Embrace Scenario Planning to Future-Proof Your Strategy

Start by defining the scope of the scenarios to be explored. Consider what decisions or issues you want to look into and how broad the focus should be. To reduce the time and effort required, identify existing strategy documents and artifacts that can be repurposed for scenario planning.

Lay the groundwork by conducting multiple one-on-one interviews with internal and external experts such as key functional decision makers, stakeholders, customers and industry professionals.

Frame the interviews around critical uncertainties — underlying assumptions about the future direction of emerging trends or market shifts that will make or break a strategic bet, investment or initiative. Ask interviewees to describe the most favorable and unfavorable outcomes they see, any major constraints they anticipate and how they expect the landscape to evolve within the next two to five years.

Based on the collective responses, develop several possible “end states” — brief descriptions of an outcome such as “AI is embedded in every modern device” — along with specific events or milestones that will mark the path from the present to the end state. Each chain of events — likely to include between 20 and 40 events — leading to the end state is called a scenario.

One week prior to the workshop, give each participant the list of developed end states, and ask them to rank the end states based on relevant criteria — for example, attainability, desirability, profitability or revenue potential. 

This prework exercise helps to group participants with diverse beliefs into workshop teams and create a before-and-after basis for comparison once the workshop is over. And, by making optimal use of participants’ time, the prework builds credibility and increases the likelihood of full participation.

Start the workshop by dividing participants into teams, and ask each team to vote on the likelihood that the events developed for each end state will actually occur.

Once each team develops their scenarios, they’ll deliver a presentation to defend their vision for the future and justify their position. The presentations should address major themes of the end state — for example, profitability — and define key players (including winners and losers), who has control over the primary customer relationship and how one end state might overwhelm other possible end states.

After all the presentations are complete, ask participants to again individually rank the end states based on the original criteria from the prework in step 2. Then facilitate a conversation around participants’ before-and-after perceptions to underscore the importance of maintaining visibility into the future.

Finally, identify the common events throughout the scenarios and test multiple strategic options for resilience against the significant events. Then devise your game plan to achieve the desired end state based on this analysis.