CONVERSATIONSFOR THE FUTURE

VOLUME I

Singapore’s
Experiences with
Strategic Planning(1988–2011)©2011 Public Service Division, Singapore
All rights reserved.
Public Service Division, Prime Minister’s Office
100 High Street, #07-01 The Treasury
Singapore 179434
Fax: (65) 6332-8932
Website: www.psd.gov.sg
ISBN 978-981-07-0417-9
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by
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Printed in Singapore
Design and Production by Silicon+

CONTENTS
02

FOREWORD

04

INTRODUCTION

08

CHAPTER 1
A Historical Overview

22

CHAPTER 2
Complexity, Cognition and
the Challenge of Communication

36

CHAPTER 3
Capability-Building

41

CHAPTER 4
Connections andNetworked Government

46

AFTERWORD
A Note to the Future

2

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

FOREWORD“The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as
a complete surprise, and is not preceded by a period of worry
and depression.”John Preston

Singapore has never enjoyed the luxury of not planning for the future.
We were thrust into independence in 1965, a country smaller than New York City,
with few natural resources and even fewer people who thought we would survive theinitial years of nationhood. Our early leaders understood our tenuous situation andembarked on several long-term plans, including a massive industrialisation drive.
Some of these efforts ran against the then-current conventional wisdom – opening
our economy to international trade and multinational business rather than favouring
import substitution being a key example. Planning is a deep part of our nationalDNA, drawing from what the late historian Michael Leifer described as Singapore’s
acute awareness of its own vulnerability.
As Singapore matured, so too has our understanding that while we can plan andprepare for the future, we cannot predict it. Even the best-laid plans can run into
problems, or even produce unintended consequences, in a world characterised byever greater turbulence and complexity.
As John Preston suggests, one response to an uncertain world is to bury our heads
in the sand and enjoy transient periods of blithe ignorance before being surprisedby change. However, as a small state and economy, Singapore cannot afford this.
As the velocity of change increases, such periods of comfort are likely to become
progressively shorter. Singapore also has little strategic depth or capacity to absorb
the consequences of multiple large policy errors.
Instead, we have opted for a system of governance that analyses and prepares for
multiple futures. We acknowledge that we cannot fully anticipate these futures, but
try nonetheless to understand their broad contours so that we can take steps today

3

FORE WORD

in preparation for tomorrow. Effectively, we are involved daily in managing risk anduncertainty, and in building a system that is resilient to possible shocks.
This book outlines how our efforts at planning have evolved since the late 1980s, when
we first experimented with scenario planning. Scenario planning continues to be acore tool in our arsenal, complemented by other methodologies and tools developed
through the Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) programme to form
the “Scenario Planning Plus” (SP+) toolkit. The various efforts and experiments
are synthesised by a team in our Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF), which wasestablished in early 2009.
These efforts are not just marginal add-ons to Singapore’s pre-existing bureaucracy.
They lie at the heart of how we are reinventing governance in the face of a rapidlychanging global environment, which necessitates responses vastly different fromwhat we have grown accustomed to. Traditional governance, what we might call
“Government 1.0”, involved regulation, seeking compliance with policy rules andmaintaining as efficient an approach as possible. In contrast, recent developments
call for a fundamental rethink of traditional models. “Government 2.0” will need tobe more adaptive, emergent and able to navigate situations characterised by multicausality, ambiguity and complexity, where relationships between cause and effectare not always clear ex ante.
This is a story very much in the making. Our planning system will continually
evolve as the global and domestic operating environments change. I am glad thatthe initial chapters of our story have been recorded here. Given our unique history
and environment, we cannot promise universal solutions to the challenges andfrustrations of planning in a complex world. But if we can offer suggestions thatcan be customised to other contexts, and educate Singaporean policymakers in the
future, then this book will serve a useful purpose.

Peter Ong
Head of Civil Service, Singapore
Chairman, Centre for Strategic Futures Advisory Board

4

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTUREINTRODUCTION
Personal Reflections on Futures Thinking
In the 1980s, when I was Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Defence, I wrote a
paper suggesting that scenario planning as practised by Royal Dutch Shell could
be a useful tool for planning and policy development. This eventually led to theintroduction of scenario planning, first in the Ministry of Defence and then later by
the rest of government.
Today, scenarios are a key part of the government’s strategic planning process,embedded into our annual strategic planning and budget cycles. National-level
scenario planning exercises are run every few years. These efforts deal with issues
on a national scale, while focussed scenario studies on specific topics like the new
media and climate change are also conducted regularly.
Scenario planning in Singapore has been useful in surfacing otherwise hidden
assumptions and mental models about the world. Regular workshops and forums
facilitate discussions amongst public sector leaders to build consensus and developa Whole-of-Government strategic agenda. Planning units in our Ministries andagencies are now familiar with the key vocabulary and concepts of scenario planning.
The language of scenarios – driving forces, critical uncertainties, predeterminedelements and branching points – is now second nature to many policymakers who
have been trained in the method.
In applying scenario planning, we were fortunate to learn from the experience ofPeter Schwartz and others whose initial experience was in the Shell Scenarios team.
We have since also worked closely with Schwartz and his associates at the Global
Business Network (GBN), and for a long time were the only country among the
GBN’s otherwise corporate members.
Notwithstanding the benefits of scenario planning, a series of shocks in the late
1990s and early 2000s gave me an uneasy feeling about the methodology. These
shocks included the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001 and the SARS crisis in 2003. Each was a sharp, discontinuous and nonlinear shock – a black swan – that had not been anticipated by the scenario planning

5

INTRODUCTION

methodology, which tends to focus on linear extrapolations of driving forces as wecurrently perceive them.
Over several years, I realised that my apprehensions about scenario planning could
be articulated through insights from complexity science and complexity theory.
While the exact boundaries of the science of complexity are still being debated, it
is clearly inter-disciplinary in scope. That is why some of our most vexing strategic
problems require the insight and experiences of many agencies coming together, todevelop coherent plans and policies in response.
Several analysts, including Dave Snowden, who previously headed IBM’s Institute ofKnowledge Management, divide phenomena into the simple, complicated, complex
and chaotic. Snowden does this in what has come to be known as the “Cynefin1
framework”. Later in this book, details are provided on the valuable perspectives
gleaned by the Singapore government from the Cynefin framework, but let me sketch
out the broad strokes here. The framework provided a major insight and helpedme realise that Singapore was no longer operating in the simple or complicatedspaces, where cause and effect patterns are clearer and events more predictable.
Instead, turn-of-the-century events like the Asian Financial Crisis, 9/11 and SARS
had placed us squarely in the more complex and chaotic quadrants, where causal
patterns are less discernible, and predictions much more difficult. Put another way,
we were moving away from an “ordered” world to one that was more “unordered”.
Civil servants and government officials are often much more comfortable in orderedenvironments; our challenge was to start thinking about how to govern in moreunordered, unpredictable circumstances.
As I thought more deeply about these issues, I gradually moved to the idea that weneeded a horizon scanning initiative in Singapore, which could canvass a range ofsources for weak signals of potential future shocks. This marked the beginning of
the Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) system, a computer-based suiteof tools to aid scanning, modelling and perspective-sharing.
In the same way we learned from Shell, GBN and Dave Snowden, RAHS involved
learning from a range of individuals.

1

Pronounced ”kuh-nev-in”.

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CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

John Petersen, from The Arlington Institute, provided some inspiration with hismodels for data analysis. I discovered that John was also doing a lot of thinking about
wildcards: low probability events with game-changing impact. This seemed to me
an important complement to the traditional scenario analysis of driving forces. John
later worked with our National Security Coordination Secretariat (NSCS) on pilot
projects, which became part of the first version of the RAHS system.
We also learned from Jeff Jonas, who had done some impressive work in the fieldof complexity theory. His system of connecting databases and looking for outlier
behaviour – through a system he called NORA (Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness– seemed like a rigorous way of detecting weak signals of future extraordinary
events. We continue to engage Jeff regularly, to exchange perspectives and explore
developments in our respective projects. He and John Poindexter, who developed asystem of “Total Information Awareness” (TIA), both showed that it was possible
to scan masses of data, both structured and unstructured, to look for weak signals,
anomalies and emergent issues.
A brainstorming workshop held in 2004, involving these and other personalities,
led to the conceptualisation and, ultimately, the development of the RAHS system.
This story, of how we moved from scenario planning to RAHS, illustrates two
important points.
First, the process was one of discovery and experimentation. There was no
preconceived plan; we did not try to pre-judge or situate our approach ex ante. Given
the nature of the issues we were tackling, we recognised that we could not start
off thinking about our final destination, but were guided instead by synchronicity,
serendipity and a bit of good luck.
Second, we were fortunate to have a reliable network of friends, from a range of
disciplines and backgrounds, which helped us develop and implement our ideas, andcontinue to do so.

