Our Work:
Scenario Planning, Corporate Strategy, and Futures Analysis

FSG’s Unique Scenario Approach

Nearly all management consulting companies profess to do some version of “scenario planning.” More often than not, this amounts to a cursory consideration of one or at most two alternatives to a “most likely” base case. The problem with this approach is that numerous fundamental assumptions of the current operative business model are never challenged. Planners end up defaulting to an extrapolative image of the future in which business risks and opportunities are more or less similar to the present. Not only does this situation leave planners ill-prepared to deal with non-traditional challenges; it also blinds them to opportunities.

The FSG approach to scenario planning is unique in the balanced emphasis placed on the following three critical elements:

• Rigor
• Creativity
• Practical results

Rigor is essential for credibility and executive buy-in to the scenario planning results. But it is also the necessary starting point for true creativity. The FSG scenario planning approach is rigorous throughout. It begins with the meticulous construction of an analytical framework that captures the full range of plausible market and operating conditions that an organization might encounter over a given planning horizon. FSG’s approach consciously challenges internal client notions of what the future will bring. Our experience working across many industry segments gives us the confidence and credibility to stretch our clients’ thinking. We also use external interviews with opinion leaders to question conventional wisdom. Client “core teams” become our partners in the creation of the scenario “inquiry space” and all the key scenario documents. The client core team provides important industry knowledge and insights that ensure that the worlds we create are plausible and ultimately useful. Finally, with our clients, we painstakingly build a wide-ranging set of scenarios specifically designed to explore non-traditional combinations of high-level business drivers. This rigorous framework provides needed structure for the creative work to follow.

Rigor, however, though necessary, is not sufficient. Creativity is the other magic ingredient. Once the analytical framework is in place, the “serious fun” begins. Client executives (and, often, outside experts and other stakeholders) are invited to take part in strategy workshops. These workshops allow people to leave behind the “tyranny of the present” and to speculate creatively about what the future MIGHT bring. In scenario strategy workshops, cross-functional groups of senior executives “live” in each of the scenario worlds. The results of each of these world team strategy sessions are stress-tested against the conditions of each of the other scenarios. The “robust” strategies that emerge from this process, then, have been shown to work across extremes of potential future working environments.

Practical results are why most organizations invest in strategy. It is no different for scenario planning; the output must be clear, useful, and executable. FSG works hard from the beginning of the scenario development process, with our clients, to derive concrete meaning and direction from the workshop exercises. The strategy development workshops are built around a series of questions that challenge participants to articulate concrete actions that respond to emerging business conditions. We also push participants to confront trade-offs—i.e., what are you willing to give up in order to invest in Projects A, B and C? A large part of the value FSG adds arises from the facilitation skills needed to guide workshops down a path of discovery and action. Scenario planning, as FSG practices it, is not a weekend retreat activity to stimulate creative thinking. It is a creative and rigorous process to achieve concrete results through specific actions. In the process, a remarkable degree of team-building and executive alignment inevitably result.