Exploring and learning from the future: five steps for avoiding strategic surprises
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to argue that the reason most organizations get blindsided by market transformations is that they undertake strategic planning processes – like scenario development –without seeing them as a unique opportunity for learning about and exploring multiple futures.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper demonstrates the Monitor360 approach to learning from scenario development.
Findings
The paper reveals that exploring multiple possible ways the future could unfold gives decision‐makers the ability to look in the right place for game‐changing events, to rehearse the appropriate responses and to systematically track indicators of change.
Practical implications
The process offers five discrete steps to make scenario planning more effective. The paper explains why each step should be undertaken with a distinct mindset.
Originality/value
When planners follow the process described in the paper, which systematically cuts through the barriers to effective group learning and decision making, and combine it with principles that give discipline and robustness to the entire endeavor, the future, and the company's place in it, comes into a much sharper focus.
Keywords
Citation
Randall, D. (2009), "Exploring and learning from the future: five steps for avoiding strategic surprises", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 37 No. 2, pp. 27-31. https://doi.org/10.1108/10878570910941190
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2009, Emerald Group Publishing Limited