7

INTRODUCTION

These two principles – experimentation and discovery, and the importance of
networks – have been fundamental in the work of the Centre for Strategic Futures(CSF), which is the current phase in our strategic planning story. In this book, theCSF team shares some of the key lessons that Singapore has gleaned in the courseof conducting experiments about the future, communicating insights to decisionmakers, and continually learning from a wide network of friends.

Peter Ho
Senior Advisor, Centre for Strategic Futures
Former Head of Civil Service, Singapore

8

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

CHAPTER 1 – A HISTORICAL OVERVIEW“Our key challenge is to sustain good
governance when the road ahead is unmarked.”Peter Ho, 4th Strategic Perspectives Conference, 8 April 2008

Singapore’s Governance Model
Singapore is a small nation state of approximately five million people, including
both citizens and resident non-citizens. With limited resources and no economic
hinterland, it has always been dependent on the world economy for its survival.
One of the cornerstones of its success story has been political stability and effective
government. Its unique system of governance is based on core principles that form
the basis of public policy formulation in the various spheres of government.
One of these principles is “Anticipate Change, Stay Relevant”. This principle
recognises that Singapore must learn to anticipate future trends, influence
developments and meet needs in ways that can provide Singapore with a competitiveedge. Recognising that the future will always be uncertain, the PS21 (Public Service
for the 21st Century) movement was launched in 1995 to transform the Public Service
from being satisfied with the present to questioning the future. The basic tenet of
PS21 is accepting the need for change as a permanent state. Scenario planningreflects the spirit of PS21, because it lies at the heart of anticipating change.
In line with the spirit of staying relevant, Singapore’s model of governance has
evolved over time: from “Reinventing Government” where government focussed
on being lean, efficient and responsive; to “Networked Government” or “Wholeof-Government” thinking, where the importance of system-level outcomes wasemphasised; and most recently to government as a “Complex Adaptive System”
facing high incidences of systemic risks and uncertainties.

1

The other three principles of governance are “leadership is key”, “reward for work; work for reward” and “astake for everyone, opportunities for all”.

9

A HISTORICAL OVERVIE W

In 2005, the government embarked on a process known as World Singapore, whichapplied Blue Ocean thinking – developed by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne – togenerate new ideas and ways of thinking for Singapore. In line with its name, themovement aimed to bring Singapore to the world, and the world to Singapore, in order
to seek out hitherto uncharted opportunities. World Singapore was an important
way to emphasise the importance of Whole-of-Government (WOG) thinking, andto anticipate the key complex issues that we will have to navigate in a more complex
global environment. Through the work of 19 inter-agency project teams, each led bya Permanent Secretary, World Singapore generated ideas about new things to do as
well as new ways of doing things, by getting our officers to learn how to work in a
networked fashion, rather than within the silos of their Ministries or agencies. In theprocess, it led to valuable political support and dedication of resources to accelerate
progress on innovative ideas, and prompted public officers to make the link between
their work and broader national strategies.
A common theme permeating all these governance models is the importance ofstrategic planning, in order to be prepared for the future. Due to its vulnerability toexternal events, Singapore’s engagement in strategic foresight has been an importantsource of comparative advantage.
In a world that the Institute for the
Future describes as increasingly volatile,
Due to its vulnerability touncertain, complex and ambiguous, several
external events, Singapore’s
challenges face Singapore. Its status as aengagement in strategic
regional hub is being challenged by otherforesight has been an
emerging economies in the region. Energy
important source of
security is a perennial worry, especiallycomparative advantage.
given recent instability in the Middle East.
Singaporean society is also evolving due tochanges in our social makeup, greater affluence and changing expectations from anincreasingly sophisticated citizenry. These factors make for a more variegated andmultidimensional policy space, with issues such as a declining birth rate, an ageing
population, tensions due to an influx of foreigners and increasingly vocal citizens
calling for a more adaptive, flexible and responsive government.
Amidst these changes, Singapore has to be continuously forward-looking in orderto tap on opportunities and highlight uncertainties, as it tackles the challenges ofsustaining its growth.

10

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Origins of Scenario Planning in the Civil Service
Singapore’s efforts at futures planning began as an experiment in the Ministryof Defence (MINDEF), in the late 1980s. This was a natural starting point, giventhat MINDEF’s acquisition cycles are much longer than most public agencies’ andinvolve looking 10-15 years into the future. A planning process was therefore neededthat would allow them to look down such a long-term horizon.
Scenario studies were carried out in the Scenario Planning Branch, with security as
their primary concern.
In 1991, the government felt that we should experiment with scenario planning
as a tool for long-term strategic and policy development. Two years later, scenario
planning was approved by the government as a tool for long-term policy and strategic
development. Key initiatives that helped to jump-start the Civil Service’s capabilitiesin scenario planning were its membership of the Global Business Network (GBN), as
well as visits and attachments to the Shell Group Planning in London.
In 1995, the scenario planning functions were transferred from MINDEF to thePrime Minister’s Office (PMO), where the Scenario Planning Office (SPO) wasestablished. The office aimed toΩ develop national scenarios;Ω disseminate the scenarios;Ω coordinate policy implications; andΩ update expertise in the scenario planning methodology.
The newly-formed SPO launched its first set of scenarios in 1997. In the courseof working on these scenarios, we discovered that while geopolitical and economic
issues were well on the decision-makers’ radar screens, softer “social” issues likenational identity, rootedness to Singapore and community ties received less attention.
In response, the 1997 National Scenarios were designed to both be plausible andchallenge decision-makers’ current assumptions and worldviews. The scenario“Hotel Singapore” explored the possibility of a commercially successful, cosmopolitan
Singapore to which few people felt connected, and where citizens were hardly
different from hotel dwellers seeking somewhere to stay for short stints. “A Home
Divided” posited a Singapore where identities were strong, in relation to specificcommunity groups, but less to an overarching national self-image.

11

A HISTORICAL OVERVIE W

Subsequent exercises were conducted by SPO for the National Scenarios every
three to five years, to refresh the thinking on possible futures and take into accountchanging realities and operating assumptions.
In addition to the National Scenarios, SPO has also worked with other agencies to
conduct studies on more focussed topics. These are opportunities for “deeper dives”
into issues identified as being of particular significance for Singapore. The greater
focus on specific issues has also meant that agencies can apply the findings of eachproject more directly to their everyday work.
The two most recent focussed scenario projects have been on the following topics:Ω New Media, which explored how the advent of the new media would
introduce greater complexity into Singapore’s society and policy-making
environment; andΩ Climate Change, which examined how the first-order geophysical effects ofglobal warming could lead to a range of second- and third-order effects, forinstance on agriculture, human migration, geopolitics and international
economic interactions among states, especially in the Asia-Pacific.

Benefits of Scenario Planning
Scenario Planning has proved useful in creating a culture of long-term strategy
planning and questioning assumptions and mental models, as it focuses as muchon the process of strategic planning as a product or outcome, whether in the formof a report, research paper or some other deliverable. A typical scenario planning
exercise is conducted by a group of public officers, from different agencies and withvarying expertise, committed to the scenario planning project. Team composition
is important to ensure diversity of opinion, expertise and experience. Eachscenario planning team typically spends substantial time researching trends in theenvironment, otherwise known as driving forces, which could impact Singapore.
Each scenario project typically begins with an extensive interview process, throughwhich the team seeks opinions on trends, changes and challenges from Ministers,
Permanent Secretaries and other Public Sector Leaders. Personalities from outside
government, who could provide fresh perspectives, are also interviewed. At key
intervals, the driving forces and National Scenarios are presented to key decisionmakers to obtain further views and feedback. This overall process helps to ensure

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CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

that the scenarios are useful not just as products, but also as a process to engender acommon understanding of the future among government leaders.
Scenario Planning helps the Civil Service
to re-examine conventional wisdom andformulate strategies to meet potential newchallenges and opportunities. In 1997, thegovernment approved the implementationof a formal “Scenarios to Strategy” process,which requires Ministries to conduct
strategic reviews against the ideas set out
in the National Scenarios.

A typical scenario planning
exercise is conducted by agroup of public officers, fromdifferent agencies and withvarying expertise, committed tothe scenario planning project.

