Calibrating Strategic Perspectives
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Calibrating Strategic Perspectives A simple manager-friendly model for compiling and testing scenarios for strategic planning
James Thring Sustained success requires long-term strategies with
but how adequately are they perceived?
assumptions about future trends and events, should be set against a background or scenario. Comprehensive scenarios are rare because of lack of training, myopia about remote factors, problems of consensus and lack of simple tools. This article offers a simulation solution,
Creating scenarios
contingencies for uncertainty. Strategies, and their
Filling the gaps between the base data with logical constructs and imaginative leaps develops pictures of the future at given points in time. Such scenarios can be misleading, particularly if only one beguiling picture is
bridging intuitive and econometric approaches. This provides a framework for heuristic learning, for trying alternative strategies, assumptions and interactions, gaining consensus and producing more and less likely scenarios. This reduces vulnerability to shock and lost opportunity. lt helps management focus on long-term strategy, allowing more initiative down the line. A case
painted. Alternative projections and views must be
examined. lt is then a matter of judging the chances of
various trends and events coming about. Many regard
this process as unscientific and hopelessly prone to error. But the contention remains: that judgements about future possibilities are better made consciously and refined by consideration, than simply taken for granted or worse still, not taken at all. If such judgements are not made explicit
study for a county planning department ¡s illustrated.
and tested, success will depend on luck rather than deliberation. Sustained success is unlikely without a careful appraisal of the agents of change and some
Sustainable success
means of understanding their interaction.
Firms which consider long-term future options and their broad ramifications, and plan accordingly, are more likely to enjoy sustained success than those which assume the status quo will continue. Exploring the future business environment 10 or 20 years hence, and imagining some of the regional or global social, technical and economic
Strategic planning risk Translating this intelligence and imagination into guidance for strategic planning is subject to another series of judgements about the reaction of an organisation to the events foreseen. This step underlines the above experience, that some judgement has to be made about the
changes which could affect business, is an important form of 'intelligence gathering which can only help longterm security.
chances of particular events happening because the cost-
effectiveness of investment in people, resources and goodwill depends on ¡t. This in turn, affects the amount of
effort or sacrifice worth risking in the strategy. If no
Data about the future
assessment of risk is made, the strategy will still be open to danger and lost opportunity.
There is no data about the future, exce
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