Scenario Planning: Tools for Tomorrow
Transportation leaders operate in an ever-evolving world, where an interconnected web of trends, demographics and economies combine to create global impacts. In this environment, it’s not enough to look at the past to understand how the future will unfold. Organizations focusing solely on incremental changes to develop strategic plans may find themselves caught off guard, unable to meet the long-term needs of their constituents. This paper evaluates long-range scenario planning as a valuable tool in developing viable future strategies, understanding how organizations address changing trends and how these shifts may impact future agency goals and strategic purposes. Potential benefits of long-range scenario planning include identifying the need to adjust policies or organizational workflow to become more efficient, or discover the need for new approaches. Scenario planning can also help organizations chart pathways through alternative future views, encouraging adaptability and flexibility, and preparing leaders to watch for signposts. This paper explores how scenario planning can be conducted in a variety of organizational settings, testing similar materials in different settings and reviewing the results to learn how discussions about the future were impacted. Scenario planning doesn’t try to predict the future. Instead, it develops a series of plausible futures and invites participants to think about how best to prepare for a variety of future possibilities. By thinking strategically about what transportation might look like in 50 years, agencies can develop long-range strategic plans — then refine them to develop smart, actionable decisions for today.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABC10 Standing Committee on Strategic Management.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Lorenz, Julie
- Jones, Jessie
- Scheuerman, Michelle
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
- Date: 2016
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References;
- Pagination: 13p
- Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Benefits; Case studies; Long range planning; Strategic planning; Transportation departments
- Subject Areas: Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General);
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01593549
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 16-3950
- Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Mar 15 2016 10:07AM