FSG Blog

Why Scenario Planning Works

Say you have a strategic decision to make. And you have several experts giving you different expert opinions about how you should make that decision. And you are not an expert. What do you do?

Scenario Consulting to Go

It’s been said – and it’s still true – that scenario planning is most valuable as a tool to deliver strategic insights for longer-term planning. But in recent years, with the accelerating pace of change (and the increased recognition of such), private sector executives have tended to pass on in-depth strategic exercises in favor of what most would consider to be business planning. FSG believes this is a mistake, and that the need for thinking rigorously about what lies “around the corner” is always valuable, especially in turbulent times.

Global Trade and Logistics Scenarios

In mid-May, FSG principals facilitated a scenario-planning exercise for the Port Commerce Department of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. Under the guidance of FSG and our partner, Cargo Velocity, some 60 workshop participants devoted three days to exploring the strategic implications of five alternative future operating environments for maritime trade and logistics. 

Types of Scenario Planning

by Charles Thomas

The term “scenario planning” encompasses a surprisingly diverse range of activities. While there are many potential schemes for categorizing these activities, the discussion below presents a fairly comprehensive view of them, and indicates – if imperfectly – the relationships among the various approaches.

Silos, seams and business model reengineering

“Silos” are an inevitable part of any organization; indeed, of any human activity. Even if you confine yourself to individual action, your own mind is thinking within certain categories, usually operating off a mental model that tells you what to expect – “If I do X, then Y will happen” – and what NOT to expect – Z or W or something completely different.

This Week’s Scenario Blast from the Past: Nation-Building in ’01

Despite our leeriness about extrapolation from the past, we do read a lot of history at FSG in order to write our scenarios. As Mark Twain wrote, “It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible.” (Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (1940, Bernard DeVoto, editor).