Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter the Most

Scenario planning is a narrative art, first and foremost. It homes in on the uncertainties that inevitably haunt a complex decision and forces the participants to imagine multiple versions of how that uncertain future might actually play out.

While the diverse groups were better detectives—they identified the correct subject more frequently than their homogeneous equivalents—they were also far less confident in the decisions they made. They were both more likely to be right and, at the same time, more open to the idea that they might be wrong.

It was, instead, a disorganized muddle of action and inaction.

you can’t draw up a list of things that will never occur to you. But you can play your way into that kind of list.

But Sommers found that the mere presence of non-whites in the jury room made the white jurors more contemplative and open to other possible interpretations. Just the idea that there were diverse perspectives in the room helped the group build more accurate maps.

be more widely utilized in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. You can think of a red team as a kind of hybrid of war games and scenario plans: You sketch out a few decision paths with imagined outcomes and invite some of your colleagues to put themselves in the shoes of your enemies or your competitors in the market and dream up imagined responses.

To me, the parable of the basement fire teaches us how important it is to be aware of our blind spots, to recognize the elements of a situation that we don’t understand.

scenario-based exploration of a potential move to the suburbs would take the elements that are most uncertain, and imagine different outcomes for each of them.

resilience and flexibility into their codes and conventions. But mostly those exercises in long-term planning have been all about preserving the current order, not making a preemptive choice to protect us against threats that might erupt three generations later.