Scenario Planning to De-colonize Management Perspectives

July 25, 2022 Virtual Consulting

By Gideon Malherbe, Founder, VCI

As the definition of our human experience includes anticipation, we all attempt to foresee the future and act accordingly. Scenario Planning is a distinct way for corporate leadership to leverage this innate human ability.

Our approach to Scenario Planning leverages the innate human ability of anticipation. But instead of blindly looking forward with old or falsified frameworks of what to expect, or relying on colonized corporate understanding, we figure out how to actually shape our present-day assumptions about the future. Speaking of the colonization of futures, we want to avoid being colonized by assumptions formulated through un-curated mass media, bad actors in the system, or now-redundant old contexts. Through Scenario Planning, we work to identify poor assumptions and develop others that are more appropriate. These can cover any topic such as our views of globalization, inflation, war, society, fossil fuel, democracy, transportation, mega-cities, longevity, and so forth.

But rather than just identifying problems in a reflective practice, our Scenario Planning is aspirational. It works to release leadership from the default of taken-for-granted assumptions, and facilitates the progression of individual leaders to become effective agents of change. With this, the responsibility for the future is given to leadership who are better equipped to consciously steer the company’s strategy.

Our Scenario Planning process typically creates an enormous transformation in leadership — as they relate to other individuals and to the world. It creates another leadership competency that functions as a way to communicate on many different levels – business, emotional, social – to create a more collective meaning throughout the company. This in turn enables others in the company to expand their stories and continue a more meaningful and dynamic growth of the organization at large.