Today's business environment grows more volatile and less predictable every day. A forecast of the future is no longer reliable for planning and strategy development. The ability of an organisation to survive and prosper in such an environment now depends on the skills of its leaders to lead and to enhance the learning and the adaptive capacities of the organisation.

Scenario Thinking is a technique that provides the tools to anticipate the important external dynamics that will shape the future. These dynamics are the input for scenarios. Scenarios are a set of plausible, relevant and challenging stories about the future. In contrast with forecasts, which attempt to predict one "official" future, scenario thinking leads to a portfolio of several plausible futures.

Good scenarios do not predict the future accurately, but enable an organisation and its leadership to learn, prepare for the future and make better decisions today. Building scenarios is an ongoing process that provides competitive advantages now and in the future.

The organisation's strategy can now be tested for robustness in all plausible futures. Blind spots and incorrect assumptions can be reduced and new strategic options can be generated. Example: does the current management development program focus on the right skills considering all scenarios?
 

CIL teaches executives to look at the future from a scenario perspective. Furthermore we assist organisations and their leaders in the scenario building process. Scenario Thinking and building is however a dynamic process. To sustain the scenario process CIL is dedicated to building this scenario thinking capacity inside the client organisation. Naturally we offer our services in a form that best suits the client, i.e. consulting, (in-company) workshops, public courses or train the trainer sessions.