Strategic Framing

One often heard criticism of scenario planning is that,by itself, it does not lead to strategic action.  This is true and the true power of scenario planning is in the follow up.  How will you use the insight gleaned from the scenario building process?

At DSI, scenario building is not the primary end point of a planning process.  The scenarios are simply one input into a strategic options and monitoring process.  Depending on the needs of the client, the strategic options could focus on short-term risk mitigation, organizational design implications, or longer-term product innovation.  In all cases, we use the scenarios to help build adaptive capabilities into the planning process.  Scenarios also build a framework for environmental monitoring.  Such monitoring also provides a natural way to keep decision makers honest about changes they are seeing in their industry…even changes they would prefer to ignore.

Here are some questions your group can work through for each scenario after completing a scenario planning exercise:

1. What actions can your company take today to prepare to navigate the future as depicted by this scenario?
2. How can the your company reduce our strategic risk exposure and capture some of the emerging opportunities?
3. How does your company succeed in this scenario?
4. What is the winning business model?
   -Where do we source our revenues from?
   -What are our significant expenses?
   -Where do we invest our resources?
5. What types of products and services are most in demand?
6. What business lines are most attractive?
7. What is the appropriate HR strategy? Who do we hire and how?

For more on scenario planning see:

1. Scenario planning in finance
2. Implementing scenario planning in your organization
3. Interesting output from 1997 scenario planning exercise