Informing Your Strategies With Scenario Planning

Strategies fail when those telling the story lose control of the narrative. When I was 11, my sixth-grade teacher walked our class to a local library, where I started writing my story. I learned about museums and natural history; to this day, I enjoy collections of fossils and shells indexed and displayed in cases and am inspired by books I checked out from that library. Unfortunately, as much as the influence of that small library in Carson, Calif., reaches through time to still touch me decades later, it closed in the 1990s. At some point, that library could no longer substantiate a story of value amid shifting economics, changing demographics, and a misalignment with the politics of place.Strategy often fails when it encounters a bleaker future than imagined or a more progressive one. In a bleaker future, organizations fail to consider what they could or should cut under increasing budget pressures or negative political situations. They are ill-prepared to navigate a future that challenges fundamental assumptions about libraries and their purpose. Conversely, if the future turns out better than imagined, libraries may prove unequipped to capitalize on the windfall.