A Broader Mission
In 2003, the Scenario Planning Office was renamed the Strategic Policy Office, toreflect its enhanced work scope and responsibilities.
One of the first tasks of the newly-formed SPO was to drive the formation of crossagency teams to coordinate strategy formulation at the WOG level. In essence, theseteams were designed to provide concrete follow-up on the key issues identified inpart by each set of National and focussed scenarios. Each team was set up to addressa specific set of policy issues that required rationalisation across the jurisdictionsof multiple Ministries and other agencies. These teams have typically been led bysenior civil servants, and have comprised both experts from relevant policy realms,
as well as officers covering other policy areas who could provide fresh and innovative
perspectives. The teams have tackled a broad range of issues, including Singapore’s
economic regulation framework, the situation faced by middle-income workers
and the potential opportunities and challenges posed by today’s youth, who will betomorrow’s consumers, talent and citizens.
To complement the work of the cross-agency teams, SPO started working closelywith the Ministry of Finance towards a WOG strategic planning and budget
allocation cycle. This was to ensure alignment between the budget planning andresource allocation processes on the one hand, and the strategy development process
on the other.

13

A HISTORICAL OVERVIE W

The foundation of this merged system has been a “block budget” assigned to each
Ministry – essentially a spending ceiling within which Ministries are empowered
to make final allocations based on their respective strategic outcomes and priorities.
By design and necessity, the WOG planning process has been a fluid process, evolving
since its inception to include more diverse tools as the challenges facing Singapore
have grown in number, scope and depth. This WOG process takes into accountthe work done under the National Scenarios, as well as the Whole-of-Government
Integrated Risk Management (WOG-IRM) framework, a complementary processthat is elaborated on later.

Limitations of Scenario Planning“Those working in government today are the first generation of
public servants responsible for addressing difficult, complicated and a growing number ofcomplex public policy issues simultaneously.”
Jocelyne Bourgon, President Emeritus of the Canadian School of Public Service

Notwithstanding its many uses and applications, after several iterations, scenario
planning proved to lack sufficient agility in responding to a rapidly changing andcomplex environment.
Part of this stemmed from its focus on linear extrapolations of trends ordriving forces as currently perceived, which discounts the possibility of sharp,
discontinuous shocks.
Also, a typical National Scenarios exercise would take approximately two years, during
which there was little avenue for quick updates, “course corrections” or opportunistic
refreshes based on current developments. A succession of unanticipated events –including the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis; Jemaah Islamiah terrorism-relatedarrests in 2002; and the occurrence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
in 2003 – indicated that the Singapore government needed to manage future risks
and uncertainties with a broader suite of tools that could canvass new tools and ideas,
to analyse weak signals of potential future shocks.

14

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Developing New Tools
In response, the Civil Service began exploring risk assessment and horizon scanningcapabilities in trying to understand a more complex and unpredictable environment.
There was a broad understanding that even with the best efforts and best tools, wewould still be surprised – possibly and probably repeatedly. Hence, the aim of these
new capabilities was not to eliminate, but to reduce the frequency and amplitude ofstrategic shocks.
As Peter Ho noted in his Introduction, the search for tools to complement scenariosdrew on the work of various international experts in complexity and futures.
John Petersen, president of The Arlington Institute, had written about strategic
surprises and developed the Arlington Index, to measure the rate of change andimpact of wild cards. Petersen proposed setting up a Surprise Anticipation Centre– an idea that eventually evolved into the Horizon Scanning Centre (HSC) as partof the Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning (RAHS) programme, under the
National Security Coordination Secretariat (NSCS).
Jeff Jonas, Chief Scientist of IBM’s Entity Analytics Group, had done impressive workin the field of complexity theory and developed NORA (Non-Obvious RelationshipAnalysis), a system that connected databases and scanned for anomalous behaviour.
John Poindexter was heading DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
Total Information Awareness Office in 2002. The Total Information Awareness(TIA) concept posited that by connecting a vast number of databases, we could findweak signals and emergent issues, and this inspired us to consider the necessity of
having large-scale search capabilities to detect new challenges.
Dave Snowden, founder of Cognitive Edge and an expert in sense-making andcomplexity, provided a key insight with his Cynefin framework, depicted below.
Playing on the meaning of the Welsh word Cynefin, “place of multiple belongings”,
the framework divides the operating environment into Simple, Complicated,
Complex and Chaotic spaces. Governments tend to think that they are operatingin the known or knowable quadrant, where events and cause-effect relationships
are predictable ex ante. However, governance has been increasingly taking place inan environment that is best represented by the unordered realms, on the left sideof the diagram. These are characterised by increasing complexity and even chaos,15

A HISTORICAL OVERVIE W

where the first to discern patterns would have a competitive advantage. In such anenvironment, the linear planning processes of governments may often be inadequate
and out of synchronisation.

COMPLEXCOMPLICATED

Cause and effect are only coherent inretrospect and do not repeat

Cause and effect separated over timeand space

Probe-Sense-Respond

Sense-Analyse-Respond

CHAOTICSIMPLENo cause-and-effectrelationships perceivable

Cause-and-effect relations repeatable,
perceivable and predictable

Act-Sense-Respond

Sense-Categorise-RespondSeveral analysts have noted that scenario planning is usually best applied whenthe environment lies in the simple and complicated spaces, where cause and effectpatterns are clearer and events more predictable. However, events such as 9/11, the JI
arrests and SARS indicate that events increasingly occur in the complex and chaotic
spaces, where patterns are less discernible and forecasts are more difficult. As notedby Snowden:“(A fundamental assumption is) that a certain level of predictability andorder exists in the world. This assumption encourages simplifications that are
useful in ordered circumstances. Circumstances change, however,
and as they become more complex, the simplifications can fail.”
To begin tackling the challenges posed by greater complexity and the prospect of
discontinuous change, the RAHS programme was launched in 2004, as part of the
NSCS. The RAHS programme explores methods and tools that could complement
scenario planning in anticipating strategic issues with significant possible impact
on Singapore.

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CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Peter Ho notes in his Introduction that Singapore’s strategic planning journey has
been one of experimentation and discovery. This echoes an earlier remark he madeat a gathering of the RAHS network, that there was no master plan for the formationof RAHS; instead, it was “a journey of
discovery... It will evolve over time, with
Events increasingly occur
new concepts, models and technologies.”in the complex and chaotic
This is in line with recent work by Garyspaces, where patterns are less
Klein, an organisational theorist who
discernible and forecasts areargues that complex issues are best dealt
more difficult.
with through “Management by Discovery”,
rather than “Management by Objectives”.

Whole-of-Government Integrated Risk Management (WOG-IRM)
Recognising that even under conditions of uncertainty and complexity, governments
must continue to make plans and take decisions, a WOG-IRM framework wasdeveloped in 2004 to identify risks which could have an impact on our strategic
outcomes. The framework comprises a process to identify, analyse and manage risks:

IDENTIFICATIONMOBILISATION& BEHAVIOUR AL
CHANGESASSESSMENT& APPR AISALCOMMUNICATION& ACCEPTANCE

17

A HISTORICAL OVERVIE W

This framework expanded on a similar effort, started in MINDEF, to examine security
risks. MINDEF developed its prototype Enterprise Risk Management system fromscratch, adapting components from the private sector where appropriate, as there
was no suitable equivalent framework in any other government.
Unlike MINDEF, the government-wide process covered a much wider range of issues
and generated what some senior decision-makers described as an incomprehensible“spaghetti bowl” of inter-connected risk issues. Therefore, rather than considering
agency-level risks, subsequent iterations have focussed on strategic risks withpotentially deep and cross-domain impact on national survival and interests,
rendering their results more tractable and useful.
Finally, WOG-IRM is integrated with the WOG planning process so that the risks
and opportunities identified also receive the resources necessary to address them.

