Involving Diverse Perspectives and Planning for Future Scenarios

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Involving individuals from various organizational levels and functions is crucial for encouraging diverse perspectives and thinking outside the box. This diversity is essential in exploring and settling on future scenarios that are distinctive from each other yet plausible, capturing a wide range of possibilities. For instance, the Coast Guard identified four forces for change, leading them to generate 16 possible worlds and narrow down to five distinct yet plausible scenarios. By envisioning these future worlds, organizations can better prepare for potential challenges and opportunities that may arise.

So much has been written about how to future-proof a strategy. But Peter Scoblic says that too many companies still rely on short-sighted strategies that don’t effectively plan for different potential future scenarios.

Scoblic is a co-founder and principal of the consultancy Event Horizon Strategies. In this episode, he explains how thoughtful and ongoing scenario-planning exercises can help organizations decide which investments will allow them to thrive — even in a crisis. He also shares how to balance short-term factors with longer term modeling and why it’s so important to ensure that your planning team is truly diverse. As he says, “This is a case where diversity absolutely matters, in all senses of the word, because what you want is to get people to think outside of the box. It’s very difficult to do that if you don’t recognize the box that you’re in.”

Key episode topics include: strategy, strategic planning, crisis management, scenario panning, modeling.

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