Book review: The art of the long view - Planning for a future in an uncertain world - Peter Schwartz

I read about future scenario planning in the Robert Kennedy Jr's book where he described future pandemic planning sessions (pre-covid) that ended up being quite accurate predictions of what happened 2020 until today.

So there is a futurist profession and these kinds of people work with governments, corporations and actually with individuals I would guess, since you could easily incorporate this into life coach activities.

Whilst in that sense it gave me some insights in how this works. The book itself is a little bit dated and I would guess for people who are not Gen X, it will be hard to understand what the world was like when this book was written. For me it kind of worked because I was old enough to witness and see the world described in this book.

I am however not someone who lives in or, in fact, even thinks much about that past. It would have been better to pick up a book that looks ahead 5-10 years from today.

As a guide on how to work with and facilitate scenario thinking and strategy, I feel the whole book could probably be summarised on a single page with a couple of bulleted lists. It does not go into too much details on how to do this kind of work.

I don't like starting and then not finishing books. I did finish it, but it took some determination. I would not recommend this one. I think you can find better.

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