Session 7

Develop ideas of where you could incorporate the use of Scenario Planning in your organisation. Upload to Group Blog.

First of all, the scenario planning is about

1. identifying unanticipated future
2. a way to prepare the mind for unanticipated future
3. changing people's mind

And the Scenario planning process include:

1. identify focal issue
2. search for driving force
3. find uncertainties
4. formulate scenario logic
5. strategy analysis 

Again and again, I am still using the example that I was the project planner of Confucius Carnival 2012. I hope it will not bored you a lot as it is the internship I had before.

For this job, the main unanticipated future is that --- we cannot assure the performance team will come on time as we had not signed any contract or agreement. They just reply us by phone call. So, if the performance teams suddenly claim that they are not able to come. Then, we can do nothing.

Thus, I will treat it as the main focal issue indeed. The external conditions would be the uncertainties. For example, if there is a traffic jam, then they may not be able to come on time or even not able to come indeed. Besides, maybe they would face the problem of health. The most common problem is that the performers feel sick right before the show and thus they are not able to have any performance even though they come to the carnival.

For the first reason, we can do nothing as the traffic problem is quite serious in Hong Kong especially in Causeway Bay on Saturday. Besides, we can do nothing if the performers feel sick as we cannot force them to keep on perform under such bad condition. Even though they are insisting in performing, they may not have a good show since the illness may affect their performance. 

For this scenario, what we can do is to prepare more functions as a contingency plan so that in case of any accident, we can allocate another performance team to do the "substitution" . But, someone may ask that how will we settle the "substitution" if the origin performer are able to perform? So, it is much better if we (the emcee) can be the contingency plan. Or we can ask the performer to arrive as earlier as possible so as to avoid any case of traffic problem.

For another scenario such as the problem of bad weather, I think it is another uncertainties which is quite common in most of the out-door activities. As the Carnival is held on February which is usually in the winter. Therefore, it has a less chance to have the rainy weather at that moment. Even it has some rain, it must be the small one and it can be solved by preparing lots of umbrella. It is not a big problem since it is not common to have a heavy rain in winter. Moreover, we can look at the weather forecasting in the website of Hong Kong Observatory which can give us a very accurate weather forecasting before the commenced date of the Carnival.