“The essence of thinking the future is to understand the pattern of forces propelling the present into the future and to see where those forces can lead.” – Clem Sunter – Scenario planner
This observation encapsulates the philosophical foundation of scenario planning-a discipline that has transformed how organisations navigate uncertainty and prepare for multiple possible futures. The quote reflects a deceptively simple yet profoundly sophisticated approach to strategic thinking: rather than attempting to predict the future with false certainty, one must identify the underlying currents and momentum that are already reshaping our world.
The Context of the Quote
Clem Sunter offered this reflection during his 2022 analysis, a moment when the world was grappling with cascading crises-pandemic aftershocks, geopolitical tensions, economic volatility, and technological acceleration. In such turbulent times, his words carried particular resonance. The quote distils decades of professional experience into a single principle: foresight is not prophecy, but pattern recognition.1,3
Sunter’s formulation distinguishes between two fundamentally different approaches to the future. The first-prediction-assumes we can determine what will happen. The second-understanding forces-acknowledges that whilst we cannot know the precise outcome, we can comprehend the dynamics at play. This distinction has profound implications for strategy, risk management, and organisational resilience.
Clem Sunter: The Architect of Strategic Foresight
Born in Suffolk, England on 8 August 1944, Clem Sunter was educated at Winchester College before reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University.3 His trajectory from academic training to corporate strategist was neither accidental nor predetermined-it reflected an early aptitude for systems thinking and pattern analysis.
In 1966, Sunter joined Charter Consolidated as a management trainee, beginning a career that would span five decades and fundamentally influence how South African institutions approached strategic planning.3 In 1971, he moved to Lusaka, Zambia, to work for Anglo American Corporation Central Africa, and was subsequently transferred to Johannesburg in 1973, where he would spend most of his career in the Gold and Uranium Division.3 By 1990, he had risen to serve as Chairman and CEO of this division-at that time the largest gold producer in the world-a position he held until 1996.1,3
Yet Sunter’s most enduring legacy would not emerge from his executive roles, but from his pioneering work in scenario planning. In the early 1980s, he established a scenario planning function at Anglo American with teams based in London and Johannesburg.1,3 Crucially, he recruited two exceptional consultants: Pierre Wack and Ted Newland, both of whom had previously headed the scenario planning department at Royal Dutch Shell.1,3 This infusion of Shell’s methodological expertise proved transformative.
The High Road and Low Road: South Africa’s Pivotal Moment
Using material developed by his teams, Sunter synthesised a presentation entitled The World and South Africa in the 1990s, which became extraordinarily influential across South African society in the mid-1980s.1,3 The presentation’s power lay in its clarity and its refusal to offer false comfort. Rather than predicting a single future, Sunter presented two contrasting scenarios for South Africa’s trajectory.
The first scenario-the High Road-depicted a path of negotiation and political settlement, leading to democratic transition and inclusive governance.1,3 The second-the Low Road-portrayed a trajectory of confrontation, escalating violence, and ultimately civil war and societal wasteland.1,3 Sunter did not claim to know which path South Africa would follow. Instead, he illuminated the forces that would determine the outcome, and the consequences of each direction.
The impact was profound. Two highlights of this period exemplified the quote’s practical significance: in 1986, Sunter presented these scenarios to President F.W. de Klerk and the Cabinet.1,3 Shortly thereafter, he visited Nelson Mandela in prison to discuss the nation’s future, just before Mandela’s release.1,3 These conversations were not academic exercises-they were interventions in history. By making visible the patterns and forces at work, Sunter’s scenarios helped shape the very decisions that would determine South Africa’s future. The nation chose the High Road.
The Intellectual Foundations: Scenario Planning’s Theoretical Lineage
To understand Sunter’s contribution, one must recognise the intellectual tradition from which scenario planning emerged. The discipline has roots in military strategy, systems theory, and organisational psychology, but its modern form crystallised at Royal Dutch Shell during the 1970s.
Pierre Wack, whom Sunter recruited as a consultant, was one of the principal architects of Shell’s scenario planning methodology.1,3 Wack’s innovation was to recognise that scenarios were not predictions but rather disciplined imagination-structured explorations of how different combinations of forces might unfold. His work at Shell proved prescient: Shell’s scenario planners had anticipated the 1973 oil crisis and its implications, positioning the company to navigate the shock more effectively than competitors who had assumed continuity.
