The document discusses how complexity, volatility, uncertainty, and ambiguity are challenging executives and companies. It presents scenario planning as a strategic mindset that can help organizations embrace uncertainty and see beyond short-term predictions by developing realistic alternative futures. Scenario planning works by starting with a question, gathering information, identifying key drivers of change, and composing different plots or scenarios to explore implications. This allows companies to connect dots between current decisions and uncertain future events. The document also advocates for more agile and adaptive strategies that embrace change, take incremental steps, acknowledge risk, continually immerse in markets, and maintain organizational alignment.

1. Complex
Games
CMO Conference 2012
Patrick Collings
Sagacite

2. & strategy

3. 52%
feel unprepared for complexity
57%
feel unprepared for decreasing
brand loyalty
56% 71%
feel unprepared for growth opportunities
feel unprepared for data explosion
68% 73%
feel unprepared for social media
of CEOs believe CMOs lack business credibility

4. “Marketing as a function is in some
danger of being marginalized”
- Donald Lehmann, Executive Director of
Marketing Science Institute

5. strategy, finance, information technology marketing

6. my view on brands and brand strategy

7. organisation

8. Offering
Procurement
Production
Staffing
Financing
Sales Channels
Packaging
Marketing Communication
etc

9. ...and if they were bic pens

10. organisation

11. therefore...

12. brand strategy
equals
business strategy

13. Complex
Games

14. By Toni Verdú Carbó

15. agenda
VUCA
Management Thinking
Scenario Planning
Agile | Adaptive

16. VUCA

17. the world is facing increased
turbulence over the next decade and
beyond caused by leadership change
in emerging markets, major policy
shifts by governments, increased
armed conflict, interlinked economies,
budget cuts by local and national
government
Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World
released by the National Intelligence Council

19. economic hardships continue and expand
by alex e proimos

20. VUCA has not just
impacted on
countries
photo by Beacon Radio

21. volatility, uncertainity, complexity
and ambiguity are also keeping
executives awake at night
image by Herr Kaczmarek

24. Photo by Eduardo Zarate

26. these challenges are faced with strategic
mindsets that are often defined as...

28. Photo by Alex E Proimos

29. photo by paul watson

31. photo by SomeDriftwood

32. strategy is a journey
not a destination
image by alice popkorn

33. constant motion
image by hans hamburger

34. E X P A N D
Y O U R
V I E W
photo by jef safi

35. embrace and plan for uncertainity
photo by martino

36. “Giving up the illusion that you can predict
the future is a very liberating moment. All
you can do is to give yourself the capacity
to respond to the only certainty in life -
which is uncertainty. The creation of that
capability is the purpose of strategy”
Lord John Browne, former CEO BP

37. time to approach with fresh
eyes and a new mindset
by maessive

38. return of scenario planning

40. photo by Templar1307
Roots in WW II military planning

42. scenario planning’s
most famous hour

43. approaches
Royal Dutch/Shell & Global Business Network
The French School
The Futures Group
Wilson and Ralston
Lindgren and Bandhold
Reference scenarios
Decision Strategies International
Procedural scenarios
Industry scenarios
Performance-based scenarios

44. Start with a question
Isolate the relevant decisions that need to be made
Gather the information
Focus on the question but not at the detriment of the unexpected and
look for disconfirming evidence
Identify the drivers
Identify the driving forces that influence the outcome of events
Composing the plots
Build plots that look at different, realistic outcome of the drivers /
information and their implications

45. scenarios give
us realistic
alternative
futures
image by assbach

46. allow us to see
beyond the headlights
photo by victor cavazzoni

47. uncertainty
forecast scenarios hope
now distance into the future

48. and avoid panic when the
future deals us a bad hand
image by luna di rimmel

49. help connects
the dots
picture by gato-gato-gato

50. relaxation of monetary
banking policy keeping
regulations interest rates
low
consumer’s
limited
financial
instruments knowledge
that shifted risk
off balance
sheets
evaporation 2008
of reasonable
credit Financial
standards
Meltdown

51. Photo by Stuart Chalmers

52. agile | adaptive strategies

54. 8
in no particular order

55. #1
embrace change

56. #2
take incremental steps

57. #3
keep looping

58. #4
acknowledge risk

59. #5
work with portfolios

60. #6
continual market immersion

61. #7
budget with insight and flexibility

62. #8
top down organizational alignment

63. Ordnung braucht nur
der dumme ein genie
beherrscht das chaos

64. Order is needed only
by fools, the genius
controls the chaos