FSG News

October 2011

Scenario Projects, FSG People, and Current Events

UPDATE ON USCG “Evergreen III” Workshops …

FSG had a busy summer facilitating scenario workshops. In June, FSG ran the second of two Evergreen scenario-planning workshops for the U.S. Coast Guard this calendar year. Evergreen, the Coast Guard’s long-term strategy and strategic-renewal process, is now in its third continuous cycle. The June workshop involved approximately 60 Coast Guard senior personnel, including officers, enlisted, and civilian leaders. The results of this workshop, combined with those from a March Evergreen workshop, will inform and shape long-term Coast Guard plans and priorities. Plans for 2012 include an Evergreen stakeholder workshop.

FSG partners with USCG Commandant Bob Papp at kickoff of
March 2011 Evergreen strategy workshop in Leesburg, Virginia.

Strategic INNOVATION IN EMERGENCY Management …

FSG and its partner Hassett Willis & Company have been busy supporting the Strategic Foresight Initiative (SFI) of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Since the beginning of the year, FSG and Hassett Willis have been facilitating workshops with emergency management practitioners and homeland security professionals to consider unexpected discontinuities across a range of relevant trend topics, including demographics, climate change, critical infrastructure and government spending. This analysis will inform the development of emergency management scenarios, which will be the focus of SFI workshops later this year.

Making Sense of Trends in Supply Management …

FSG Principal Patrick Marren ran a workshop entitled “Catalysts for Change” on August 4 for the Institute for Supply Management’s Center for Strategic Supply Leadership in Chicago. Participants, after a whirlwind tour of some well-known and some lesser-known forces for change, took part in an exercise in which they analyzed the intersections of these forces and their ramifications for the field of supply management. Eyes were widened and some great insights generated by this senior group of supply executives.

Internet’s Imprint on Journalism …

FSG Associate Gerard Smith spent an afternoon with a class at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Chicago, presenting some thought-provoking trend analysis on the impact of the Internet on the business model of journalism. The apparent breakdown of the legacy model of advertising paying the freight for print and broadcast content was the main subject of quite an interesting exchange with the very bright graduate journalism students of Professor William Handy. Principal Patrick Marren also sat in on the session.

Food Safety and Imports from China …

Patrick Marren also attended a talk given under the auspices of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in Chicago on September 14 by former client and FSG friend Christopher Hickey, formerly of the Department of Health and Human Services and since 2008 the first (and to date only) China Country Director for the FDA. Chris, who was a valued and creative participant in FSG’s Project Horizon scenario planning engagement, which included 15 different federal agencies with foreign affairs exposure in 2005-7, held a lunch audience rapt as he detailed the trials and satisfactions of ensuring the safety of all foods and drugs that are exported from China to the United States with a staff of 13 (or as he put it, “just 100 million Chinese people for each one of us”).

Scenario planning as a Tool for Innovation …

Collective Intelligence’s Kevin McDermott and FSG principal Peter Kennedy make the case for adopting scenario analysis as a tool for fostering innovative thinking. Their article, “Overcoming Opportunity Blindness and Path Dependence: How to Think Your Way to Multiple Futures”, appeared in the May 2011 issue of InnovationManagement. Drawing deeply on their consulting experiences and observations, Kevin and Peter maintain that “strategic confidence” is a critical success factor in a world of disruptive and unpredictable change. Only by rehearsing a range of plausible alternative futures—scenarios—can strategic confidence in such an unpredictable world be built.

Award for Article on Decision Making in a Recession …

Emerald, the UK publishing company, has given special recognition to a 2010 article by FSG principals Peter Kennedy and Patrick Marren. The article, titled “Scenario Planning for Economic Recovery: Short-Term Decision Making in a Recession” (published in Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 38, No. 1, 2010), was selected as “one of the most impressive pieces of work the team has seen throughout 2010.”

MILLENNIUM PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS GLOBAL RISKS …

FSG principal Charles Perrottet, a Board member of the Millennium Project, attended its annual meeting at which the latest edition of their award-winning publication State of the Future was introduced. Research done by the Millennium Project reveals that the world is getting richer, healthier, better educated, living longer and is more peaceful and better connected; yet half the world is potentially unstable. Food prices are rising, water tables are falling, corruption and organized crime are increasing, environmental viability for our life support is diminishing, debt and economic insecurity are increasing, climate change continues, and the gap between the rich and poor is widening dangerously. The Millennium Project, established in 1996 as the first globalized think tank, conducts futures research via its 40 “Nodes” around the world.

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