Step Three: Writing Snapshots for Each Scenario, Part 2

Two weeks ago, in Step Three: Writing Snapshots for Each Scenario, I continued a description of a Scenario Planning exercise my Board chair and I decided to conduct at our most recently completed Board meeting. I ended the previous post with a comment that, before moving onto step four of the Scenario Planning process, I had to discuss how the descriptions developed for each of the four possible futures combine together into four different snapshots.

The simplest way to explain this is to revisit how our four futures combined together into our four scenarios. Remember that our Board first picked two megatrends facing our industry (Internet of Things and Workforce). Then, for each megatrend, they described two possible futures that the megatrend may create for our industry (for Internet of Things: our industry either benefits from or struggles to integrate with IoT technologies; and for Workforce: our industry either has an easier or a harder time finding the talent it needs).

These are four possible futures that our industry may face, but none of them, by themselves, are the future our industry actually will face. Scenario Planning posits that our real future will be an unpredictable combination of those four futures. Based on the megatrends chosen, our industry will either benefit from or struggle with IoT AND our industry will have either an easier or a harder time finding the talent it needs. In other words, the two futures associated with each megatrend can be combined in four different scenarios:

• Scenario A: “Connected Stagnation” - Fluid power integrates with IoT but struggles to find needed talent.
• Scenario B: “Isolated Stagnation” - Fluid power struggles to integrate with IoT and struggles to find needed talent.
• Scenario C: “Connected Growth” - Fluid power integrates with IoT and finds needed talent.
• Scenario D: “Isolated Growth” - Fluid power struggles to integrate with IoT but finds needed talent.

With me so far? Because creating the snapshots for each scenario follows the exact same logic -- but rather than just combining the futures from each megatrend in their four possible ways, we start combining the lists of indicators and descriptions in their four possible ways.

So, for example, the snapshot for Scenario C: "Connected Growth" includes the list of indicators from the future in which fluid power successfully integrates with IoT technologies AND the list of indicators from the future in which fluid power has an easier time finding the talent it needs.

There are, of course, three other snapshots like this, one for each of the three other scenarios. Each describes a different future in a similar amount of robust detail. The snapshots, then, provide a nicely structured way to transcend the simplicity of thinking about the future as just the combination of two variables. Each snapshot, in its pure form, of course assumes that all the indicators associated with its two particular futures must come true in order for that scenario to be realized, but that is not necessarily the limit of their utility to the organization and its planning for an uncertain future.

I'll have to come back to that idea in a future post, because the next step, now that we have our four scenarios and snapshots in hand, is to begin discussing the strategic implications of everything we have done.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://nigelhickey.com/broken-snapshots-got/