In a world of increasingly specialized industries, managers are trained to focus in great depth on one topic.
Strategic scenarios
Scenario planning is one of the most common techniques in the modern managerial lexicon - and one of the least understood.
Having produced scenarios for executives for over a decade, let us begin by describing what scenario planning is not:
A single scenario showing inevitable success of current plans
Three scenarios showing 1%, 3% and 5% growth
Split between uniquely positive and uniquely negative outcomes
A series of dreams made up by individuals based on old assumptions
With this list as a cautionary tale, Competitive Futures will teach you want scenario planning can be, and the technique required so that you can integrate this skillset into your thinking every day.
Our Strategic Scenarios Course will help you enhance your abilities as a manager with the following skills:
Build robust potential futures based on rigorous trend data
Identify key uncertainties
Create compelling narratives that force your colleagues to consider risks and opportunities
Communicate findings to senior management
Use scenarios as the basis for wargaming
Employ digital tools to track the likelihood of strategic disruptive in the years following the exercise
Would you like to discuss how to improve your organization's analytical capabilities by training your colleagues in the art and science of scenario building? Just call us at 877.431.6565 or fill out the form below.
Trend analysis
Goals:
Make wiser strategic plans - visions not clouded by current media
Discover opportunities for creative new products and services
Detect threats - from competitors, regulation, market shifts - while there is still time to act
Understand the future, so you can create it and not react to it
Trend Analysis, the first part of the “Future Intelligence” program provides executives with a professional method of future trend analysis and forecast assessment. The goal is not to make futurists out of decision makers per se, but to give them the tools to collect the most pertinent data on strategic forces, to analyze potential impact, and to spread their insights throughout the organization. This creates the intellectually-flexible environment that all organizations must have to survive and thrive in a turbulent world.
Forecast assessment
Having trained thousands of executives in the art of foresight, we know that now, more than ever, we need a clear view of the events coming in weeks, months and year, or we risk making decisions on faulty assumptions. What passes for business media is scarcely a help in this area. If you listen uncritically to the forecasts offered up in most channels, you have to base your view of the future on:
Sunny economic forecasts based on stock speculation instead of shrinking incomes and unemployment
Chairmen of the Federal Reserve forecasting the rise housing prices just before the detonation of the entire economy under the weight of fake mortage-backed securities
The US Government predicting world oil supply as stable or steadily growing while key oil fields go extinct and China and India put millions of cars on the road
Healthcare debates that appear to ignore the impact of the Boomer retirement, shifts in employment contracts
If you are a professional analyst, we want you to be able to:
Know good forecasts from bad
Identify who can you trust in a world without defined authority figures
Make critical decisions based on the best information
Our short course entitled Real Forecasting for Professional Analysts is perfect for busy analysts and managers who want a professional-level refresher course in the evaluation of forecasts. Our course will show you how to:
Find the right sources
Identify what type of forecast is on offer
Explore the assumptions of the author
Pick out the trends used to make the forecast
Identify implications of the forecast
Assess the probability of the future described
Communicate this infomation to other people
At the end of the day, we want our clients to be ready to evaluate forecasts, understand who is writing them, ascertain their assumptions and know what it all means so they can better plan for the future.
Future Intelligence course
The Future Intelligence system is the cornerstone of Competitive Futures analysis. It is also our most popular one-day course, which has been enjoyed by thousands of executives in organizations around the world. More importantly, our clients who have taken the course have done us the great honor of reporting that they actually use the techniques they learn in real life as soon as the complete the trainig.
Outlined in Eric Garland's first book Future Inc, the system includes six techniques:
System mapping
Trend analysis
Forecast assessment
Implications distillation
Scenario development
Communications
In a single eight-hour session, executives are taught a coherent method of increasing foresight in any department of any organization. We recommend that clients invite groups of fifteen or more, as teamwork and diverse skillsets are critical to the success or organization futures. During the session, the concepts of future intelligence are introduced and then immediately put into practice with the use of a case study. We simulate a high-speed version of what you will be asked to do by forward-thinking leaders, including research and analysis of trends, discussing their potential meaning, and construction of likely scenarios.
Participants walk away from this one day course with new skillsets that they can apply immediately to their positions in business development, marketing, communications, sales, or senior leadership.
The Future Intelligence course has been taught to thousands of executives around the world, and implemented in corporations and governments. Just a few of our past clients are listed below.
Scenario planning is one of the most common techniques in the modern managerial lexicon - and one of the least understood.
Having trained thousands of executives in the art of foresight, we know that now, more than ever, we need a clear view of the events coming in weeks, months and year, or we risk making decisions on faulty assumptions. What passes for business media is scarcely a help in this area. If you listen uncritically to the forecasts offered up in most channels, you have to base your view of the future on:
The Future Intelligence system is the cornerstone of Competitive Futures analysis. It is also our most popular one-day course, which has been enjoyed by thousands of executives in organizations around the world. More importantly, our clients who have taken the course have done us the great honor of reporting that they actually use the techniques they learn in real life as soon as the complete the trainig.
