Analytical tools such as SWOT are great for looking at strengths and weaknesses in the short term, but they can constrain our thinking when it comes to what ‘might’ happen. A technique known as ‘scenario planning’ is a great strategic tool for making flexible long-term plans.

Scenarios are alternate future views. They help to identify significant events and what drives them, and they provide different perspectives on how the world works. Building them can help us to see how we might face the future.

The winners

In business, especially one like pharmacy, we can’t have our heads buried in the sand. The winners will be those who make the right strategic decisions at the right time. Eastman Kodak realised too late that it was in the image business, not the camera film business. Blockbuster collapsed as DVDs by post took hold. By contrast, its conqueror Netflix saw streaming coming and has remained a market leader.

Scenario planning can help make a strategy redundant far earlier in a business life cycle. It helps us to think the unthinkable – what might occur that could sink our ship. Scenario planning is a great strategic tool that can also help us make the right strategic decision at the right time.

One preferred method has five stages:

• Scoping: What question or issue do you want to address?
• Trend analysis: What external forces are at play and what pressure do they exert?
• Building scenarios: Using the outcomes from stages one and two, building ‘optimistic’ and ‘pessimistic’ scenarios
• Testing options: Identifying and discussing the potential implications and impacts of the two scenarios
• Action planning: Defining an action plan, taking into account the issues identified.

Scenarios are best planned in groups, involving people with different mindsets. Try this in your team – you might be surprised by their insights. Scenarios are not forecasts and should be wide enough in scope; don’t forget global aspects. What Google or Facebook invent next will affect people’s shopping and lifestyle habits here in the UK sooner than we think. Technology has an unbelievably wide reach.

Let’s use the pandemic as the base example.

The real winners will be those who scenario plan and make the right strategic decisions at the right time