A useful, pragmatic approach that should ultimately lead to better strategic decision-making.
In this business book, a consultant promotes a scenarios-to-strategy planning process.
With four decades of experience, Brummell is a credible expert when it comes to strategic planning. His focus in this executive-level volume is “scenario thinking,” which is intended “to create understanding of a broader range of possible future outcomes, and to enhance the ability to adapt.” In five terse parts the book covers the logic of scenarios; how to develop them; how they are utilized in strategy development; strategy implementation; and the author’s own application of the planning process. Part 1 lays the groundwork by detailing the attributes of scenarios, or “stories describing a range of different futures.” Brummell makes an important distinction between forecasting and scenarios. Forecasting, widely used by business managers, attempts to specifically predict the future, while a scenario focuses on uncertainties that suggest different potential outcomes. As Brummell writes, “Scenario thinking does not try to reduce uncertainty but to embrace it. As a result, scenarios are most appropriate during periods of turbulence and uncertainty.” In Part 2, the author outlines a five-step method for developing focused scenarios in a workshop environment, which he finds most conducive for the process. Enough detail is provided to comprehend, if not implement, scenario development. Along the way, Brummell offers helpful examples of types of scenarios. Part 3 concentrates on strategy development, demonstrating how scenarios can lead to strategies. Here, the author includes a useful road map to help readers visualize a five-step process. Three pertinent examples of strategy development are described in this part. Implementing strategy is the subject of Part 4, which includes an excellent discussion of the criteria for success. Part 5 examines the author’s personal experiences, from his introduction to scenario planning through trials and tribulations associated with the process. He cites several intriguing cases in which he was involved, including global scenario planning for the future of Africa, Latin America, and even the Soviet Union. The book concludes with Brummell’s insightful assessment of “three major themes” that emerged from scenario projects. Numerous charts, graphs, and sidebars enhance the main text.
A useful, pragmatic approach that should ultimately lead to better strategic decision-making.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2023
ISBN: 978-1039156029
Page Count: 248
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: March 1, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
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