The reason that it is widely used is that it was used by Shell in their scenarios process, and it is written up by the late Kees van der Heijden in his book Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation. In turn the book is probably the best single explanation of the Shell scenarios method.[1] The book seems have fallen out of favour now, but there is a lot in there that is valuable.

Interviewing

Van der Heijden devotes a few pages in the book to the importance of good interviewing, in which he emphasises the importance of open-ended questions and careful listening.

So this is the first important thing about Seven Questions: it is a guide to a semi-structured interview in which it is OK to go off script to understand a point the interviewee is making.

It’s worth explaining the questions, of course. They are, broadly, designed to let the interviewer first ask about how the interviewee sees patterns of change, and uncertainties, elicit some normative views on these, and then move to discussing the sorts of decisions that need to be addressed.

The questions

Van der Heijden doesn’t include the actual questions Shell used in the book, but there are other accounts of these. (They may not be completely reliable, of course—photocopies of photocopies, and all that.) This is the version cited by Gill Ringland in her book Scenarios, sourced to Shell via her colleague Gareth Price.

The Vital Issues (the Oracle) 1. Would you identify what you see as the critical issues for the future? (When tbe conversation slows, continue comment) Suppose I had full fore-knowledge of the outcome as a genuine clairvoyant, what else would you wish to know?

A favourable the outcome 2. If things went well, being optimistic but realistic, talk about what you would see as a desirable outcome.

An unfavourable outcome 3. As the converse, if things went wrong, what factors would yoax worry about?

Where culture will need to change 4. Looking at internal systems, how might these need to be changed to help bring about the desired outcome?

Lessons fron past successes and failures 5. Looking back, what would you identify as the significant events which have produced the current situation?

Decisions which have to be faced 6. Looking forward, what would you see as the priority actions which should be carried out soon?

If you were responsible 7. If all constraints were removed and you could direct what is done, what more would you wish to include? (The ‘Epitaph’ question).

Shell had adapted these from a book by Amara and Lipinsky, of the Institute for the Futures, published in 1983.

‘Unimprovable’

It does seem that Shell used these a lot. At a meeting to mark the 25th anniversary of the book’s publication, Peter Schwartz says interviews took ”30 to 40 per cent of his time”.

The same paper says that the questions are “unimprovable”, but that depends on what you’re trying to do. This might also be an example of the Shell scenarios “halo” at work.

Gill Ringland, in her book Scenarios, says that she added a question for a project that she did with British computer company ICL, about the specific future of the company.

The problems with it

My own experience with using them, having started out (as you do) following the published script exactly, was that there were a couple of problems with them.

The first was that they are too focussed on the business and its issues. In my practice, that comes later in the process: you need to get a shared view of the landscape before you get to the implications for the organisation.

The second was that I found there was a problem with the order: people found it cognitively difficult to jump in cold with the so-called ‘Oracle’ question, partly because it takes a bit of an effort just to get your head around it.

Re-working

So in my practice I’ve re-worked these. Some of the Shell questions work well, others get you too close to the organisation and its specific perspectives too early in the process. This isn’t the full description I use, but this is the flow:

The past: Looking at [this overall system] what the are main factors over the last 20-30 years that have shaped where we are today?

The future: Looking at the next [20 years], what new factors do you see emerging?

Good outcomes: What will organisations that succeed in this future environment have done well?

Dismal outcomes: What will organisations that don’t do well have done, or failed to do?

Decisions: If an organisation is going to succeed, what are the decisions it needs to be making now?

Uncertainties: [our version of The Oracle question, which we think of as the ‘Dr Who’ question]: if someone from 20xx [insert year of choice] who knew everything about how things turned out in [system being discussed] what are the two questions you’d want to ask them about how they did turn out?

President for a Day: [our version of the Epitaph]: If you were President for a Day, and could do a couple of things that would make a positive difference to the future [of the system] and had the resources to make them happen and make them stick—what would they be?

Good and bad outcomes

In his book, van der Heijden notes that normally in futures work, asking people to think about good/bad outcomes is not a good idea. But in the context of the interview it works well:

In the elicitation interview the discussion of good and bad worlds tends to be powerful in triggering ideas of what could be important factors to look at, leading to the discovery of underlying driving forces. These tend to be productive questions.

That’s been my experience too, and in practice these reorganised questions give people permission to approach things in different ways during the interview.

‘Problem setting’

But pulling it away, mostly, from the specific questions about the organisation also moves it—in Donald Schon’s phrase—from “problem solving” to “problem setting”. You do these interviews early on in the process, when you’re still trying to understand the system and the landscape. And people tell you plenty about what’s happening in the organisation in between the lines.

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[1] Which I think everybody knows by now is not the same as the 2×2 double uncertainty matrix method that was popularised so aggressively by Global Business Network.