Scenario Planning for Policy
Building alternative futures for a more resilient present
Overview
Our work today is dependent on what we believe the future looks like. Whether you're advocating for a tax break for a critical industry, planning a two year campaign, or designing a policy to deliver long-term benefits for your community, your plans are based on what you think the world will look like and what your stakeholders will need over the next year, decade, or generation. However, as everyone who placed a bet on the Russian market or low interest rates continuing indefinitely now know, our assumptions about what the world will be like in 5 years - or even 5 months - can be shaky.
Luckily, scenario planning has been found to help in these situations. Based on the work of Shell, RAND, and the Intelligence Community, this approach encourages a blend of internal and external knowledge to stress-test plans and spark conversations within teams.
What is Scenario Planning
We have worked on numerous scenario planning projects for clients ranging from the European Parliament to the Department of Defense to Fortune 500 companies. These take a similar basic approach: isolating the key drivers of a situation; creating a two-by-two matrix to generate four different futures; and writing up descriptions of each future. This provides stories of what may happen in the future against which plans can be stress-tested and new opportunities can be identified.
One benefit of scenario planning is its ability to be easily customized by adding new features that take each report to the next level. These can be:
More evocative narratives, like describing a day in the life for a representative figure in each future. These are common in technology-based scenarios.
Expanding on the trends that are used to select the drivers. This tends to happen in national security documents that also function as research agendas.
Incorporating quantitative modeling, as with economic scenarios for cities or states.
Using the scenario planning workshop as a way of team building or adjusting workflows.
Conducting surveys based on the scenario report, which can then be used to create a new report that attracts media attention.
We also specialize in running workshops that elicit the foundations of the scenarios that clients need and building out these features (using an expert network if needed) that take the scenarios to the next level.
Example of Scenario Planning - New York 2040
To demonstrate the power of scenario planning, imagine that New York City commissioned us to prepare a report for the city in 2040 to guide their long-term infrastructure investments.
We would run a workshop bringing together representatives from a variety of government departments, academic institutions, and nonprofits. This would likely be conducted in person with a series of pre-workshops submissions and a briefing book. In this workshop, participants would generate a long list of factors that will shape the city in the next 17 years and identify the two most important.
Over the next month, we would correspond with the participants about how each factor might impact the others, where feedback loops could emerge, and which are particularly relevant in different scenarios.
We would then write up four contrasting and sometimes mutually exclusive stories about how the city might look in 2040, including how we got there and the implications for the next decade.
The report would conclude with a series of questions and follow-up action items for each department. This would allow them to catch potentially devastating failures before they happen by setting up warning signs and move to take advantage of an opportunity as soon as they emerge. Example scenarios and an action item for a staffer in the mayor's from each scenario are below.
Deliverables
The primary deliverable is the final scenario report. It will consist of an Executive Summary, Introduction, Overview of Process and Variables, Scenario Narratives, and a Conclusion. The length, detail, and any other additional elements can be discussed and included in addition to the core scenario report.
Scenario projects are best when prepared with a workshop. For that, we would prepare a briefing book sent to participants one week in advance describing the process and some guidance for the process.
Scenario reports can be repurposed for other forms of content, such as blog posts, podcasts, and videos to further expand the findings.
Cost and Logistics
Scenario planning projects are highly flexible. Their length and cost depend on the scope of the project and the format of the delivery.
For a project without a formal workshop, or one conducted on Zoom, and a 15-page report, the cost would be $15,000 and can be delivered in a month. For a longer project, with multiple workshops and a 50-page report that is accompanied by blog posts and video interviews, the price would be closer to $100,000 and delivery would be about 4 months.
About Legislata
These reports and workshops are led by Chris Oates, the founder of Legislata and a Lecturer at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University.
Legislata is an information platform and productivity suite for the political and policy industry. Research from its development has been cited in Politico’s Massachusetts and New Jersey Playbooks, the New York Post, and City & State NY.
Chris previously worked at Oxford Analytica (not Cambridge Analytica), as the North America analyst for their Daily Brief subscription and as an Advisory Associate, leading projects for the Department of Defense, European Parliament, and Fortune 500 companies. He has also worked in business intelligence, consulting in Iraqi Kurdistan, and on the Ranked Choice Voting / Yes on 2 2020 campaign in Massachusetts.
Chris has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Oxford and a BA with Honors and Magna Cum Laude from Brown University.