Experimentation and Networks: the Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF)
Origins of CSF
With RAHS and WOG-IRM as complements to scenario planning, a key remaining
challenge was how the Public Service could organise and manage in a fast-changing
and uncertain environment.
Initial ideas for a “Centre for Strategic Anticipation” were incubated within the
National Security Coordination Centre (NSCC), part of the Prime Minister’s Office,in December 2008. The Centre aimed to develop government-wide capabilities instrategic anticipation, by synthesising the various work-strands in scenarios, RAHS
and WOG-IRM. The Centre was eventually established as the “Centre for Strategic
Futures” in early 2009, as part of SPO in the Public Service Division (PSD) of thePrime Minister’s Office. This situates it at the heart of government, with the ability
to reach across agency stovepipes. It draws regularly upon the existing networks andanalyses in SPO, as well as PSD’s other functions in human resource, leadershipdevelopment and organisational excellence.
At the same time, the Centre operates very much like a think tank within government,with the freedom to act on issues of strategic importance even if they are not perceived
to be immediately urgent. This has led to a delicate mixing of functions, with theCentre functioning both within and outside traditional bureaucratic structures.
To use a phrase adopted by the similarly-oriented Shell scenarios team, the CSF is

18

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE“tolerated but not embraced” by the rest of the government – a necessary balance toachieve its unique role.
One of the Centre’s first efforts was to update the existing scenario planning process,to complement it with a range of additional tools. The updated process was thus
named “Scenario Planning Plus (SP+)” and incorporated scenario planning, which
continues to be useful, as well as a range of other tools for the six key purposes
outlined below:

How We Do ItMETHODOLOGYDEFINING FOCUS

MONITORINGENVIRONMENTALSCANNING

DESIGNINGSTR ATEGIESSENSE MAKING

DEVELOPINGPOSSIBLE FUTURES19

A HISTORICAL OVERVIE W

CSF Structures and Processes
The CSF’s vision is to build a strategically agile Public Service ready to manage acomplex and fast-changing environment. Led by the Director of SPO and a centre
Head, it also receives guidance from an Advisory Board comprising Permanent
Secretaries and other senior civil servants. The CSF also taps on a wide international
network of advisors and friends, who provide guidance and new ideas.
As part of its think tank-like functions, the key roles of the CSF are to:Ω Promote a collective instinct for strategic thinking at the WOG levelΩ Develop and promote the use of tools and methodologies for strategic
thinking and risk management throughout the governmentΩ Be the focal point for cultivating networks between local government
agencies and international partners to promote an active exchange of ideasΩ Challenge conformist thinkingΩ Develop links with academia to support the development of inter-disciplinary
research work in areas like complexity studies and risk management

Emerging Strategic Issues and Wildcards
The CSF’s research and analysis synthesises across the national scenarios, WOGIRM and a new programme called “Emerging Strategic Issues and Wildcards” (ESI).
The ESI project involves identifying, filtering and prioritising strategic issues whichhave not yet surfaced as critical but could have significant impact if they occur –sometimes referred to as “unknown unknowns”. The process involves generating adiversity of ideas based on research, as well as interviews and online conversations
with a range of personalities from the public, private, people and academic sectors.
Canvassing views from outside ofgovernment, and internationally, is a
The CSF’s vision is todeliberate strategy to tap on the “wisdombuild a strategically agileof crowds”, avoid groupthink within
Public Service ready togovernment and obtain fresh insights.
manage a complex and fastThis is in line with the best practicechanging environment.
of others in the business of futuresand foresight.

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CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

In their current iteration, the ESIs have been prioritised through voting by a groupof senior public sector leaders. These public sector leaders were asked to rank theissues based on three criteria:Ω impact on Singapore;Ω likelihood of occurrence; andΩ the level of institutional surprise each issue would cause if it occurred(i.e. how public sector agencies would be caught off-guard despite
current safeguards).
There is also a conscious effort to monitor issues that were not prioritised in thevoting process, as these could be part of current organisational blindspots and provecritical in the future.
The issues currently being analysed at the CSF draw on this shortlist of ESIs,
and include:

Examples of Emerging Strategic Issues
ENERGY, FOOD AND WATER$$RESOURCE
CONFLICTS

FOOD PANDEMICS
AND PRICE SHOCKS

ENERGY CRISISEFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGYCYBERTERRORISM

HUMAN
AUGMENTATION21

A HISTORICAL OVERVIE W

ESIs are monitored in a variety of ways. If topics are clearly owned by specificgovernment agencies or groups of agencies, the CSF works directly with them or
establishes inter-agency teams to deal with these areas.
The RAHS suite of tools is also used to scan widely for ongoing developments inthe ESIs, while international visits and networking allow the CSF to get a sense ofongoing and emerging global trends in relation to the ESIs. Taken together, these
efforts enable the CSF and its partner agencies to obtain a good sense of recent
developments in the issues, so that they can be resurfaced to policy makers at
appropriate times.

22

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

CHAPTER 2 – COMPLEXITY,COGNITION AND THE CHALLENGE
OF COMMUNICATION“…to design scenarios that would lead our decision-makers
to question their inner model of reality and change it asnecessary, in order to take action…”
Pierre Wack, “Scenarios: The Gentle Art of Re-Perceiving”“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking newlands, but in seeing with new eyes.”
Marcel Proust

The newly-inducted into Singapore’s futures community often ask: Why, despite toplevel sponsorship, support from the public sector leadership and years of scenario
planning workshops, are we still not fully adept in anticipating the future throughscenarios and new tools like RAHS and SP+?
Over the years, the experience of scenario planning, RAHS and the CSF hassuggested that the answer has less to do with the perceived limitations of the methods
themselves, and more withΩ the nature of human cognition;Ω our inability to make sense of complexity; andΩ poor or missing incentives to prepare for strategic surprises.
This chapter elaborates on each.

Cognitive Failures
The most difficult problems involve cognitive failures to anticipate and prepare forthe future. Many surprises that governments have to deal with – natural disasters,

23

COMPLE XIT Y, COGNITION AND THE CHALLENGE OF COMMUNICATION

pandemics, even financial crises and political upheavals – can often be assigned
probabilities. If not, they can be anticipated through the “stories” or “narratives” that
scenario planners and other futurists use.
Arguably, these scenarios should lead governments to take precautionary measures,
but there are several reasons why this fails to happen.

Hyperbolic Discounting
First, policymakers often have a hard time properly discounting the present valueof events that will take place in the future. This cognitive bias, or heuristic, is
known among behavioural economists as present-biased preferences or hyperbolic
discounting. This is the tendency to discount future risks and contingencies
excessively and instead to place too much weight on present costs and benefits.
Policymakers are not cognitively well-disposed to making these calculations; theinstitutional roles they occupy often discourage them from spending time worrying
about a problem that will occur only after they leave office. Democratic governments
in many parts of the world are often paralysed in the face of problems whose
consequences are felt only in the distant future – such as ensuring the solvency ofsocial security systems and reforming healthcare. In the words of Richard Thaler
and Cass Sunstein from the University of Chicago, who wrote the influential book
Nudge, ours are not the actions of hyper-rational beings that they call “Econs”. Instead,
we have the bounded rationality and imperfect information of mere “Humans”.

Confirmation Bias
Governments are also prone to another cognitive limitation – confirmation orconsistency bias: the tendency to pay attention only to those things that are consistent
with, or confirm, our existing mental models. For example, during the boom years
before the current global economic crisis, most people – even among experts – weredismissive of the risks of a major financial or economic meltdown. Central bankers
thought that they had mastered macroeconomic management to the extent that
prolonged inflation and deep recessions were no longer possible. Financial sector
experts, including those at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), believed that
financial innovation, especially in the form of securitisation, had diversified risks
and made the global financial system less prone to catastrophic collapses. Those

24

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

who foresaw an impending crisis – like Nouriel Roubini and Nicholas Nassim Taleb– were roundly ignored.
Much of our reluctance to grapple
with game-changing issues such as
At the heart of it, cognitive
the financial crisis stems from an
dissonance is about denial:
unwillingness to face the consequences
the inability to acknowledgeof taking different scenarios or alternative
uncertainty and unwillingness
futures seriously. These consequences
to accept the need to adapt tointerfere with long-held mental ora future that might be radicallybusiness models, or self-interest, to create
different from current reality.
cognitive dissonance. This interferenceis uncomfortable, so the human mind
responds by rejecting or ignoring these alternative scenarios. At the heart of it,
cognitive dissonance is about denial: the inability to acknowledge uncertainty andunwillingness to accept the need to adapt to a future that might be radically different
from current reality.
Richard Nisbett, in his book The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners
Think, takes this argument even further and suggests that some of our biases andcognitive dissonances are culturally-based. For instance, Westerners from countries
like the US, UK and Europe tend to see the world in terms of individuals who arelinked to others, and the surrounding environment, in axiomatic ways. From thisemerges the emphasis placed in the West on individual rights and the rule of law.
In contrast, East Asians – Nisbett refers primarily to the Sinic cultures here – tend tosee individuals, communities and their environments interacting more organically,
as holistic and dynamic ecosystems.
While neither approach is necessarily the right one, relying solely on either limits
our ability to perceive problems from multiple angles. Extrapolating from this, it is
not difficult to see why one of the big challenges of government is the impedimentthat bureaucratic silos pose to the sharing of insights and information critical tothinking about the future. Information and coordination in such silos flow vertically,rather than develop horizontally.

