Business Planning for Turbulent Times

Book excerpt: The world is increasingly turbulent and complex, awash with disruptions, tipping points and knock-on effects. These range from the impacts of warfare in the Middle East on energy futures, investment and global currencies to the vast and unpredictable impacts of climate change. All this threatens established strategic planning methods.This book is for business and organizational leaders who want and need to think through how best to deal with increasing turbulence, and with the complexity and uncertainty that come with it. The authors explain in clear language how future orientation and, specifically, modern scenario techniques help to address these conditions. They draw on examples from a wide variety of international settings and circumstances including large corporations, inter-governmental organizations, small firms and municipalities. Readers will be inspired to try out scenario approaches themselves to better address the turbulence that affects them and others with whom they work, live and do business. A key feature of the book is the exchange of insights across the academic-practitioner divide. Scholars of scenario thinking and organizational environments will appreciate the authors' conceptual and methodological advances. What has previously remained jargon only accessible to the highest level of corporate and government futures planners here becomes comprehensible to a wider business and practitioner community.