- 19 January, 2009 12:16 PM EST
- Scenario Planning is No Longer Optional
Am I imagining things, or are all of our institutions getting surprised by conditions and behaviors? Leadership seems stunned and unable to respond to these seemingly surprise conditions. When leadership does respond, it's completely reactionary and not well thought through. Well, we can change leaders and it should help some, but I think there is more to it than what meets the eye. Not only are problems larger than individuals, but for scores of collaborating teams supporting those leaders. It's more than competing in a Global economy. It's disasters, power shifts, unheard voices breaking through, it's responding to changes in consumer attitudes, and it's about keeping conflicting goals in balance to optimize as much as possible for all.
Why are these things surprising? Why are responses feeble? I think it is because there is little effective scenario planning and response optimization going on. The world, unfortunately, has been practicing war for as long as people have been around and there are war scenarios with practiced responses. Why can't we do the same for economic interactions and business management in all contexts? We have been practicing isolated and reactionary response to conditions as they occur and this will continue, but larger problems need a better solution. There is a grave need for lateral thinking to identify good bad and ugly scenarios and the ability to predict, simulate and optimize responses before "the matter hits the fan."
We have all these high paid leaders who can't plan very well in the context of a world growing in complexity and changing fairly fast. I think scenario planning is a skill that leaders had better learn instead of believing in their own past success and current corporate and power base mantras. These leaders have to have an attitude that does not punish lateral thinking when surfaced, but looks to see if the scenario response has been planned and in some cases practiced. These leaders need to communicate that they have completed these crucial plans. It's a new year, let's make a resolution to plan alternative outcomes and have core responses ready for reactive variation when needed.
