When was the last time you thought about the future? Likelihood is, only a few moments ago, before you thought of the past which had to occur for you to answer the last question truthfully. We think about the future all of the time, to the angst of many a Zen Buddhist monks, who advocate living in the present moment (which of course also has its merits).
But do we think about the future in a structured way that enables successful and agile strategies to emerge? The answer is No for most of us. The reason for that negative response is that change management courses often don't teach people how to have ownership of change, through authorship of those change strategies.
Here, what I will show you is the scenario planning tool that Thinque uses in our consulting and futurist facilitation with organisation's around the globe. (For those that are interested in using this for their own personal use, this process also works for individual organisational leaders or anyone wanting to career plan for the future).
If you're interested in learning more about scenario planning and creating a 2020 vision, feel free to let us know.
The starting point in any scenario planning exercise to create your futurist strategy is to ensure that your leadership team is clear on what question it is answering as part of the process. Have a crack at filling in the blanks here.
For example: what is the future go-to market strategy of SAP in the next 8 years?
This piece is critical as it will frame the entire context of the scenario planning exercise to come.
Once you have framed your question, its context, and a time frame, it's time to look at the disrupive trends affecting your industry. We call these certainties and uncertainties.
For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, certainties and uncertainties include:
- eHealth records
- Big Data
- The future of blockbuster drug focus
- Data Privacy and Fully Integrated Pharmaceutical Networks (outsourcing and partnering essentially)
- Integrated Health Systems
- Mobile Sales Forces
- Government and FDA regulations
- Generic Inroads
- BioTech and Venture Capitalist funding
- Genomics and Tailored Therapeutics
- Design Thinking and Customer-Centricity
Some of these we know will continue into the future, thus they are certainties. Others are uncertainties in the sense of us not quite knowing how we will be impacted by them, or to what degree.
An uncertainty that has turned into a certainty in another industry - tobacco - is the decision by the Australian government to enforce generic, plain packaging on Big Tobacco. This used to be an uncertainty, which tobacco has been fighting for years, and it has now turned into a reality with government regulation and legal enforcement through the Australian High Court.
- Ask yourself, what certainties and uncertainties are facing your industry over the coming years?
Could it be:
- The rise of the BRIC Nations
Once you're clear on the question you are answering and the top certainties/top uncertainties, pick the top uncertainties that are most highly relevant and most impactful for your company/industry.
For example, in the printing and digital solutions industry this could be:
- offset v digital printing
- big data and its importance
- technological adaptation rate
- speed of device innovation
In Thinque's scenario planning and future strategy consulting we use the STEEP model (also known as PEST or PESTLe depending on the industry). It's a great way of ensuring that you map both socio-cultural, technological, economic, environmental and political disruptions that are likely to impact your 2020 Vision.
To ensure that you're focussing on the key uncertainties and that you can create a future strategy that is both powerful and agile, you need to prioritise and pick the 2 that will create cognitive tensions and creative inputs. So, for our current purposes, let us pick:
- Technological Adaptation Rate
- Strength of the Economy
As you look at these two uncertainties, you'll notice that they are both framed as a continuum. That's deliberate, as we are seeking to create a futurist scenario grid, that enables us to look at how these uncertainties will play out and interrelate.
What this means is that, in this instance, technological adaptation rate can either be fast or slow, and the strenght of the economy could be good or bad (and in between of course...). So pick dimensions / concepts that can be divided into fast v slow, high v low, good v bad, deep v broad, intense v relaxed etc.
Once you have picked your dimensions, map them into the extremes of this grid. For our printing and digital solutions examples, let us go with the idea of technological adaptation rate with slow on the left, and fast on the right, and the economy's strength as good at the top and bad at the bottom.
- Can you see how this creates 4 unique future worlds or alternative scenarios?
For example: a strong economy with slow technological adaptation rate by consumers/clients will be radically different from a weak economy, where the technological adaptation rate is fast. At this stage, ensure your leadership teams think deeply and separately about each of these 4 worlds, and how they might impact you. A fun and impactful way of doing this is to divide your team into heterogeneous teams of diverse thinkers, and ask them to think of your 2020 Vision, within the confines of one of the 4 quadrants. Ask each team of 4 to do this.
The mission, should you choose to accept it, is to:
- find a title for your future quadrant eg. Techno Ghetto (weak economy and fast technological adaptation rate)
- provide a newsflash from 2020 (or whichever time period you have set): "Singularity impacts cheap androids who only read from Google glasses"
- map the implications and actions required to cope with each of the worlds eg. moving from print to mobile devices, investing in new technology, outsourcing big data entry etc.
By engaging some of the best and most creative thinkers in your organisation you will get a great free-flow of ideas, and you will ensure that the strategies you come up with are strong and also agile enought to deal with the potential alternative future scenarios.
Make sure that you test and devil's advocate the various worlds, and critically evaluate the worlds against key data, trends, and future industry projections to ensure their validity.
Once you have done this you're now in a position to think about your brand, market strategy, HR succession plans, or change management problems from a bunch of helpful perspectives, and most importantly ensuring that you're future-proofing those strategies in a way that is agile.
Once you have determined the strategy that is going to be most impactful and agile, and will assist you in reaching an answer to your initial question, it is helpful to get the executive leadership team to commit to goals and projects that will move you in the right direction.
That is the process of scenario planning.
At Thinque we tailor this approach to your unique market conditions and industry, including facilitating your strategic reviews, and providing research. Recently we have been helping banks, pharmaceutical companies, printing and digital solutions companies, fast moving consumer goods companies, and IT vendors around the globe adapt to a new 2020 vision of their futures.
How have you found scenario planning helpful in your company? Please add your thoughts and contribute to the conversation.