Pick the two most uncertain forces that matter most, cross them, and write the four worlds that result in enough detail that people can stand in them. The point is rehearsal. A group that has lived in four futures for a day will recognise one arriving faster than a group that has not.
Move 2 of 4 · Makes a future inhabitable
Two uncertainties crossed into four worlds a group can reason from inside.
Needs some practice
The idea
You take the shifts from a scan and rate them on two things: how much they would change schools, and how uncertain they are. The two that score highest on both, and that do not move together, become the axes of a 2×2. Each corner is a world. You then write each world from the inside, using the same handful of people in all four, so the worlds can be compared.
Scenarios are a 2×2 with better writing. That sounds dismissive and is not meant to be. The value is almost all in the rigour of choosing the axes and the honesty of the writing.
Scenarios are not forecasts. The moment someone asks which one is most likely, the exercise turns back into forecasting and the other three become decoration. Say this at the start. Expect to say it again halfway through.
What scenarios build is recognition. A group that has argued about four coherent worlds carries them around afterwards. Two years later, someone notices the early shape of one and names it. That is the real output, and it is close to unmeasurable, which is an honest problem for justifying the time.
A scenario set is only as good as the two things it chose to be uncertain about. Choose two that move together and you get four descriptions of the same world in different hats. No amount of good writing afterwards will rescue it.
So spend more time on the axes than feels comfortable. The argument about them is where most of the learning happens. Be wary of the obvious axis. For technology scenarios it is usually the speed of progress, and for schools that is often the wrong choice, because a fast timeline and a slow one look surprisingly alike from inside a classroom.
When
Before
Steps
8 steps, about 4 hours, best as one day in all. The questions in quotation marks are meant to be read out as they are.
Read out the sentence: these are not forecasts, and we will not rank them by likelihood. Show one finished world from a published set so people see the grain you are aiming for. Agree a signal anyone can use when the room drifts into forecasting.
Ask the room
Watch for Polite agreement with no intention behind it. It will come back within the hour.
Place each shift card on two scales: how much it would change schools, and how uncertain its direction is. Use the uncertainty sort. Shifts that are high impact and low uncertainty go to one side. They will hold in every world.
Ask the room
Watch for Everything rated highly uncertain. Uncertainty means the direction is open, not that the details are fuzzy.
From the high-impact, high-uncertainty shifts, choose two that are independent of each other. Test each pair: can you imagine all four combinations? Write each axis as two ends, both plausible, neither obviously good. Expect this to take the longest. The argument is the work.
Ask the room
Watch for Axes with a good end and a bad end. You will get one utopia, one dystopia and two worlds nobody takes seriously.
Write the four corners. Give each a short working name of two or three words. Warn the group the names will harden and outlive the descriptions, and agree to revisit them after the writing.
Ask the room
Watch for Names that are verdicts. “Dystopia” is a verdict. Ask for a name a resident of that world might use.
Confirm the four or five people who will appear in every world. Give each a role and a reason to be in a school on an ordinary day. Holding the cast constant turns four stories into one comparison.
Ask the room
Watch for A cast of heroes. Include someone who is tired, someone sceptical and someone with less money.
Split into four groups, one per world. Each writes a single ordinary day for the fixed cast, hour by hour if there is time. Commit to specifics: a name, a time, a decision someone made that could have gone otherwise.
Ask the room
Watch for The preferred world written as a brochure. Ask its group what it costs and who loses.
Each group reads its world aloud. Then fill in the read-across grid for five dimensions: the classroom, curriculum and assessment, how students behave, how teachers act, and the partnerships around the school. Mark what is the same in all four and what differs most.
Ask the room
Watch for Reading the worlds as a moral ranking. Every world contains something worth having, and the preferred one contains real losses.
For each world, write two or three things you would notice first if it were arriving. Keep them concrete and checkable. These are what make the worlds useful after the session ends.
Ask the room
Watch for Indicators so vague every world fits them, such as “more technology”.
Worksheets
Each one prints on its own sheet of A4. The grey line under each is an example from the worked situation.
Futuring · Scenarios · Worksheet
Rates each shift on impact and uncertainty, and tests which pairs are independent enough to become axes.
| ShiftFrom the scan, named as a change | Impact on schools1–5 | How uncertain1–5 | Moves together withAnother shift, or none | Axis candidate?And its two ends |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Example How technology is used by the people in it | 5 | 5 | None | Yes: aligned and human-centred, or misaligned and extractive
geraldajam.com/work/toolkit
Futuring · Scenarios · Worksheet
Puts the four worlds side by side on five dimensions, so you can see what persists and what differs.
| World 1 | World 2 | World 3 | World 4 | Same in all four? | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Classroom environment | |||||
| Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment | |||||
| How students behave | |||||
| How teachers act | |||||
| Partnership and operating culture |
Example Curriculum, pedagogy and assessment | Velvet Cage: assessment predicts conformity | Flourishing: learner-owned portfolios, human final judgement | Division Economy: nobody believes a credential | Gilded Enclaves: micro-credentials for some, old tests for the rest | No. The sharpest difference in the set.
geraldajam.com/work/toolkit
Worked example
A horizon scan for Singapore’s schools
The group had the scan’s signals and three developments that held in any future. We wanted four worlds coherent enough to rehearse against, and we wanted them grounded in Singapore, with void decks and hawker centres in them, because a scenario with no ground under it is a genre exercise.
What came out of it
Four worlds, eight signal stories and a read-across on five dimensions. The surprise was assessment. Across the four worlds the classroom furniture barely changed and the technology in the room changed less than vendors would hope. What changed almost beyond recognition was what a credential means, who issues it and whether anyone believes it.
Signs
Variations
Use published scenarios, such as the OECD’s four for schooling. Skip the axes and the writing. Read one world per group, fill in the read-across grid and list early indicators. You lose the argument about the axes, which is a real loss, but you keep the comparison.
Take a published set and write one ordinary day for one student you teach, in each of the four worlds. Two hundred words each. Then fill in a single row of the read-across grid for the dimension you care most about.
Give students the two axes and ask each group to write a day in one world, for someone their own age. They will be harsher and funnier than staff, and their reading of the extractive worlds is usually closer to the present than adults like to admit.
Next
Pin the four worlds and the read-across grid somewhere the team will see them. Put one early indicator per world on the agenda of a meeting six months out. Then use the worlds: backcast from the one you want, or stress-test a commitment you already hold.
Tools
Published elsewhere, and worth the time.
Back to the Future of Education (OECD, 2020)
Four finished scenarios for schooling. Show a staff group the output before they make their own, or borrow them outright.
Critical Uncertainties (Liberating Structures)
A structured way for a group to choose two uncertainties and cross them. From Lipmanowicz and McCandless (2013).
The Futures Toolkit (Government Office for Science, 2017)
Includes a step-by-step guide to building scenarios from two axes of uncertainty.
The Art of the Long View (Schwartz, 1991)
The classic two-axis method, readable in an evening.
Reading
Start with the first on the list.
Ramírez, R., & Wilkinson, A. (2016). Strategic Reframing: The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach. Oxford University Press.
Scenarios as reframing, not prediction.
OECD. (2020). Back to the Future of Education: Four OECD Scenarios for Schooling. OECD Publishing.
A finished set for schooling.
Schwartz, P. (1991). The Art of the Long View. Doubleday.
The classic method.
van der Heijden, K. (1996). Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation. Wiley.
Why the conversation matters more than the document.
Wack, P. (1985). Scenarios: uncharted waters ahead. Harvard Business Review, 63(5), 72–89.
The original account of scenarios changing managers’ minds rather than predicting prices.