WTF: What’s The Future? An Introduction to Scenario Planning

Welcome to our first What’s the Future (WTF) Scenario. Throughout the year, we will be sharing scenarios that we hope you will find compelling, provocative and useful. 

Futurists use scenarios to explore possibilities for the future. As we shared in our opening issue, they are not trying to predict the future or even to come up with a foolproof plan for managing a future situation, but rather to develop cognitive flexibility by imagining what seems, today, to be implausible. Digging into a scenario also helps us to imagine what the future might look like if one of these scenarios should come to pass: What new technologies will exist? What our economic reality might be? What our political landscape might be? And ultimately, how all of this will impact our schools and the future of education.

All of our scenarios will take place ten years in the future - 2032. Research on scenario planning suggests that imagining about a decade into the future is both manageable and helpful. It’s far enough ahead that we will admit that things could be really different but close enough that we feel it is helpful and relevant.  

We have written our scenarios based on several sources including:

1) Imaginable by Jane McGonigal. We’ll be referring to this book all year long.This scenario (and the following questions) is deeply indebted to Imaginable. We have adapted the scenario from her book to be more relevant to school leaders. Many of our follow up questions are borrowed from her work as well. 

2) The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Risk Reports. Every year the WEF publishes a paper that lists some of the biggest current and future risks. Here is the one from 2022. How often does your leadership team or your board look at this report and consider these risks for your school? 

 3) Some of our own observations about the signals we are seeing - signals that may seem a little on the fringe now but could be a sign of things to come.

We encourage you to use these scenarios to foster conversations at your school. Maybe host a lunch table of colleagues or students. Bring the scenario to a team meeting. Share the scenario with the board. Or maybe consider forming a Futurist Committee made up of multiple stakeholders for the year and meet to dive into these scenarios.

Most importantly, we hope you will see this as a playful exercise and an opportunity to have spirited conversations and exchange ideas with your community members. Scenarios and simulations are simply games that allow us to play with what ifs and they stretch our mind and improve our complex thinking. We hope you learn something about your school, your community members, the future and yourself.

Scenario One: Internet Shutdown

August 2032. All summer long, the country has endured chronic, intermittent internet shutdowns, lasting anywhere from 24 hours to several weeks due to the threat of international cyber attacks which could impact power grids and water supplies. Some of these have been regional and some have impacted the entire nation at one time. There is no end in sight and no predictability to the episodes.

In the first week of faculty orientation, another shut-down occurs with a strong chance that you will be starting the year with students with either sporadic or even no internet access. You are starting to consider what it might be like to begin the year unable to communicate with families and with students and staff with limited and unpredictable access to the internet. It’s anticipated that this current episode could last up to two weeks.

Beyond the immediacy of this shut-down, it’s a challenging and polarizing time for everyone. The inconsistency of internet access has caused unprecedented supply issues, business closures and reversion to slow and outdated practices, just to keep some businesses up and running. In addition, all of this has been a tremendous source of unpredictability and anxiety. Some even believe these shut downs are part of a national conspiracy by the government. There is a lot of anger and mistrust in the air.

A few questions to consider: (Members of L+Doers Unite can check out the WTF Slack channel to access your “Scenario Guide” with more questions for discussion, additional activities for building futures-thinking skills as well as an opportunity to talk about this scenario with other members.)

1. As you read this scenario, rate how you feel on a scale of 1-4. (1=highly pessimistic and worried about the scenario. 4=highly optimistic about the scenario.)

2. It’s ten years in the future. What’s going on with you? Take a few minutes to envision “future you”. What is your role? In that role, what kinds of decisions will you be responsible for at your school?

3. What are going to be the challenges of managing this situation at your school?

4. Are there any opportunities that you can imagine?

5. Walk through this day in 2032. What is different or similar about your current day.

6. What might your students, staff and families need from you?

7. What does leadership look like at this moment?

8. What will you need to do - what actions, policies, routines, structures - will you need to put into place?

9. Having thought about this scenario a bit more extensively, rate how you feel on a scale of 1-4. (1=highly pessimistic about the scenario. 4=optimistic about the scenario.)

A couple additional questions might help you reflect on the likelihood of this scenario.

1. How prepared do you think your school currently is to manage this scenario?

2. What signals do you see now that suggest this could happen? How likely do you believe this scenario is to come to pass? (1=not likely, 4=very likely)

3. Knowing this is a possible future scenario, what actions might you consider taking as a school to prepare?

Finally, the purpose of futurist thinking – and scenarios like this one – is not to predict the future, but to build our imagination about the future, and to prepare ourselves for a range of possible futures. With that in mind, you might even go deeper, and ask the following question:

What other scenarios might the actions above help your school prepare for? In other words, which of those actions would help your school best prepare for a broad range of possible futures?

We’d love to hear how you use this scenario at your school. More importantly, how does it feel to tackle a scenario with a team of colleagues, board members or with students? What kinds of skills are you developing through this process?  

If you don’t know where to start with this scenario, we suggest doing a little web search on internet shutdowns. You might find some interesting information about what could cause an internet shut down, what countries currently use them and what the impact of a scenario like this one could have on the world, country, your region and your school.