Woody Wade

What happens in a scenario PLANNING workshop? a short faq.

HOW MUCH TIME DO WE NEED?

The interactive scenario building workshops I facilitate face-to-face typically last 1 to 1½ days. Online — which is where almost all of my workshops are currently being conducted for the moment, because of the pandemic — workshops are structured a little differently: I recommend 2 sessions of 3 hours each. These are preferably scheduled with some time between the sessions (a day or two).

ARE SHORTER WORKSHOPS POSSIBLE?

Once or twice I was given a slot in the schedule of an industry conference and did a so-called “micro-workshop” lasting just one hour (!) As I joked at the time, these events felt like "speed dating" — a flirty, superficial opportunity to open your eyes to intriguing future possibilities, but nothing as satisfying as actual "romance.” As you can imagine, these sessions were high-energy, if not downright frenetic. I really worked up a sweat.

Not actually my cup of tea, if I’m being honest. A quick workshop like this might generate some interesting results, but frankly, you’re taking a risk that you’ll emerge at the end of the hour without many original or thought-provoking conclusions. It’s more likely that a rushed session ends up with outcomes that generate an underwhelmed reaction from the participants along the lines of: “Thanks, but we already knew all that.” In my opinion, you need to be willing to invest more time than one hour in the process, so we can get beyond conventional, superficial ideas — “analysis” that is easy to come up with, but not very useful. Read on to see how I do that.

WHAT IS THE PROCESS EXACTLY?

The exercise itself kicks off with an introductory presentation where I explain the what, why, and how of scenario thinking, walking you through the main points of the process we’re about to undertake together, and explaining the logic of each step. I use concrete examples from past workshops to illustrate each part of the process.

When we get into the scenario generation process itself, we go through a number of steps:

• In working teams, we first need to identify a reasonable number of driving forces that could affect your future.

• Back in a plenary session, we dissect these driving forces, perhaps clustering several of them into a single driver where that’s possible, and try to reach consensus on which ones represent the most critical uncertainties, i.e. the ones that have the greatest potential to affect how your future landscape is going to change. These are the drivers that we focus on from this point forward.

• Based on this choice, we can construct an array of contrasting — all plausible — scenarios that could emerge, depending on the different ways these critical uncertainties could eventually resolve themselves over time.

• Back in the working teams again, we discuss and define key characteristics of each scenario, for example:

  • How would each scenario look and feel to your organization if you find yourselves operating in that environment? What would be the key attributes of each scenario — for example, how would the market landscape be different? Can any important aspect of the scenario be quantified, even roughly?

  • Who would be likely winners and losers in each scenario? Many different organizations will find themselves advantaged (or disadvantaged) depending on how a given future landscape has unfolded. Which competitors of yours will do well? Who will probably struggle? What about other stakeholders: your customers, end consumers, suppliers, employees? How will they be faring? What will they want from you that might be different from today?

  • What new opportunities, challenges, and requirements would each scenario present you?

• Each working team then elaborates a strategic response (potential actions, initiatives or innovations) that you could realistically undertake to improve the chances of your success in each scenario.

• Lastly, we try to identify possible signposts that might appear as time goes on, indicating that one particular scenario seems to be emerging, rather than one of the others.

• Oh yes, one more thing: we try to give each of the scenarios a snappy name! “Good Vibrations” communicates a lot more, and is easier to remember, than “Scenario 3.”

The process is thorough, and goes into some detail. If any of these steps is too rushed, the outcomes will be sub-optimal. That’s why you need to devote sufficient time to each stage of the process.

WHAT ARE THE OUTCOMES?

What you have at the end of the process is a portfolio of futures that could each plausibly materialize, a good understanding of their implications for you as an environment in which you are doing business, and a basic strategic response for each one. You are then in a position to take this “to-do” list for each scenario and outline such managerial details as:

• Organizational responsibility: Who will you put in charge of executing the strategic response?

• Specific action steps: What exactly should be done to prepare yourselves for the scenario, even before knowing for sure if it is the one that will materialize? Once you are sure that you are operating in one of the scenarios foreseen, what new actions need to be executed?

• Timing and milestones: Do you need to act now, or do you have the luxury of waiting? How long? By when do you absolutely have to have implemented the various steps?

• Budget: How much would it cost for each of the action steps to be implemented? Have you got the financial resources?

• Other resources needed: For example, is additional manpower needed? Are there specific skills you need to succeed in this new world? Have you got them? If not, how will you beef up your capabilities?

Having conclusions that are structured and practical like this can serve as a road map for you to navigate the next few years, as you keep an eye on the landscape to see how it is actually evolving.

HOW MANY PEOPLE SHOULD BE INVOLVED?

The size of the group can range from relatively small — 8 or 9 — to quite large, around 30. I’ve conducted workshops with over 200 participants, but this calls for some technological help (e.g. electronic brainstorming), which is all very cool stuff but affects how well the participants connect with me and with each other — and let’s face it, there is an impact on the cost, too. It’s doable, but not optimal, and not cheap.

The ideal number, in my experience, is between 16 and 24 participants. This allows you to form 4 working teams during the workshop that will each have 4 to 6 people in them, which I’ve found is about right for good team discussion and a high level of participation from everyone. 

I should also mention that, no matter how many people are taking part, you want to make sure that you are including participants with different perspectives on your business and on the environment you operate in. You don't want the scenario development group to consist only of accountants or only of marketing specialists. Diversity of experience and viewpoints is essential.

AND FINALLY…

An important aspect of scenario planning is credibility. The process does you do no good if you just end up with over-optimistic wishful thinking — or its opposite: dark, doomsday fantasies. Instead, the scenarios you generate must be realistic. That’s not only because you will base strategic action and resources on them, but even before that, you need to get the buy-in and support of colleagues (or superiors) to take concrete preparatory steps together.

This is why one of my jobs as facilitator is to steer the group away from implausible scenarios and get everyone to focus on developing futures that all seem like plausible ways your business environment could realistically evolve, even though this may be challenging. The result will be a portfolio of scenarios that reveal contrasting outcomes — maybe even to an eye-opening degree — but which are all deemed believable by the workshop participants. Your credibility is at stake here!

WHAT NOW?

Contact me and let’s talk about your situation. No obligation, just a chat. You can also e-mail me directly at wade@11changes.com.