Scenario-Driven Planning: Learning to Manage Strategic Uncertainty

Scenario-driven planning is a new management technology for strategy design that employs computed or strategic scenarios to improve the quality of managerial thinking. Strategic scenarios―the outcomes of modeling strategic situations―produce insight much richer than that expected from environmental scenarios alone. They bring to the consulting and upper-level management audiences a better way of handling strategic uncertainty, providing the tools managers and strategy students need for thinking and dialoguing about complex strategic issues.

This new Quorum book deals with a subject that has gradually emerged to the forefront of planning theory. Scenario-driven planning (SDP) is a new technology for management design that empowers organizations to address the various uncertainties that beset them. In recognition of the increasing turbulence of the business environment, this new technology for strategic management is attracting a great deal of attention. However, most present approaches to SDP fall short of the full power of modern management practices. Buttressed by an extensive index and reference list, this book is the most comprehensive treatment to date of the scenario approach. Written for practicing managers and consultants distrustful of quick fixes, as well as for academics and students in the field, the book starts with the present business malaise of developed economies and follows it with a presentation of the historical antecedents of the origins of SDP. It then gradually develops a modern treatment of the scenario approach, starting with its origins, proceeding with graduated case studies (simple applications first, followed by standard applications), and finally concluding with discussion of the theoretical issues and emerging trends that underlie the scenario approach.

Drawing on their combined theoretical and consulting experiences, the authors enumerate the cognitive biases and other obstacles to the management of strategic uncertainty. They present a method that goes beyond the enumeration of judgemental environmental scenarios, and introduce simple as well as more sophisicated methods for computing strategic decision scenarios. Called CSM (Comprehensive Situation Mapping), this analytical approach to strategic planning allows managerial thinking to soar past the bureaucratic side of planning in order to take advantage of creative dialectics. Because of its computational and dialectic features, the CSM approach can be used by astute corporate leaders as an opportunity for promoting organizational learning.

NICHOLAS C. GEORGANTZAS is Associate Professor of Management Systems at Fordham University and a management systems consultant. Widely published on topics on model-based strategy support, decision framing, and behavioral simulation modeling, he has consulted in commercial and retail banking, computer and information systems, education, entertainment and multimedia, and other industries.

WILLIAM ACAR is Associate Professor of Management Systems and Administrative Sciences at the Graduate School of Management of Kent University. The author of numerous published articles, internal reports, and conference presentations, Dr. Acar has developed a number of methods for management theory and practice. He has consulted to a number of business firms and nonprofit agencies, and has developed a causal mapping method for the analysis of complex business situations called CSM (Comprehensive Situation Mapping).