Document 6588157

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
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