Scenario Planning for Strategy Development Online Course

Business decisions face many challenges in today’s VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) world, making it hard to see through the fog in highly complex, contradictory situations. Yet, in the artificial, extreme worlds of scenario planning, strategic implications of possible future realities become very apparent providing a unique opportunity to develop robust strategy.

Our proven approach to Scenario Thinking for Strategy Development helps navigate the VUCA future by providing a comprehensive framework to identify, classify and develop strategies to mitigate key external uncertainties.

Attend this course and learn to broaden your decision frames to address business uncertainties, develop winning strategies for different future worlds, and qualitatively assess their robustness across possible futures.

What’s Covered

• Frame decision problems that lend themselves to scenario thinking for strategy development

• Assess key macro / external uncertainties to identify future worlds

• Gain insight from future business landscapes to develop winning strategies

• Gain insight from qualitative analysis to develop hybrid strategies and enable informed decisions

• Communicate the problem definition, frame, and impact of different alternatives to ensure clarity and realistic trade-off discussions with decision-makers

What’s Provided

• A practical Scenario Thinking for Strategy Development workflow and toolset to develop future scenarios and winning strategies.

• Two relevant case studies that incorporate different energy transition business environment uncertainties upon which to develop future scenarios and the strategies given any of the future worlds unfold.

• DTrio® decision framing software tool for use during the course with a 30-day evaluation license following the course.

• A digital course manual and Decision Frameworks Decision Quality Toolbox

Online Course Outline (three, 4-hour modules)

Module 1 – Intro to Decision Quality & Scenario Planning  

• Introduction to Decision Quality, decision framing & scenario planning 

• Case study breakout: Problem definition, issue identification, decision focus, project alternatives 

Module 2 - Uncertainty Ranking & Future Worlds  

• Case study breakout: Identifying and ranking external uncertainties upon which to build future worlds & describing future business landscapes 

Module 3 - Framing Strategy Alternatives for Future Worlds & Qualitative Analysis 

• Case study breakout: Developing winning strategies for future worlds & qualitative assessment