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Scenario Planning is a strategic planning method used by some companies for long-term planning. By analyzing known facts and future events, such as demographics, geography, military, politics, industrial information and mineral resources, etc., we can provide useful suggestions and key driving forces for society, technology, economy, environment, education and politics.
Scenario decision-making can include systems thinking, especially for complex methods that can create amazing future factors (based on nonlinear feedback loops). This method also allows to add factors that are difficult to calculate, such as new future thinking, profound changes in values, unforeseen rules and inventions. System thinking and scenario planning work together to plan practical and feasible scenario story lines. When scenario planning and system thinking are common, scenario development is sometimes called structural motivation.
In a highly uncertain environment, the advantages of scenario planning are obvious: since no basic situation can be identified as possible, it is necessary to make plans based on assumptions (assuming several different possible futures), and Need to pay close attention to the various potential drivers of uncertainty.
The current prevalent uncertainty complicates scenario planning: the number of variables at play — and the range of possible outcomes — has exploded in the past year. For example, consider the plight of an industrial supplier. Not only is it severely affected by the commercial and residential real estate industry, but it also has many government customers. For this company, the most important uncertainties include: the development direction of the commercial credit and mortgage market, housing prices, taxes, and the government's economic stimulus plan. The different results of each of these uncertain factors will make the development path of this company greatly different. As the core of scenario planning-conceiving multiple strategies for different results-has become more and more complex, therefore, strategy experts should develop more stringent information collection, possibility research procedures, and conduct completely old-fashioned Strict thinking.
Corporate executives who have not participated in the strategic planning team—even those who are accustomed to the development of scenario models—may find that the diversity and complexity of this year's scenario models are confusing and at a loss. It is essential that these executives participate in the planning process as early as possible: for example, a scenario development method involving the entire executive team is used to initiate the planning process. Similarly, when the review process for business units begins, companies can invite senior executives from various departments to participate in the process-instead of maintaining a one-time working relationship between the senior management team and the person in charge of each business unit, To inculcate how to correctly evaluate the threats faced by the company and the common response strategy of the company.