TALK 01
How to plan when you can't predict the future
Most strategies are built on one forecast. When the forecast is wrong, the plan goes with it. There is a better way to plan.
WHAT THE AUDIENCE LEAVES WITH
01Why a single forecast is a weak basis for strategy, and what to use instead
02Four futures for your own market, and what each would ask of the business
03The decisions that hold up in every future, and the ones that can safely wait
Every plan rests on a picture of the future, usually an unexamined one in which the next five years look like the last five, only faster. That serves well enough until the year it does not. A new technology, a change in regulation or a shock in the market arrives, and a strategy built for one future has nothing to say about the one that turned up.
Futures thinking treats the future as conjecture rather than forecast. It does not ask what will happen. It asks what could happen, which of those futures are plausible, and which one the organisation would prefer to build towards. The method in this talk asks a leadership team to imagine several possible futures for its market, to take each one seriously, and then to name the future it would choose. For each one it explores what the business would need, what it would stop doing and what it would regret not having started.
The value is in what the possible futures have in common. Some decisions hold up in every future, such as the customers worth keeping, the capabilities worth building and the costs that make sense whatever happens. Those are the decisions to make now. The rest can wait for better information, and knowing the difference is what the session is for.
Dr Jackie Nagtegaal holds a PhD in futures studies and uses the method in running her own businesses. As a keynote she works through it on a question the audience recognises; as a workshop the leadership team applies it to its own strategy.
FORMATS
Keynote, 30 to 45 minutes
Half-day workshop for leadership teams
Strategy day session
SUITS
Founders, boards, leadership offsites, strategy days
SHAPED TO THE EVENT
Length, format and emphasis are agreed with each organiser.
ENQUIRIES
Bring this talk to your event
Every talk is shaped to the room and the event. Tell me about yours and I will come back to you with how this one could work.
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I speak on other subjects and prepare talks to fit the event, its audience and its theme. Tell me what you are planning.