The strategic conversation, 25 years later: A retrospective review of Kees van der Heijden's Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation

Abstract

Kees van der Heijden is an icon in the futures and foresight academic and practitioner community. Educated at the Technische Universiteit Delft, his work at Royal Dutch Shell, the Global Business Network, the Strathclyde Business School at University of Strathclyde, the Saïd Business School and the Templeton College at University of Oxford, and the Netherlands Business School at Nijenrode University has shaped the scholarly field of futures studies as well as the practical world of scenario facilitation. This article is a 25‐year reflective and retrospective book review of Kees van der Heijden's seminal text Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation. The authors conducted interviews with colleagues, coworkers, collaborators, students, and friends of Kees van der Heijden to add depth and dimension to this retrospective work. To bring van der Heijden's work into scholarly conversation with the extant literature, we also situated this return to Scenarios in the context of related works and other reviews of both editions of the book.

What's luck got to do with it? Commentary on Rowland and Spaniol (2021)

“…The retrospective review of Rowland and Spaniol (2021) is timely, or rather 20 years too late—which is something that is meant only half‐jokingly. There should basically be a scientific statute that stipulates that fundamental books such as Scenarios: The art of strategic conversation be reviewed again in specialist journals every five years.…”

From alternative pictures of the future to an organizational intervention: A commentary on Rowland and Spaniol

“…Rowland and Spaniol (2021) refer to Pierre Wack, and, specifically, his idea that scenario planning is about helping an organization to reperceive itself. And while Lang and Ramirez (2021) point out how difficult it is for decision makers to work with scenario reports that have been produced for them or have been produced outside of their organization in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic, I too slowly started to realize, in my practice, what the essentials in scenario planning really were.…”

“…Focusing less on the scenarios themselves and more on what happens during those conversations, specifically, those strategic conversations. Rowland and Spaniol (2021) mention that the scenarios developed by Wack et al, which predicted the rise of OPEC, were developed for but not with the leadership team. Kees van der Heijden shifted the scenario work away from presenting polished scenarios to initiating a process that allowed the managers of Shell to participate in developing the scenarios.…”

“…I find it striking, on the one hand, how much or how little time (depending on the perspective) it took me to understand the value of "strategic conversations," but how relevant these two books by Kees van der Heijden still are. Rowland and Spaniol (2021) refer to an interview with Paul Schoemaker in which he states that in the 1970s it took Shell's competitors eight years to understand that times had changed and by then it was too late. This is exactly what makes the idea of having "strategic conversations" so timely when organizations are faced with fast-changing business environments, increasing complexity, and an uncertain future.…”

Start‐ups and the art of ignoring the future: Commentary on Rowland and Spaniol 2021

“…Many founders are obsessed with getting the business model “right” (as adapted from Wack, as cited in Rowland & Spaniol, 2021, p. 4). They often have no idea themselves what this “rightness” means.…”