The Sixth Sense: Accelerating Organizational Learning with Scenarios

by Kees van der Heijden, Ron Bradfield, George Burt

This book helps managers move beyond the idea that the future of business will resemble the past and allows them to use scenarios to imagine multiple perspectives. The concepts of organizational realities, experience, and beliefs are explored to encourage and embrace change in business organizations for a successful future.

Genres: Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published August 16, 2002

Reviews

[Said AlMaskery]

I am surprised that a book like has not made it to the top of a-must-read business books. Unfortunately this is the case with a lot of well-researched management books.

The authors build a strong case for scenario planning as a tool for strategy development. They argue; that taking away daily business interactions, certain personal and organization biases, along with thinking flaws, will allow a better and more concise strategy development that has tools to "sense" what might be coming. Hence "The Six Sense". They also argue that this collective activity will enable a better communicated organizational learning that cascades throughout the organization.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would recommend it as a read for business leaders. The tools presented can be simplified to accommodate any organization size. I actually intend to try it out in my next annual strategy meeting.

[Katayoon]

The book introduces the readers to the concept of external business environment and the procedure (scenario planning) of how to deal with it. As any manger and people in charge of decision making in any organization may know the future of any business is very complex and hard to forecasts. However this book offers more than consultancy, it offers a perspective of the unexpected business’s future by explaining of how to explore the business environment.
The book provide a process (rather than a solution); most specifically a process of making sense of the future of business by paying attention to business environment’s factors such as social, technological, economic, ecological, political, geo-politics, ethics and cultural factors. It provides a framework of how to present each one of these factors and plan and operates sensibly for any unexpected happening due to this factor.
I was privileged to be a student of one of the authors, and on the first day of his class, he started his lecture by this quote from Heraclitus “If you do not expect the unexpected you will not discover it; for it cannot be tracked down and offers no passage”. The book describes this quote in modern business language and in the form of scenario planning.

[DAVID CHOE]

One of the good book referring to the scenario planning and usage for the strategic foresight. In this uncertainty time, many Organisation scramble to use this strategy to determine their position current , beyond and the future.