Where Do You See Your Company in 5 Years Time? The chances are that the only thing you can say with any certainty is that you intend to be around fighting to succeed in whatever business climate exists. How you get from here to there in good shape is anybody's guess. Ashridge Consulting deploys strategic scenarios in their work with organisations to explore possible business futures. Analytical Analysis vs. Crystal-ball Gazing All the analysis of past trends and educated crystal-ball gazing to find the future are little help when hard-topredict opportunities, be it the internet or the opening up of markets in Eastern Europe, radically alter how you do business, where your markets are or even the products you sell. However good your analysts and however deeply they research the market, no one can look at the future with certainty. But by thinking about a variety of futures, playing with a multiplicity of possibilities you can succeed in making your company flexible enough to absorb whatever shocks the future holds. You Cannot Rehearse the Future Ashridge's scenario-based consulting takes many of the tools any good business strategist would use - analysing an organisation's past, identifying issues important to an organisation's perception of its future, examining external business trends and the possible political, social, economic, environmental and technological factors which may effect the future business climate - and then creates a variety of plausible, possible futures through which an organisation can look at its ability to meet future challenges. Scenario consulting work is not about learning how better to guess the future but rather learning to work with the idea of the future as an unknowable quantity, but nonetheless something which any organisation must be prepared to face. Disciplined Imagination Working with an organisation, Ashridge's consultants build up a picture of a given company's DNA - its structure, work force and culture - then look at current and predicted business trends and posit a number of scenarios in which that company could find itself in, say, three years time. It is a story-telling approach which, while having a solid basis in data gathered internally from decision makers, and externally by analysing current and emerging trends, relies on a strong dose of disciplined imagination. Real Fantasy However, scenarios are not fantasy. Consultants will use mocked up newspaper articles, academic research and web-sites to give the organisation they are working with a real sense that they have jumped a couple of years further into the 21st century and that the scenarios they are presented with have a strong connection with the organisation as it is now. Nonetheless,, scenarios are ‘merely’ a part of a process which aims to stimulate proactive approach to the question “What shall we do now in the light of these possible futures?” Why Try to Second Guess the Uncertain Future Companies which are responsive to emerging trends and have the capability to see the future as offering a multitude of opportunities rather than a nightmare of unforeseen obstacles are flexible enough to adapt to changes in the business climate. When working with scenarios, Ashridge's consultants and their clients become aware of areas that are consistently weak in their organisational structure, groups of people who have the agility to meet new challenges or see that ways of doing business which have been successful up till now seem likely to be less relevant two years down the line. By imaging the future instead of laying down its ground rules, by taking a step forward from an organisation's current situation and leaping forward into the realm of story-telling, executives are put in the position where they are not judged on the accuracy of their predictions for business two years hence but can admit that like everyone else they have no hot-line to the future. They also have the space to sit back and think long-term and the time to develop new areas of expertise and improve perceived short-comings in company structure so that when the future does arrive they have had the time to plan how to meet its challenges. © Ashridge Consulting 2002 Ashridge Business School UK - http://www.ashridge.org.uk Page 1