This document discusses scenario planning and its use for strategic planning. Scenario planning involves imagining alternative futures and their implications in order to think more broadly about forces impacting libraries. It allows options to remain open and liberates thinking from the past. Scenarios help engage others so that many views are explored. The document provides examples of possible scenario dimensions and library scenarios. It emphasizes that scenario planning is about developing preferred futures and reimagining services to respond to customer needs.

1. Reflecting on the Future
Joe Matthews
November 2013

2. Shameless
Commerce
Section

3. My Road Map
• Rules of the Game
• Scenario Planning
• Library Scenarios
• Re-imagining
• Planning Horizon

6. Our Age of Anxiety is, in great part,
the result of trying to do today’s job
with yesterday’s tools and
yesterday’s concepts.
Marshall McLuhan

8. It’s not linear
Alternate futures
Now

9. Strategic planning is not only
looking down the road, it is …

10. … not just a map

11. … it is a plan to arrive at a
specific destination!

12. Scenario Planning
• Process of imagining alternative futures – and
identify their implications
• Recognizing that we do not have one
future, but many
• Allows ‘options’ to remain in ‘play’
• Seeks to consider new and different options
• Liberates us from past thinking
• Helps us move to a “preferred future”

13. Scenarios
• Helps us to bring new ideas into our
thinking and planning
• Helps us to think more broadly about the
forces that are impacting libraries
• Are a great tool for engaging others so
that many views and insights are explored
• Nothing is right or wrong. Scenarios
encourage us to think about things we
normally don’t think about.

14. Disruption is a reality

16. Building Scenarios
Experience
LEARNING
SPACE
INSPIRATION
SPACE
Explore
Excite
Empowerment
Innovation
MEETING
PLACE
PERFORMANCE
SPACE
Participate
Create
Involvement

17. Possible Dimensions
• Technology (Hi & Lo); Touch (Hi & Lo)
• Eco-framework; Values retention
• Institution-driven vs. Customer-led;
Structure (Inflexible vs. Flexible)
• State supported vs. market driven;
closed (traditional) vs. open (MOOC)
• Funding climate; adaptability

18. Library Scenarios

19. Confronting the Future

20. Its all about building stories & ideas
around a framework as a means
to an ongoing conversation.
It’s about what could happen,
not what will happen.
It’s about developing a preferred future!

21. Re-imagining Libraries

22. Re-imagining Services
• Search
• Discovery
• Content
• Shelving
• Librarians

23. Planning Horizon
• Focus on 3 to 5 years hence
• Use scenarios to explore the future with a
variety of stakeholders
• Focus on a Preferred Future that will really
respond to your customer’s needs
• Recognize that a plan does not survive the
first encounter with “reality” - adjust

24. Possibilities abound …
Just do not dismiss
opportunities

25. An Important Question
Regardless of the scenarios used in the
planning process and your choice of a
Preferred Future, how will the library
add value in the life of each customer?

26. Joe@JoeMatthews.Org

27. Joe Matthews
Joe@JoeMatthews.Org