Wack’s theoretical contribution emphasised that effective scenarios must be plausible (grounded in real forces), internally consistent (logically coherent), and challenging (forcing organisations to question assumptions). This framework directly informed Sunter’s High Road/Low Road scenarios, which were neither optimistic fantasies nor pessimistic catastrophes, but rather rigorous explorations of how identifiable forces-political pressure, economic inequality, international pressure, and institutional capacity-could lead to fundamentally different outcomes.
Ted Newland, Sunter’s other key consultant, brought complementary expertise in organisational change and strategic implementation.1,3 Newland’s contribution emphasised that scenarios were only valuable if they influenced actual decision-making. This principle became central to Sunter’s philosophy: foresight without action is merely intellectual exercise.
Beyond Shell’s pioneers, Sunter’s work drew on broader intellectual currents. The systems thinking tradition-particularly the work of Jay Forrester and the Club of Rome-had demonstrated that complex systems often behave counterintuitively, and that understanding feedback loops and delays is essential to grasping how present actions shape future outcomes. Sunter’s emphasis on identifying forces rather than predicting events reflects this systems perspective.
Additionally, Sunter’s approach incorporated insights from cognitive psychology regarding how humans process uncertainty. Research by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky had revealed systematic biases in human judgment-anchoring, availability bias, overconfidence-that lead organisations to underestimate uncertainty and overestimate their ability to predict. Scenarios, by presenting multiple futures with equal seriousness, counteract these biases by forcing decision-makers to consider possibilities they might otherwise dismiss.
The Evolution of Sunter’s Thought
Following his corporate career, Sunter became a prolific author and global speaker. Since 1987, he has authored or co-authored more than 17 books, many of which became bestsellers.1,4,5 Notably, he collaborated with fellow scenario strategist Chantell Ilbury on the Fox Trilogy, which applied scenario thinking to contemporary challenges.5
One of his most celebrated works, The Mind of a Fox, demonstrated the prescience of scenario thinking by anticipating the dynamics that would lead to the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.1,3 Rather than claiming to have predicted the specific event, Sunter had identified the underlying forces-geopolitical tensions, ideological conflict, technological capability, and organisational determination-that made such an attack plausible. This exemplified his core principle: understanding forces allows one to anticipate categories of possibility, even if specific events remain uncertain.
Throughout his career, Sunter has lectured at Harvard Business School and the Central Party School in Beijing, bringing scenario planning methodology to some of the world’s most influential institutions.3,4 His work has extended beyond corporate strategy to encompass social challenges, particularly his efforts to mobilise the private sector in combating HIV/AIDS in South Africa.1,4
Recognition and Legacy
In 2004, the University of Cape Town awarded Sunter an Honorary Doctorate for his work in scenario planning, recognising the discipline’s intellectual rigour and practical significance.6 He was also voted by leading South African CEOs as the speaker who had made the most significant contribution to best practice and business in the country.1,2,3
These accolades reflect a broader recognition: that Sunter had not merely applied an existing methodology, but had adapted, refined, and championed scenario planning in a context where it proved transformative. His work demonstrated that strategic foresight, grounded in rigorous analysis of underlying forces, could influence the trajectory of nations and organisations.
The Enduring Relevance of Pattern Recognition
Sunter’s 2022 reflection on thinking the future remains profoundly relevant. In an era of accelerating change-artificial intelligence, climate disruption, geopolitical realignment, pandemic risk-the temptation to seek certainty is overwhelming. Yet his principle offers a more realistic and actionable alternative: identify the forces at work, understand their momentum and interactions, and explore where they might lead.
This approach acknowledges human limitations whilst leveraging human strengths. We cannot predict the future with certainty, but we can develop the mental discipline to recognise patterns, trace causal chains, and imagine plausible alternatives. In doing so, we move from passive reaction to active anticipation-from being surprised by the future to being prepared for it.
The quote’s elegance lies in its compression of this sophisticated philosophy into a single sentence. The essence of thinking the future is not mystical foresight or mathematical prediction, but rather understanding the pattern of forces and seeing where those forces can lead. This is a discipline available to any organisation willing to invest the intellectual effort-to step back from immediate pressures, to identify the currents beneath the surface, and to imagine the multiple shores toward which those currents might carry us.
References
1. https://www.clemsunter.co.za
2. https://www.famousfaces.co.za/artists/clem-sunter/
3. https://mariegreyspeakers.com/speaker/clem-sunter/
4. https://www.londonspeakerbureauasia.com/speakers/clem-sunter/
5. http://www.terrapinn.com/conference/the-turkey-eurasia-mining-show/speaker-clem-SUNTER.stm
6. https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02426/05lv02666.htm
7. https://ipa-sa.org.za/public/scenarios-a-useful-tool-for-strategy-development-in-philanthropy/
