PG #70: Strategy in uncertain times

As strategists and designers, we trade in the future. Our entire industry is built around organisations seeing something wrong with their trajectory and looking for help to course-correct. Typically the time spans we work within are reasonably stable, but these days even the near-term is deeply uncertain.

Below are a few suggestions to help organisations plan during what are now known as these unprecedented times.

Rapidly generate future scenarios
Sharpen your strategic direction by imagining plausible but challenging events that might have an impact.

Begin first by defining the focal issue (this could be your sector, or even just one aspect of your organisation’s work), the timeframe you are planning for, and any relevant past events. From there, list out the driving forces in your sector, then analyse what critical uncertainties you will face within the timespan you’re looking at. Include a diversity of voices from across your business to co-design these scenarios, so you can make sure all the uncertainties are surfaced.

With that info, you can develop three or four plausible scenarios for the future, from which you can map out actions you can take today. These actions should be anti-fragile enough to succeed in all the scenarios. This will help you future-proof the plan you create.

Don’t just write business goals, write customer-oriented ‘impact goals’
Imagine the change you want to create in the world for others and use that as a way to design a work plan.

Bring together leaders from across the business and work together to reframe your business goals. Assess each goal, then flip it into a customer-oriented version of it. For example, a typical business goal might be ‘Increase market share’. Flipped into a customer-oriented impact goal, this could be something like ‘Help future customers gain access to (our service) so that they gain (benefit of the service)’.

Streamlining your daily, weekly and monthly work with a laser focus on impact will make decision-making in times of stress and uncertainty easier. It will allow you to drop away from the work that drains resources but isn’t creating the impact you want it to.

Operationalise your strategy
Strategy requires real-world actions to bring it to life. With your impact goals written, work with your team members who are on the ground to assign metrics, write detailed actions that will achieve the goal, and a time frame for each one. Stress test these impact goals against the different scenarios you imagined before – what do you need to change so they still work well in the future scenarios?

If you and your business have found any other great ways of tackling planning for the future – or you’d like to chat about the challenges you’re facing – I’d love to hear from you. Please feel free to get in touch via LinkedIn!