25

COMPLE XIT Y, COGNITION AND THE CHALLENGE OF COMMUNICATIONCountering Cognitive Biases
A key function of Singapore’s strategic planning is to consider how we can limit orcounter the influence of such biases. Obviously, the actual occurrence of a crisis
that radically alters our mental models is one corrective. The SARS crisis forced
governments in China, Hong Kong and Singapore to take more deliberate steps toprepare for future pandemics. SARS corrected our confirmation biases, made us
realise the severe risks and costs of a pandemic, and increased our alertness to theonset of another pandemic. Without SARS, Singapore’s response to the more recent
AH1N1 outbreak would not have been as aggressive and proactive. Our response, andthat of other Asian governments such as China and Hong Kong, contrasted quite
starkly with the lack of urgency in other countries, which had been largely unaffectedby SARS. This is not at all surprising, since confirmation biases can contribute togovernments avoiding extreme actions when presented with unfamiliar situations.
While crises can break our outdated mental models, they are an expensive way toforce recognition of our confirmation biases. No government or society should haveto wait for an actual terrorist attack to take the threat of terrorism seriously.
In addition, the research conducted at
SPO and the CSF has highlighted that we
While crises can break oursometimes learn the wrong lessons fromoutdated mental models,
crises. After the Asian Financial Crisis,
they are an expensive way
Asian governments built up their foreign
to force recognition of our
exchange reserves as a form of insurance
confirmation biases.
against the next currency crisis – but thiswas not necessarily the right lesson of the
Asian crisis. The crisis was not caused by insufficient foreign exchange reserves in
the Asian economies (although not having enough reserves limited their ability todeal with the crisis). Instead, current thinking suggests that it was the result of moral
hazard stemming from semi-pegged exchange rates that created a false sense of
security for domestic institutions to borrow heavily in foreign currency, weaknesses
in regulatory regimes, and poor corporate governance. Even this reasoning may one
day be proven mistaken, or at least incomplete, based on future insights.
A major question that Singapore’s strategic planners have pondered is how we canprepare for the future, if crises are not the best way to correct for our consistency
biases. The various National and focussed scenarios have suggested that part of
the answer lies in producing well-crafted, challenging narratives of the future,

26

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

articulating imaginative yet plausible ways in which current trends could evolve.
For instance, the Climate Change Scenarios explored different permutations ofpolitical, economic, scientific and other consequences from different degrees ofglobal warming. Such narratives can also take the form of Emerging Issues oreven an “artefact from the future” like the simulated newspaper below, which wasdisseminated to all government planning units on the first work day of 2011, to
encourage some consideration of possibilities in 2012.

27

COMPLE XIT Y, COGNITION AND THE CHALLENGE OF COMMUNICATIONThe Challenge of Complexity
Through several scenario exercises since the late 1980s, Singapore’s strategicplanners have realised that a second source of failure to prepare adequately forsurprises arises from our limited grasp of complexity. Despite our best efforts, many
practitioners tend to focus on what can be modelled or extrapolated from today’s
trends. What is not modelled is discounted or assumed away. As a result, planners inpractice, if not in theory, often end up concentrating on “known unknowns” rather
than on “unknown unknowns”.
Related to this is an inherent linearity in our causal reasoning. Since the scientificrevolution of the 18th century, the Cartesian assumption has grown more
ubiquitous: there is proportionality between cause and effect; big causes will havebig consequences and small causes, small consequences. This linearity, applied toplanning for the future, can easily mean that practitioners focus on the major forcesin the social, economical, technological, political and environmental spheres. But
some future states of the world are difficult to anticipate because they emerge outof parallel developments whose interactions are either unforeseeable or unforeseen
by planners. High-tech gurus often confidently predict the “next big thing” on thebasis of straight-line guesses or extensions of existing trends. But history has shown
us that the way future technologies will interact with each other and with users is an
emergent property, not always predictable from previous developments.
Non-linearity and emergence have had major implications for how Singapore hasgone about developing its ability to anticipate future change. We are constantly
grappling with the reality that our society and economy are complex systems, unlike
machines governed by stable causal relationships. We cannot predict the future byidentifying all the known driving forces, and then generating scenarios from themby mechanically “computing” interaction effects. Even if it were possible to identify
all the relevant driving forces, the sheer number of interactions among them would
produce a dizzying array of possible outcomes – more than can be described in a
few scenarios.
Instead, we have tried to learn the lesson that futures thinking should not be reduced
to a simplistic engineering procedure in which driving forces are the inputs andscenarios or future narratives, the outputs. Instead, it is more like building an ecosystem. Driving forces are the raw ingredients that interact in sometimes bewilderingways, invariably producing outcomes and patterns that are unpredictable ex ante.

28

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

The experience of the ongoing financial crisis is instructive in providing us with aglimpse of the inherent uncertainty and unpredictability of complex systems. The
relevant driving forces were known before the crisis – structural imbalances in the
global economy, financial sector innovation, especially in the form of securitization,and the globalization of capital markets. Yet it would have taken extraordinary
imagination to identify a major financial and economic crisis as a potential scenario
simply based on these underlying drivers.
Learning from the ongoing crisis, we now acknowledge the need to understand arange of variables and factors. These include the complex linkages and interactions
between sub-prime mortgage originators, banks and non-bank financial institutions,the shadow banking system, credit rating agencies and insurance companies, as wellas the underlying human behaviour and greed of all the actors within the financial
markets, in the broader context of global imbalances and low interest rates in the US.
Only then can we begin to understand the risks of a severe financial crisis.
Of course, hindsight will always castdecision-makers in a less than favourable
There has not been a single,
light. There has not been a single, provenproven method for singling
method for singling out “unknown
out “unknown unknowns”,
unknowns”, but that does not imply that
but that does not imply thatgovernments should apply rigid “businessgovernments should apply
as-usual” approaches either. Instead,rigid “business-as-usual”
we have realised that in addition to theapproaches either.
traditional emphasis on driving forces inthe scenario planning methodology, wemust also identify potential discontinuities, monitor for emergence, and scan thehorizon for “wild cards” and “black swans”. This was a major motivation for our
ongoing efforts with RAHS and the ESI project.

Poor or Missing Incentives
The final obstacle to properly guarding against strategic surprises has to do with pooror missing incentives. Even if individuals and organisations are cognitively prepared
for a contingency, they often do not have the right incentives to hedge against it. For
instance, even if we had identified in our scenarios the possible risk of a severe financial
crisis, would we have taken precautions or done anything differently? Hedging is costly,

29

COMPLE XIT Y, COGNITION AND THE CHALLENGE OF COMMUNICATION

and risks – as the ongoing global financial crisis shows – spill across boundaries inways that make it impossible for a single country to hedge against fully.
As a result, it is not always easy for the strategic planner to challenge an official vision of
the future, especially when that future is consistent with an organisation’s biases andpreconceptions. The planner who articulates a radically different future is in dangerof being branded as subversive or lacking a sense of reality. He has a real incentive to
make his scenarios more palatable for his audiences.
But in so doing, he also inadvertently reduces the impetus for the organisation toconfront its uncomfortable futures and to prepare itself for them. That is why Peter
Schwartz once said that the futures planner should be a court jester: he can say themost ridiculous things and get away with it. The planner’s role is to help decisionmakers suspend disbelief.

Lessons Learned at the CSF
It would be easy to grow despondent – fatalistic even – about the possibility of doing
strategic planning well. But the work of thinking about the future is far too importantto succumb to fatalism.
Over the years, Singapore’s future planners have grown more or less accustomed to
the reality that thinking about the future and strategic surprises will remain a messy
business, where people often pursue the wrong aim of trying to get precise predictions.
Early pioneers of scenario planning, like Pierre Wack and Peter Schwartz, acknowledgedthat when thinking about scenarios, one should focus less on the external world andmore on the internal world of the decision-maker. This does not mean we ignore
external factors, but their relevance should be measured against an organisation’s
priorities. As Schwartz notes, “the objective is not to get a more accurate picture of
the world around us”. Rather, we should seek to provide useful input for our decisionmakers to make informed assessments. Good scenarios must provide better decisions,
not better predictions.
The CSF team is constantly asking: How then can we make better decisions about
anticipating strategic surprises? In the rest of this chapter, we outline five key ideas.

