.

Here are some examples of the use of scenarios creation with groups (these are preliminary scenarios. Follow up is very important).. Then I'll lay out a more detailed "ideal" project plan.

Examples

Because of my interest in the various forms of participatory development group based open space. I've looked for ways to use some form of scenarios as part of a large scale process. I've spent enough time with the major modes of large scale participation to feel confident in the underlying logic. 

First Example: smaller groups

Second Example: Large Scale events

Scenario types