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Welcome to Class 6 Rapids!

Sean Ryan
Our scenario planning whitepaper helps you prepare for uncertainty.

Strap on your helmet, and get your paddles ready: we’re about to enter some very turbulent times! That era of perpetual whitewater we’ve been paddling through will likely get even more choppy as Trump returns to the White House later this month.  As his first term demonstrates, it’s foolish to try and anticipate what the returning president will do, what policies or plans he will put in play. The only certainty is change, which isn’t new but is accelerating and intensifying at a pace we’ve never seen before.


It’s not just Trump-related. The world is also grappling with other upheavals: economic and geopolitical instability, the environmental crisis, and warp-speed digital transformation. 


It all adds up to a boatload of uncertainty for leaders. As an American living in Canada who works in the states almost weekly, I feel it on both sides of the border. Regardless of your politics, what’s for sure is that the Trump presidency will have wide-ranging impacts on businesses in the U.S. and beyond. 


It can feel like tough paddling out there! But the worst thing you can do is sit on shore, helpless.


Scenario-proof your strategy  

While we can’t know what lies around the bend, wise leaders are doing all they can to be ready to respond to changing circumstances and even prepare for worst-case scenarios. That takes agility. Traditional strategic plans, with their years-long cycles, are too slow to respond to this breakneck change. 


This is where scenario planning steps in. It offers a dynamic and multifaceted approach to future planning that can respond to the complexity of multiple uncertainties. 


The WhiteWater team are such fans of this approach that we’ve created a free whitepaper on scenario planning. This concise primer will give you the confidence to prepare for an unknowable future through a proactive process. 


Scenario planning can help your organization plan in three key ways: exploring future options, naming the triggers that will activate a course of action, and defining the factors to evaluate a plan’s success.


Along with drawing on our extensive experience leading clients through this process, we’ve curated the best practices and ideas from the leadership literature. Our whitepaper breaks down the three major categories of destabilizing elements in the larger context that could affect your business and operations: your markets, your people and your values. It offers a brief history of scenario planning, and details the three essential elements of successful scenario planning. It also looks at the related roles of improvisation and communication in this approach. 


What’s wrong with forecasting? 

Unlike traditional forecasting, which tends to assume a single future that’s not very different from the present, scenario planning proactively explores multiple potential scenarios and their implications for your organizations. 


Scenarios explore a range of plausible outcomes, not a single probable one. They help you prepare for the unexpected–before it happens.After all, your strategy is based on a set of assumptions about what will likely occur. 


But what if that planned-for future never arrives? What if the conditions change? Scenario planning is an antidote to helplessness, a source of credible action plans to implement when change happens. Scenario planning is a way to explore the interplay between your immediate business environment and the broader context during “TUNA conditions”: times of turbulence, unpredictable uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity.  


This approach helps make your strategy as dynamic as the context in which you do business. It allows you to interact pre-emptively with external factors, from local, national and international politics to domestic and foreign economic forces and social movements. Most importantly, it helps you prepare for multiple eventualities–including those that are not ideal or that seem less likely. If there’s anything we can expect these days, it’s the unexpected. 


The power of resilience

Scenario planning requires an open and creative stance to uncertainty. It also brings your team into the process and mindset of being ready for whatever may come. It provides training, in a sense, for flexible responses to quickly changing circumstances. 


As Fernando F. Suarez and Juan S. Montes wrote in ‘Building Organizational Resilience,’ a fascinating Harvard Business Review piece, “Organizations that regularly deal with fast-evolving situations—think SWAT teams and military commandos—know that it pays to practice and prepare for the unexpected while you have the luxury of time and resources instead of trying to learn how to adapt in the middle of a storm.” 

 

By reflecting on their potential impacts today, you can better plan for a prosperous future. Remember, for every risk, there’s the possibility of a new opportunity.  The more comfortable you become with the uncertainty, the better you’ll be able to navigate the whitewater that’s ahead. 


So, ready, set, let’s dig in! Grab your free copy of our whitepaper now. And stay tuned for more posts on the power of scenario planning. 


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