Identity Wind Tunneling: A method for discovering an organization’s strategic identity using scenarios

Abstract

In a turbulent environment characterized by unexpected events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, a sharp oil price decline, and dramatic economic crises, many organizations face not only challenges but also an “identity crisis” as they are unable to respond to the question "who are we as an organization?" Some organizations may concurrently hold multiple identities without being clear on whether these are shared and agreed upon, and on their role in potentially disruptive futures. In response to this challenge and addressing a methodological gap in the broader futures and foresight field, we draw on both futures and foresight as well as management and organization literature to propose a new organizational foresight method: Identity Wind Tunneling (IWT). Designed as an enhancement of wind tunneling approaches, IWT allows an organization to understand, test, and manage multiple organizational identities. Furthermore, IWT facilitates the alignment of organizational identities across a range of possible futures created during a scenario planning process with the ultimate goal of finding a strategic identity. This represents the central, enduring, and distinctive role that the organization embodies while pursuing a long-term and holistic strategic direction that is robust across all scenarios. The strategic identity either clarifies or reimagines the identity of the organization. The paper provides a step-by-step explanation of how to implement IWT and ​presents a case study of its application. The method is also presented with a series of open-source templates created on the whiteboard collaborative platform Miro (https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_kqakYjs=/).