30

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

First, we need to acknowledge and accept
that human cognition has its limitations
Through travel and exposurein anticipating strategic surprises. Evento new ideas, we can cultivatein the most forward-looking government,
an open mind, encourage aleaders and officials will have their own
range of perspectives that domental models and cognitive biases. We all
not conform to our own mental
seek confirmation for such biases. Being
models, and challenge ouraware of them is already a step forward inthinking with contrarian andanticipating the future. When Singapore
diverse views.
started scenario planning nearly two
decades ago, we were not as sensitised tocognitive biases as we are today. Knowing what we know today, we can take deliberatecompensatory steps. Through travel and exposure to new ideas, we can cultivate an
open mind, encourage a range of perspectives that do not conform to our own mental
models, and challenge our thinking with contrarian and diverse views. This does notmean we must agree with every view; but we do our best to give each a hearing, to test
the robustness of our own ideas.
Second, we strive to recognise that the cost of responding to some strategic surprises
can be too high, especially when governments are seen as spending inordinate
resources to prepare for eventualities that may never happen. For instance, there is apossibility of the earth being destroyed by a planet-killing asteroid, but this is probably
not a risk that we can meaningfully prepare for given the prohibitive costs today. We
cannot eliminate every risk, but we need to manage each in such a way that strategies
and their premiums do not have to be front-loaded.
Third, we have to calibrate strategic thinking processes around the psychologicaland practical challenges of policy implementation. In addressing these “downstream”
issues, methods matter, but psychology matters too. For Singapore’s case, the evolving
SP+ framework will continue to reflect the relative strengths of the scenario planningand RAHS processes in mitigating issues of cognitive failures among our key audiences.
The role of psychology is linked to a fourth lesson: the importance of engaging andcommunicating with decision-makers. Their support and active involvement are
crucial for success in achieving better decisions and strategic outcomes. For a message
to resonate strongly with decision-makers, the work should be presented in distilledforms, with sufficient detail, using creative expressions and graphics like the simulated
newspaper headlines above. In futures workshops, we have also experimented with

31

COMPLE XIT Y, COGNITION AND THE CHALLENGE OF COMMUNICATION

the use of graphic facilitation in order to distil complex ideas in catchy, memorable
ways. The example below is from a workshop discussing the future of Asia.

In addition, complex scenarios and strategies can be broken down into smaller “bitesized” pieces. These are more easily digested by decision-makers, who, in turn, havea higher likelihood of recalling and applying these insights. At workshops involving
senior civil servants, written reports of future trends are often complemented with“memory cards” like the one below, which capture the essential ideas.

Having lost ourcompetitive advantage, we’restuck playing catch-up.

Soh Ding Wei, 37
Strategic Planner

The expansion of high-speed rail
linkages cutting across continental
Southeast Asia has diminishedSingapore’s relevance as a hub for
business and talent – a point madeworse by skyrocketing oil prices,which have reduced long-range sea
trade. Officers like Ding Wei often
find themselves at a loss:
WHAT IS OUR VALUEPROPOSITION BEYOND OUR
HUB STATUS?

32

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

In a similar vein, the findings of the WOG-IRM process are conveyed through a
combination of written reports and more succinct “risk cards”, like the one below:

PHYSICAL DISASTERS AND HAZARDS
Risk Event: Effects of Climate Change
WEATHER CRISES ARISING FROM CLIMATE CHANGEΩ The following outcomes could damage Singapore’s liveability andreputation as a clean and green city *OUFOTFSBJOGBMM¬»PPEJOHXJUIMPTTPGMBOEMJGF
 &YUSFNFUFNQFSBUVSFTFYBDFSCBUJOHIB[FBOEEJTFBTFPVUCSFBL 4FBMFWFMSJTFDPVMEMFBEUPMPTTPGMBOEBOEUISFBUFOGSFTI
water reservoirsΩ Increased energy demand, e.g. for air-conditioning, may increase
resource vulnerability

Disruption
in Resource
SupplyShut-downof Public
Instituions

Pandemic
Outbreakof Disease
Locally/
Regionally

Loss of
Distinctive
Economic
Advantages

Effects of
ClimateChangeN.B: The size of the circles represents the extent of the respective risk events.

33

COMPLE XIT Y, COGNITION AND THE CHALLENGE OF COMMUNICATIONThe CSF’s counterpart units in other Ministries have also undertaken innovative
communications experiments. The diagram below is the cover of a recent publicationby the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s Futures Group, which explores key economic
issues in a range of ways, including videos on emerging trends and a manga comic
on geo-engineering.

34

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Some of our current experiments with communications involve engaging decisionmakers through exercises and what we now call “policy games”. These help decisionmakers get into the habit of preparing for the unexpected. Gary Klein, in his book
Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, emphasises the importance of identifying
patterns in perceiving and making decisions about the future. Expertise in handlingspecific situations can be developed through repeated experience and pattern
identification. Participation in exercises and games help simulate some of these reallife patterns, which can then be applied to decision-making in exceptional situations.
The military exemplifies this approach, as war is characterised more often than notby surprise rather than predictability. They prepare for these inevitable surprises
through wargames, conducted repeatedly under different conditions, so that militaryplanners and leaders are mentally conditioned to expect and prepare for surprise.
Other futures practitioners are also increasingly applying gaming techniques – Jane
McGonigal at the Institute for the Future, for instance, as well as the Netherlandsbased Stichting Toekomstbeeld der Techniek. In 2010, the CSF worked with our
Ministry of Manpower to develop a policy game that was applied to the issues oflabour relations and human capital development.
Fifth, the CSF increasingly recognises that even as we endeavour to avoid being
surprised, we should still expect to be surprised. To mitigate this, governments
should build some “fat” into their organisations by having a small but sufficientgroup of people to think about the future. These individuals will be the repositoryof patterns that can be used to facilitate decision-making, especially to prepare for“unknown unknowns”. It is critical that such groups are given the freedom andbandwidth to focus on this important role without getting bogged down in day-today routines. A corollary to this point is that lean and efficient governments may nothave the spare capacity to deal with shocks to the system. As Singapore has done with
the CSF, it is very likely that governmentsin the future will have to find ways to
It is critical that such groups
create some spare capacity to cope withare given the freedom andunexpected contingencies. It will also be
bandwidth to focus on thisnecessary to build organisations staffedimportant role without getting
by curious people with inter-disciplinary
bogged down in day-tominds who can see connections acrossday routines.
disparate issues and areas of study.

35

COMPLE XIT Y, COGNITION AND THE CHALLENGE OF COMMUNICATION

Dealing with complexity and cognition is a new area for the Singapore government.
While it has not been a traditional area of focus for most governments, it would bea mistake to overlook it. The underlying science of complexity indicates that it ismulti-disciplinary in nature. This resonates closely with the Singapore government’s
approach in dealing with strategic WOG issues, in complex or chaotic environments,that require inter-ministry and inter-disciplinary collaboration. We are still in the
midst of exploring how these challenges can be attenuated, even if not overcome,and hope to share more experiences of further attempts to do so in future volumesof this book.

36

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

CHAPTER 3 – CAPABILITY-BUILDING
FutureCraft
Given the complexity and cognitive issues outlined in the previous chapter, a key role
for the CSF has been to promulgate the SP+ framework of tools for strategic thinking
and risk management throughout the government. In essence, this has involved
training government officers in the tradecraft of the futurist, which we have done
through a series of workshops called “FutureCraft”.
The FutureCraft curriculum was designed to complement existing Scenario
Planning Workshops (SPW), which have been conducted by SPO since the early
1990s, as well Environmental Scanning Workshops (ESW) conducted by the HSC
to increase awareness and application of RAHS tools. The SPW sessions have beenrebranded as “FutureCraft 101”.

A participant explains scenarios formulated during a Scenario Planning Workshop

37

CAPABILIT Y-BUILDING

The rest of the FutureCraft series has been co-developed with the Ministry of Tradeand Industry’s Futures Group. The series comprises:

FutureCraft 102: SP+ Tools
While SP+ as a whole comprises a wide range of tools and methods, FutureCraft 102
focuses on six of the most accessible tools by applying them to a public policy theme,
such as “The Future of Food” or “Education in 2020”. The six selected tools areΩ the Cynefin Model;Ω the Futures Wheel;Ω the Futures Triangle;Ω Causal Layered Analysis;Ω Shared History; andΩ Backcasting.

