Internet of Everything and Beyond: A Case Study on the Failure to do Proper Scenario Planning

This is about a train company in London that had to drastically reduce service due to the shortage of drivers. It was a practice of this company to rely on its full time drivers to work overtime to cover the schedules but fewer and fewer of its drivers are willing to do so. It takes a year to bring up a professional driver. Unless the company is willing to increase the overtime pay, there is no short term solution. The problem is that the company cannot afford to offer this increase. Case in point is that the company did not assume a worst case scenario or miscalculated the degree of worseness and complexity that it could become. The world changes continuously. If we try to predict the future based on previous happens and not understanding all the relevant impacting factors and changing elements that could create whole new scenarios, the prediction is not much different than guesswork (Kourdi, J., 2013).

Using the past as guide to the future had caught out numerous big companies such as General Motors, Woolworths, Kodak, Daewoo and many others. Not be on the lookout of the changing world around you and see no reason to change when in good times, the downfall silently lands on the business gradually and without fanfare. By the time it is recognized, it will be too late to turn around. Scenario planning is like a strategic conversation. It is not linear in nature. The planning is a continuous process. Looking and preparing for change is a constant. Jeremy Kourdi (2013) suggested that hiring an external company to do the scenario planning will avoid disruption to the business or cause tensions among the staff who may have agendas of their own. The goal is to challenge the conventional ideas and create new ones based on the changing circumstances and environment around you. Identify possible outcomes, the probability of each happening and the impact on the company. Think of ways to deal with each of them. It is not about prediction but to understand the future with all its complexities; what it takes to shape the future that is profitable to the company and how to get there as well as what are the internal and external forces that will support planning and innovation for change.

Case in point with the train company is that no one asked questions that would imply an answer such as I wish I had thought about these three years ago. When decision-makers of the company do not challenge the business-as-usual thinking and continuously engage in business and operational strategy debates, inertia occurs and the industry and the world will leave you behind. Scenario planning promotes the idea of learning from the past and preparing for the future. Forces involved in making this happen include steady awareness of the political, economic, societal and environmental changes and their relationships to the business. Analysis on any impact that they may cause should be taken into consideration with the full picture and use scenario planning as a tool to make an educated assessment and how best to deal with the potential negative outcomes before it occurs if possible. Avoid procrastination in dealing with less than profitable scenarios that are foreseen to come down the road.

A general technical challenge in defining the scope of the scenarios to be included in the planning cycles is instead of being passive observers; the opportunity to shape the future scenarios should not be missed. In the divergent-thinking phase of the planning process, the planners need to have open minded acceptance of each other’s insights and try to converge at a reasonable juncture. It is good practice to identify as many scenarios as possible and later on dismiss some that have a less chance of materializing. Draw the big picture to begin with all the divergent thinking ideas and find the most likely ones to target the planning on (Davis, P. et al, 2007).