Session 9 Review

The seminar this week was used to discuss about scenario planning. So what exactly is scenario planning?

Scenario planning is a method for learning about the future by understanding the nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces affecting our future. It is a group process that encourages knowledge exchange and development of mutual deeper understanding of central issues important to the future of your business. The goal is to craft a number of diverging stories by extrapolating uncertain and heavily influencing driving forces. The stories together with the work getting there has the dual purpose of increasing the knowledge of the business environment and widen both the receiver's and participant's perception of possible future events. The method is most widely used as a strategic management tool, but this and similar methods have been used for enabling other types of group discussion about a common future. (Source: Well.com)

Now that I have given you a scholarly approach to it above, let me go ahead and explain it in my words. Everyone has a habit of wanting to predict future moves and decisions. The method we actually use is by trying to figure out what is going to happen in that future and how we could react to it. That is probably my most simplistic understanding of scenario planning.

So how do we go about building a scenario? Well, the standard process involves: (Source: Net Based Management.net)

• identify people who will most likely contribute to a wide range of perspectives
• comprehensive interviews/workshops could be done so as to understand all likely future changes that can affect oneself and the company
• cluster the different views together to form a pattern
• from these draw out a list of priorities i.e. the best ideas
• create a rough picture(scenario) of the future based on these priorities
• work further to now detail the impact of this scenario on the company
• mark out early signs/warning signals for each different impact
• moderate, evaluate and review scenarios

This now gives us a rough idea as to what exactly happens in scenario planning. I am going to paste something below I found rather interesting. I pulled off the web and I think its important to read it as I am quite sure at some point in our lives we will have to use the scenario planning tool. (Source: Net Based Management.net) Now that you have an idea about what we discussed I will continue ahead with my thoughts on the seminar.

Some traps to avoid in Scenario Planning:

1) treating scenarios as forecasts
2) constructing scenarios based on too simplistic a difference, such as optimistic and pessimistic
3) failing to make scenario global enough in scope
4) failing to focus scenarios in areas of potential impact on the business
5) treating scenarios as an informational or instructional tool rather than for participative learning / strategy formation
6) not having an adequate process for engaging executive teams in the scenario planning process
7) failing to put enough imaginative stimulus into the scenario design
8) not using an experienced facilitator

Now that you have an idea about what we discussed I will continue ahead with my thoughts on the seminar. Prof Gilbert did explain all the above and said that scenario planning is a common corporate tool and was actually derived from military planning tools and intelligence methods. I think what I realised is most important is not to predict the future but to look at all the different possibilities that can occur. Each and every possibility has the same likelihood of occuring as the other. The aim of the scenario planning is just to keep you prepared for different types of occurances. At the same time it will also teach you and prepare you on how to handle the different future scenarios. Once the whole analysis process is over you get what is known as a scenario matrix. It is short, concise but tells you exactly what you need to know and is extremely useful. I love the idea of such a simple yet powerful table. It makes something difficult to think about and understand seem so simple, yet organised.

		VARIABLE 1
		Outcome 1A | V	Outcome 1B | V
V A R I A B L E 2	Outcome 2A -->	Scenario 1	Scenario 2
	Outcome 2B -->	Scenario 3	Scenario 4

It was really great learning about this tool. I think it really is useful to students, corporation and ofcourse the place it all started: the military. There is loads of information about it on the web and most of it is actually really useful.

The last section of the seminar was about making presentations for a case analysis. It was an optional part of the seminar but the whole class stayed back for it. It was a nice summary on what should really be done and I learnt a lot of new pointers from that presentation. An interesting one was that for a competition it is important to create a presentation targetted at the most influential judge (the consultant) so that he could influence the remainder of the judges. Other interesting points brought forward was also how to break up the time to create the presentation. One thing that Prof Gilbert said that really struck me was dont assist the powerpoint, but let it assist you. I realise now that it is so important that a presentation is made for the purpose of complementing what the presenter is saying and not vice versa. Think that is probably the most common mistake we make and I hope I learn in the future to avoid it.

All in all it was a detailed seminar but never the less filled with ideas. Gosh with so many ideas and details coming through every week I am beginning to worry about the exam! So confused about what can be asked! Just a month to go...oops!!!