Group discussion on the Future of Food

38

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Backcasting, which involves envisioning a particular future and working backwards
to the present, has been particularly popular among agencies. The envisioned future
can be either positive (a “preferred future”) or negative (a “feared future”). In many
ways, it is a natural companion to scenario planning, which moves forward fromtoday to possible futures, via the trajectories of driving forces. A companion method
used by some consultants involves creating “Photographs (or some other Artefacts)from the Future” – the underlying principle is similar in that it involves working
backwards from an envisioned future state. Some recent applications of backcasting
are detailed in the box below.

APPLICATIONS OF BACKCASTING
During a workshop with senior decision-makers in May 2010, strategists from
CSF and SPO experimented with backcasting, which challenged the participants
to imagine different future worlds and think through the possible trajectories
leading to those outcomes. Instead of merely positing what future scenario
worlds could look like, the first step of backcasting called on participants toarticulate what sort of worlds might be most preferred or feared for Singapore.
It was not always a comfortable or easy process. Participants had to keep an open
mind and grapple with their innate biases, mental models and assumptions
about the world. Several commented that this was a worthwhile experiment, as
it helped to unearth novel and interesting insights into issues that they had notpreviously considered – particularly social and values-related issues to which
policymakers had not always given the most attention.
The Ministry of National Development also experimented with backcasting
during its annual retreat in October 2010, while the Ministry of Information,
Communication and the Arts used the technique in August 2011. Bothagencies used the tool to encourage their officers to imagine a new operating
environment, which provided a springboard for discussion on strategies for
how to realise the preferred futures, while conducting monitoring and risk
management strategies to mitigate the possibility of the feared futures.

39

CAPABILIT Y-BUILDING

FutureCraft 103: Facilitating for Foresight
Our experiences with scenario planning and recent experiments with SP+ havehighlighted the critical importance of facilitators in any futures process. These
personalities perform a complex mix of functions. They design workshops,
communicate ideas and craft the experiences of decision-makers to elicit new
thinking on future possibilities. Good foresight facilitators can “work a room”
masterfully, drawing on the collective knowledge of the participants present.
Given the centrality of this role, FutureCraft 103 is designed to teach a variety offacilitation skills that can be employed for the purposes of knowledge elicitationand generation of new ideas. Among other things, it includes elements of Design
Thinking, which has been used by global design firms to promote “customer-centred
design”. The methodology involves a range of tools, including customer-focussed
ethnographic research and rapid prototyping of new ideas that can be usefully
applied to creating engaging and impactful futures products.

FutureCraft 104: Curating the Foresight Experience
Building on FutureCraft 103, 104 discusses the various ways facilitators can curate
foresights sessions and products, through the use of different communication andpresentation methods. These include graphic facilitation, serious gaming, creativeuse of videos and the creation of “artefacts” like the simulated newspaper headlines
shared in an earlier chapter. During the sessions, participants have rightly realisedthat the curation of their products is limited only by their imagination, and many
have gone on to produce creative products that they use in their own agencies’
strategic planning discussions.

40

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

FutureCraft 105: Challenges to Good Foresight – Complexity & Cognitive Limitations
As outlined in the previous chapter, complexity and cognitive limitations present
genuine obstacles to the application and acceptance of foresight. FutureCraft 105,
the first run of which will be held around the end of 2011, aims to build agencies’
awareness of such limitations, premised on the idea that articulation of a problem isa major step in starting to address it.
The workshop will examine both cognitive issues and inability to make sense ofcomplexity, includingΩ Decision Biases;Ω Memory Biases; andΩ Probability and Belief Biases.
Participants will be encouraged to explore how these biases and limitations play out
in their work, and how they can be ameliorated. Part of the programme will hopefully
include an extended conversation with a selection of senior decision-makers, so that
their collective experiences can be shared and built upon by their younger colleagues.

41

CONNECTIONS AND NE T WORKED GOVERNMENT

CHAPTER 4 – CONNECTIONS AND
NETWORKED GOVERNMENT
Several senior decision-makers sometimes reminisce about their initial encounterswith complexity expert David Snowden, early discussions with Peter Schwartz on
scenario planning and explorations of early forms of RAHS with John Petersen, Jeff
Jonas and John Poindexter. Many of these interactions took place over informal meals,
as the personalities involved explored how their ideas interacted and synergised.
These meetings, and those organised since by SPO, the RAHS team and the CSF,
reflect a fundamental belief in the importance of building strong connections inorder to understand future possibilities. In large part, this involves the idea thatchance favours not just the prepared, but the connected mind. This has been anunderpinning belief in Singapore’s futures work, which has relied significantly
on both internal government networks, links with non-public sector agencies in
Singapore and international connections.
Forging durable networks is a key means of addressing the challenges of cognitive
biases and complexity discussed earlier. Within the government, discussions
among networks allow for interaction among the various institutional blind spotsthat invariably exist in each agency and, hopefully, the realisation or reminder toconsider a wide range of perspectives. Outside government, discussions with the
CSF’s international partners has allowed us to challenge traditional Singaporeanmental models, and often raised new possibilities. As James Surowiecki
suggested, sometimes one needs “The Wisdom of Crowds” to alleviate one’s own
cognitive limitations.
This chapter outlines the CSF’s efforts at forging such networks.

Networked Government
In addition to building the capability of individual futures officers, the CSF also
plays a key role in building government-wide processes and capacity for futures
thinking. Even during the early days of scenario planning, the approach to planning

42

CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

for the future was “Whole-of-Government”, as the various teams that used scenarios
attempted to synthesise perspectives from a range of agencies.
A major part of this role is carried out through building a community of futurists fromagencies, each dealing with a particular domain of public policy, but also connected
to one another so that their ideas cross-pollinate and are mutually enriching.
The CSF drew inspiration from the Futures Activists Network (FAN) in the UK to set
up the Strategic Futures Network (SFN) in October 2009. Policy makers and strategicplanners from across government agencies and statutory boards were drawn into the
network. Each Ministry is represented by a Deputy Secretary, the next most seniorcivil servant after the Permanent Secretary. In early 2011, the Network expanded
to include Chief Executives from key statutory boards that had started their own
futures efforts.
The philosophy behind the SFN is thatthe members should be senior decisionA major part of this role ismakers who can deploy resources
carried out through building
and influence officers within theira community of futurists fromorganisations. The CSF’s role is toagencies, each dealing withpersuade these decision-makers thata particular domain of public
futures thinking is valuable. Rather thanpolicy, but also connected
force agencies to comply with decisions
to one another so that their“from the top”, the CSF leaves room forideas cross-pollinate and are
members to take ownership and lead theirmutually enriching.
futures projects. The CSF also does notespouse a fixed model for how agencies
must organise their futures work. There have been many different initiatives
customised to the contexts of different agencies. A key benefit of this approach isthat agencies have learned to tolerate messiness, which in most circumstances isanathema to government bureaucracies.
The SFN meets every two months to discuss emerging issues as well as new tools or
methodologies. It is chaired by the Head of Civil Service, and has helped to socialise
civil servants to the idea of futures work as the Ministry representatives, called
Strategic Futures Officers (SFOs), serve as useful evangelists for futures thinking.

43

CONNECTIONS AND NE T WORKED GOVERNMENT

Several SFOs have set up futures units in their own agencies, after recognising theimportance and usefulness of futures work for their agencies. Futures units existed
in the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministryof Community Development, Youth and Sports prior to the SFN’s establishment.
Since the SFN began its work, futures units have been set up in the Ministry ofEnvironment and Water Resources and the Ministry of Finance, as well as the
Housing and Development Board. A horizon scanning unit has also been set up at
the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority. New units are being planned, including in
the Ministry of Home Affairs. Futures work is also being undertaken by pre-existingplanning or corporate divisions in several Ministries, including the Ministry of
Education, the Ministry of National Development and the Ministry of Manpower.

Networks in Singapore
CSF’s non-government networks within Singapore include a range of think tanks,
including the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at the Nanyang
Technological University (NTU) and different sections of the National University ofSingapore (NUS).
RSIS’ Centre for Excellence in National Security (CENS) currently organises a
Masters module on futures thinking, which has been taught by futurist Wendy
Schultz (2009) and Helene Lavoix (2010–2011). Some of its academics have also
attended the CSF’s workshops and contributed to scenarios and other futures projects,
as have other thinkers from NTU, including paleoseismologist Kerry Sieh fromthe Earth Observatory Singapore (EOS) on issues relating to climate change andvulcanology. NTU is also developing a complexity programme, which will explore
the science behind, and applications of, complexity theory. The university’s Institutefor Catastrophic Risk Management (ICRM) examines the possible consequences oflarge-scale financial risk.
The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS has provided the CSF with useful
new thinking from its various research centres. The Centre for Asia and Globalisation
has initiated insightful studies on the future of governance, particularly in the
research of its former Director Ann Florini, a Brookings Fellow and global expert
on how governance needs to evolve and adapt to growing roles of private and people
sector entities. The Institute for Water Studies (IWS), and its Director Seetharam
Kallidaikurichi, have also been strong partners, particularly on water and resource
security issues.

