Creating Robust Strategies and Robust Organizations

So far, we have demonstrated how to develop scenarios that describe a range of futures. But, as we have discussed, sometimes the unexpected can happen. Consider the 9/11 attacks on the US homeland. With hindsight, these attacks and the methods used to achieve them seem predictable. Airliner cockpits were, then, relatively insecure and easily accessed by motivated individuals posing as passengers who, once inside the cockpit, had the flying experience necessary to pilot the airliner to a target destination: the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and one other target that was not reached. But US-based newspapers and magazines were mute about such a possibility before its terrible occurrence, despite numerous precursor signals throughout the 1990s, including Al Qaeda’s attacks on US embassies in Africa, its thwarted plan to blow up multiple aircraft in flight over the Pacific, and the previous failed attempt to bomb the World Trade Center. The sequence of events and the effect of stakeholder capabilities and motivations on the events of 9/11 appear now to have been obvious, with hindsight — like standing dominoes falling one against the other in an unstoppable sequence. But, before the event, such a sequence was one of many thousands — each, perhaps, equally likely, but yet equally implausible. In this chapter, we discuss biases that can lead to inappropriate confidence in predictions of the likelihood of future events, and then consider what an organization should do both to protect itself against the occurrence of high-impact negative events, and to take advantage of the occurrence of high-impact positive events.