A Faster Way to Build Future Scenarios

This streamlined approach to scenario planning incorporates AI and helps managers navigate future uncertainties more efficiently.

- By Rafael Ramírez, Trudi Lang, Joakim Köhler, and Matt Mennell

THE ABILITY TO ENGAGE WITH RADICAL uncertainty is becoming increasingly urgent for leaders — and they need tools for doing this rapidly.

Scenario planning is growing in popularity as a way to better understand and prepare for changing business contexts, but, as practiced in the past few decades, it can be too time- and resource-intensive to meet today's need for fast insights.

While thoughtful attention and consideration of rapidly evolving issues is more important than ever for managers, dedicating people's valuable time to produce a set of scenarios is becoming increasingly expensive. It is also ever more difficult because many managers are stretched thin — a situation that's exacerbated by the delayering of central management and strategy teams.

How, then, can managers produce a bespoke and useful set of scenarios to address their own specific situations and uncertainties? And how can they do so without expending vast resources, managerial attention, and person-days — or waiting six months or more for useful insights?

A few companies have found a way to do all of the above. Their approaches involve framing scenarios with their intended users, those engaged in strategic planning, at the center, placing a sharp focus on what really matters here and now to those individuals. These companies have also made judicious use of generative AI tools in the process. We will explain how these elements are being applied in an accelerated scenario planning process, illustrated by the recent experiences of two companies: Fazer, a Nordic fast-moving consumer goods company; and Unum Ltd., the U.K. subsidiary of a U.S.-based provider of employee benefits.

Framing Scenarios for Their Users, Here and Now