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At NUS’ Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, former Danish diplomat Joergen
Oestroem Moeller has been conducting research on possible futures for the
Asia Pacific.
In addition to thinktanks, the CSF has also developed growing links with private
sector entities in Singapore. Of these, the partnership with Shell is probably strongest,drawing on a long-standing relationship since the early days of scenario planning.

International Networking
Even the most extensive network within Singapore would be subject to some formof “national” cognitive lens. To ameliorate this, the CSF endeavours to maintain awide range of international contacts through study trips, roundtable discussions,international networks and conferences.
Study trips – or “Learning Journeys”, to borrow a term coined by the GBN – havebeen critical. Many of these are done by the CSF team, with learning later shared with
the SFN to ensure that lessons are disseminated across the wider government. Since
its inception, the CSF has visited places with strong traditions of forward planningand anticipatory thinking, including both coasts of the United States, the United
Kingdom, the Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland and South Korea. Roundtablediscussions called “FutureChats” are also held regularly when international partners
visit Singapore or transit here en route to other destinations.
Since 2011, the CSF has also started Whole-of-Government Learning Journeys,
to expose other government futurists to people and places that might spark new
thinking. These “omnibus” trips help to ensure that insights applicable to multiple
agencies can be accrued and learned on a collective basis. They also complement
intra-agency trips, where agencies explore issues within their own specific domains.
Being plugged into international networks is another key priority for the CSF. The
Global Futures Forum (GFF), International Risk Governance Council (IRGC), theWorld Economic Forum’s Risk Response Network and the Davos-based World Risk
Forum are prime examples of the growing number of international communities
interested in exploring future-related ideas. All meet regularly, and where useful,Singapore has shared its experiences with both the opportunities arising from, andchallenges to, having a robust government system of national foresight.

45

CONNECTIONS AND NE T WORKED GOVERNMENTThe CSF and its sister outfit the HSC also endeavour to be convening platforms intheir own right. The HSC’s International Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning
Symposium (IRAHSS), first held in 2007 and currently in its fourth run, is a
useful gathering of futures practitioners from all sectors, and focuses particularly
on methodology-related issues. The CSF’s invitation-only Foresight Conference,currently in its inaugural run, complements IRAHSS with a focus on content issues.
The theme of the first conference in October 2011 is “The Future of Asia & Its Place
In The World”. Experts have been invited from backgrounds as diverse as businessconsulting, academia and science fiction writing, to nurture a rich and varied crossdisciplinary discussion.
The Foresight Conference takes place at thesame time as an international complexity
Whole-of-Government Learning
workshop, organised by NTU. This is
Journeys... help to ensure thatthe third workshop of its kind organised
insights applicable to multiple
by NTU, and offers a golden opportunity
agencies can be accrued andto identify deeper synergies between
learned on a collective basis.
scientific research and applications ofcomplexity in government and futures
thinking, as is currently done with SP+ and RAHS. Additional applications ofcomplexity can be studied if NTU’s complexity programme successfully collaborates
with other parts of the Singapore academic scene – RSIS on political-strategic risk,
EOS on geological and environmental risk, ICRM on financial risk – and otherglobal interlocutors. Such a connection of existing areas of work would raise current
discussions on futures and complexity to new levels; this is an area we hope to
examine in more detail in future volumes of this book.

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CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

AFTERWORD
Memo to the Future(From a time capsule closed in 2011, to be opened in 2030)

New

Reply

Reply AllFrom:

CSF Team 2011To:

CSF Team 2030

Subject:

Six Lessons

ForwardDeleteDear Team,In much of our work, we have produced “Artefacts from the Future” – scenarios,
models, photographs – to make future trends tangible and visceral for ourdecision-makers.
In this note, we would like to offer the converse: a memo, or artefact from the past,
where we share some of our lessons with you. You may (and probably should!) findsome of our analysis woefully “behind the times”, but we hope it provides you witha glimpse into how futures work was done 20 years before your time. If any of theselessons have been forgotten, as is wont to happen with frail human memories, thenwe hope this note is a timely reminder.
Our first, and arguably most important, lesson is that futures work is not, and should
not be, about prediction. Our job has never been to gaze into a crystal ball and attempt
to discern future outcomes like the oracles of old. Instead, our aim has always been
to use futures as a way to better appreciate the complexity of the present. We havealways attempted to be as useful as possible in providing insights to our government
colleagues, even as we nudge them to (re)consider the mental models, biases and47

AF TERWORD

lenses through which they perceive the world. We hope this is your aim too: to makebetter decisions today, rather than predict tomorrow.
We have also realised that futures work is never complete. Every report we wrote has
led to new projects; every issue we analyse or workshop we organise has prompted
new ideas. This can be tiring, especially for those new to our teams. Eventually, they
have caught on to the fundamental reality that futures work is an ongoing campaign,
a conversation that needs to be painstakingly curated. It is not just another discrete
event to be organised, or another report to be written and filed away for posterity.
In crafting the various elements of these campaigns, we have often found it helpful
to bear in mind the principle of “Obliquity”, popularised by the Financial Times
journalist John Kay in his 2010 book. With futures, as with all complex phenomena,
we have often found ourselves adopting indirect approaches. In conveying scenariosor versions of the future, for instance, we found it effective to “show, not tell” what wemean. Instead of prose renderings of scenarios, sometimes we have found it usefulto draw, or create artefacts like this memo or a photograph, to convey our messages
as viscerally and engagingly as possible. Implementing obliquity has mostly beenchallenging, calling for significant lateral thinking from all of us, and suspension ofdisbelief by the time-constrained decision-makers in our audience.
Our fourth lesson has been about the importance of “bio-empathy”, a term included
by Bob Johansen, former president of the Institute of the Future, on his list of ten
leadership qualities for a “VUCA” world (one that is volatile, uncertain, complex andambiguous). Bio-empathy involves understanding the soft, emergent, non-linear
qualities of complex systems, which are far more like biological ecosystems thanmechanical systems governed by immutable input-output relationships. Bio-empathy
has underscored for us that we might not be able to predict all the phase transitions
that might occur in a complex system, arising from self-reinforcing feedback loops.
Many of the governance challenges we have faced – like climate change, falling
fertility rates and the advent of social media – display such biological characteristics,
with major consequences sometimes resulting from minor perturbations. We
suspect that in 2030, you will have even greater need of bio-empathy than we do, butof course only you will know that for sure.
Like the most resilient biological ecosystems, we have also learned the inherent valueof diversity. Our best futures work has always been done after consulting a range

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CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE

of contacts, from both in and outside the public sector, as well as in and outside
Singapore. This has been critical in helping to attenuate any groupthink or otherbiases we might have brought to our analysis. However, we think we could have ranged
even wider in some of our work – perhaps in doing massive public crowdsourcing
for ideas, rather than just consulting with groups of experts in specific fields. From
your perspective, you probably know with certainty whether such crowdsourcing will
work – from the vantage of point of 2011, all we can say that is that perhaps this will
be a new horizon for us in the years to come.
Our final lesson has been about the fundamental approach we take to futures work.
After more than 20 years, it has become clear that our approach is what some
practitioners would call “adaptive” futuring: we see the future as the exogenous
result of a combination of trends, to which we must adjust and adapt. Much of thisapproach can be traced to the deep national narrative in Singapore, that we are a“little red dot” with little, if any, control over the global shifts that dictate our future.
While this is an important reality, and one that keeps our policies grounded andpragmatic, we have also realised that it is not the only approach we can take. We canalso afford to be more “activist” about the future, and try to shape our destiny in amore proactive way – particularly in areas where our small size give us the advantage
of alacrity to seize new opportunities. All of you in 2030 will have a clearer picture
about whether we need to be more adaptive or activist in our futuring: but from
where we are today, we know we want to balance both ways of thinking.
We hope these thoughts are useful to you in understanding where the CSF has comefrom, which we believe is critical to shape where we head to next. Good luck!

PS – if time travel becomes a reality, please send us a reply. We’ll be waiting.

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CONVER SATIONS FOR THE FUTURE