Behavioral issues in the practical application of scenario thinking: Cognitive biases, effective group facilitation and overcoming business-as-usual thinking. (2016)

Participants’ cognitive biases can both help and hinder scenario thinking: but expert facilitation can challenge and attenuate individuals’ overconfidence.

Stephanie Bryson, Megan Grime, Adarsh Murthy and George Wright; Strathclyde Business School.
Chapter in Behavioral Operational Research, edited by Kunc, M., Malpass, J., & White, L., published by Springer.

“(The authors) discuss and analyse the use of scenario interventions in organisations to overcome business-as-usual thinking – by promoting divergence of opinion and subsequent debate about the nature of the future.

“They show that cognitive biases at the level of individual participants in a scenario workshop can both help and hinder the progression of scenario thinking, and we go on to demonstrate how expert facilitation of the group process can help generate process-gain, with the result that individually held overconfidence is challenged and attenuated.”

Buy the chapter here: Behavioral issues in the practical application of scenario thinking