QUOTATION 67

JAMES YORKE ON THE NEED FOR A PLAN B

Use this to remind you that you always need a back-up plan, or two!

James Yorke (b. 1941) was a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Maryland until he retired in 2013. He was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences, US & Canada, in 1980 for his work on chaos theory.

Chaos theory shows how apparently minor events can develop into significant crises. That is why Yorke suggested that:

The most successful people are those with a plan B.

James Yorke

Scenario analysis can improve the planning process by identifying the effect that key variables may have on the organisation in the short and medium term and developing a series of strategies to deal with them should they occur.

WHAT TO DO

  • Appoint an experienced external facilitator to help you run the scenario workshops. It is essential that they be willing to challenge the pre-conceived ideas that you and your staff hold.
  • Working with the facilitator, select about six people (three in small organisations) who have imagination and an understanding of the changing environment that the organisation operates in. At least one of the team needs to be a technology expert.
  • Brief the team on the aims of the exercise. Specify the variables that you particularly wish to explore, e.g. inflation rates, leaving the European Union, rejoining the EU!
  • Don’t try to look too far into the future. As previously indicated, anything over three years is about as accurate as an astrological chart.
  • Working alone, ask every member of the team to prepare a list of the issues that they see arising from the variables given. Allow people to add new variables to their list. Give them about a week to think about their list and to briefly write up their ideas.
  • Circulate each person’s report to every member of the team in advance. At the meeting, allow for between 30 and 60 minutes to discuss each submission. If you want everyone to say what they are thinking, including seemingly daft ideas, avoid criticism of ideas at this stage. Analyse the ideas discussed using risk and cost as descriptors Vis:
High risk/Low cost
  • Clearly, it’s not worth working up strategies for low risk/low cost or high risk/low cost scenarios. Concentrate your efforts on low risk/high cost and high risk/high cost. If any issue in these two categories has a 30 per cent chance or more of occurring, you need to determine a strategy for how to deal with it.
  • It’s very likely that a single strategy will address several scenarios. It is these strategies that you should work up in greatest detail as they are the most likely to be used in practice.
  • For each scenario, develop a best and worst case scenario and one midpoint between those.
  • Report your finding to senior management/board and get their approval for your recommendations. This will save time if you have to implement one or more strategies in the future.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

  • Given a free hand, who in the organisation would I like on the scenario team?
  • Is there anyone in the organisation I can appoint as facilitator or do I need to go outside for the right person?
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