Scenario Planning Mastery: Visualizing Alternative Futures

Scenario planning is a fantastic methodology for exploring future change. In this introductory module you’ll learn about the course content, objectives, and a few things about your instructor, Woody Wade.

Of course, people think about the future when they’re developing plans and strategies for their organizations. But the way they think about future change is often erroneous – and can lead to regrettable business decisions. In this lesson, we’ll look at various approaches used (all misleading!), especially zeroing in on the most common way managers envisage “the future” – and why it is wrong to think like this.

Then we’ll look at the way the future actually does unfold, and how taking a very different conceptual approach – scenario planning – based on the understanding that at any given moment, there is not "one" future, but several alternative futures, is a much better way to plan.

In this lesson we'll briefly discuss the nature of change, and why it's so important in business to scan the horizon and stay alert to the different kinds of changes that are continuously happening all around you – some of which might have a significant impact on your future success.

At the outset of any scenario planning exercise, you need to decide on a few key parameters. This lesson shows you how to make these important preparatory decisions, which will make sure that when you go through the process, you and your colleagues are all focused on the same - realistic - goals.

In the scenario generation methodology this course is teaching you, the first step is to identify as many so-called "driving forces" as possible, i.e. trends or developments that will probably have some influence on the way your future landscape emerges. This lesson shows you how to approach this task.

At this stage you will have come up with a large number of driving forces potentially affecting your future. But because it's not practical to wrestle with so many different factors, you must narrow this list of driving forces down to the most critical uncertainties that will be challenging you over the next few years. This lesson shows you how to do this.

The next step in the scenario generation process is derived from the choice of critical uncertainties. Using these important parameters, you build a logical framework of alternative future landscapes, or scenarios, and then activate your imagination to describe these landscapes in relevant detail. Despite their highly contrasting profiles, all of the scenarios will be plausible!

At this point in the process, you now have an understanding of how the scenarios you've defined differ from each other, and what how they would "look and feel" as business environments in which you may find yourself operating. What now? The next step is to identify potential opportunities and challenges that each scenario would present. These are likely to be quite different in each of the futures you have postulated.

This is where the rubber meets the road! Logically, the opportunities identified in the previous lesson can be exploited, and the challenges can be tackled (or even avoided) – but how? This lesson explains how to work out a basic action plan that would improve your chances of success in each of the different futures.

Developing realistic scenarios, and your plan for each one, would be a waste of time if you are not able to identify, from the many indicators in your business environment, which scenario is actually materializing. In this lesson, we will discuss this vital aspect of the process.

During COVID, an Italian company that produces fresh pasta examines the future for this product, evaluating potential post-pandemic “new normal” situations that might arise in Italy.

A young company that produces high-quality baby food tries to ascertain how well it could perform given various uncertainties about its future business environment.

Representatives from a number of universities sit together to visualize the futures they might face as they meet the challenges of recruiting qualified students from around the world.

Chile’s political leaders have been making many substantial changes that could result in radically different futures emerging for the country’s economy - and ultimately all of society there. A group of Chilean executives undertook the challenge of trying to foresee what these futures could look like for the average citizen.