Meeting Agenda

12:00 pm – 1:00 pm, Odd Fellows Hall (100 6th Ave SW, Calgary, 4th Floor Ballroom) 

Please bring your own lunch

The Strategy Challenge

Speakers

Kent Burkholder, Decision Frameworks

Abstract 

Hindsight is 20-20. Looking back, humans tie events together to tell a story to make sense of it. Place yourself at the start of those events and they often remain very difficult to forecast. Think to these few examples. 

·        Very few anticipated the 2008 financial crisis and, though we now feel that we understand the dynamics that caused it, we are not able to predict the next downturn.

·        The Keystone XL has been mired in delays far longer than anyone would have ever envisioned when the project was first proposed.

·        The dialogue around climate change dominates the news feeds where it received only passing mention ten years ago.

After a significant change, it is human nature to accept the resulting world as the stable new normal and use it to set our strategies going forward. The price versus time plot below shows this. The historical data shows a relatively steady price decline of about 80%. The forecast data in no way predicts this to continue. The range of the forecasts, from high to low, is particularly narrow, considering the trend that precedes them.

This is quite typical and, when we plot our past forecasts against reality, we tend to project the same trends going forward, as shown below:

Placing yourself back at the start of the plot, how would the forecasts in green help you to prepare your business for the upcoming price drop?

Scenario Thinking expands your strategy conversation to enlighten your management team to these blind spots. In it, we envision different possible future worlds and use these to build a business strategy that is more flexible and resilient to the uncertain future ahead. Scenarios are possible stories about the future, not forecasts, and we use them to enrich the strategy conversation.

RSVP through this google calendar invite: