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Scenario Analysis

Exploring different futures

Imagine that you're facing a really significant decision. Imagine that it could fundamentally affect your personal life, or that it will determine the future of your business. Perhaps you're thinking about "stretching your finances" to buy a bigger house. Or maybe you're thinking of launching a new product which you know could "cannibalize" existing sales.

Perhaps you've done the numbers, and these seem OK. But deep down, you dread what could go wrong. After all, no one has a foolproof vision of the future, and while you may have strong instincts as to how things may develop, any single projection of the future is clearly vulnerable to disruption by a range of different factors.

Scenario Analysis helps you bring these fears into the open and gives you a rational and professional framework for exploring them.

Using it, you can make decisions in the context of the different futures that may come to pass. The act of creating scenarios forces you to challenge your assumptions about the future. By shaping your plans and decisions based on the most likely scenarios, you can ensure that your decisions are sound even if circumstances change... (Sign in to read more.)

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New Articles (Not included in the Mind Tools E-book.)
* Shows articles available in full only to Career Excellence Club Premium members

Porter's Diamond - Shaping strategy to reflect national strengths and weaknesses*
Using the TOWS Matrix - Developing strategic options
The McKinsey 7S Framework - Ensuring all parts of your organization work in harmony
ADL Matrix - How industry position influences your strategy
The Boston Matrix - Focusing effort to get the greatest returns
The Ansoff Matrix - Understanding the different risks of different options
Porter's Generic Strategies- Choosing your route to competitive advantage
Bowman's Strategy Clock - Making sense of eight competitive positions*
Core Competence Analysis - Get ahead. Stay ahead.
The Pyramid of Purpose - Concisely communicating your strategy*
Hoshin Planning System - Steering everyone in the right direction*
The Balanced Scorecard - Motivating employees to deliver your strategy
The Triple Bottom Line - Measuring your organization's wider impact*
Practical Business Planning - Understanding the components of future success*
Critical Success Factors (CSFs) - Identifying the things that really matter for success
Benchmarking - Comparing your performance with the best*
Using the Greiner Curve - Surviving the crises that come with growth
Leverage - Achieve much more with the same effort

A full list of Mind Tools articles is available here.

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