Duignan’s What-If Planning D-WIP
Almost all organisations are now working in a hyper-dynamic, poly-crisis environment. We need a new fit-for-purpose planning approach for the current age.
Traditional planning
Traditional strategic planning is based on working in an environment where change took place over years, if not decades. Information was collected on the current situation and possible future trends. Strategic options were considered and a single course of action was selected for the particular organisation to pursue during the next implementation period. Longer-term planning was often for periods of five years, and annual plans were developed within the general strategic pathway set by such planning. This made sense at that time because it was possible to determine a most likely future pathway. There was the option for course correction and this was usually conceptualised as risk management around the implementation of a strategic plan.
We now live in a radically different world
We no longer live in that world. The extremely fluid operating environment which many organisations now find themselves working in needs a new planning paradigm. This new requirement is being embodied within project planning and implementation approaches such as Agile planning and within that in specific techniques such as Scrum. These methods provide ways of quickly producing project deliverables. The philosophy of these approaches is short-term planning and quick action in short bursts. This is combined with a rapid response to feedback and changes in one’s operating environment. As a result of this these planning techniques naturally tend to be focused on action in short time-frames.
Complement Agile with longer-term ‘What-If Planning’
Agile and similar methodologies need to be complemented with a planning approach that has a longer planning horizon if we want to avoid zigzagging along a pathway of extreme short-termism. The problem when trying to think about the longer-term is that traditional strategic planning’s attempt to discern a single most likely path forward will not work any more given the dynamic and poly-crisis environment in which we are now operating. What-If Planning picks up on an alternative and less utilised strand in planning in the past - scenario planning. What-If Planning does not attempt to define only one single most likely future. Rather it defines a set of What-If possibilities (‘What-Ifs’) that may conceivably come to pass in the future. You develop strategies for these and then develop Switch Indicators that are used to determine which one or more What-Ifs you are counting on as being most probably in the current planning period.
Key steps in What-If Planning (D-WIP)
Identify a set of alternative What-Ifs.
Describe in detail what each of these possibilities will look like. If wished, you can do this by drawing a strategy diagram capturing details of each What-If.
Develop strategies you can use if you are having to deal with each What-If and identify strategies that could apply to more than one What-If (these can be particularly useful strategies because they can be used under a number of different What-Ifs).
Where decision making is going to have to take place under tight time frames for certain What-Ifs, further work can be done on firming up decision making for sub-parts of the strategy diagram in the event that the What-If possibility occurs.
If possible, develop rough estimates of the probability of the different What-Ifs occurring. This can help guide how much resource to spend on working-up the details (or strategy diagrams) for particular What-If possibilities.
Identify Switch Indicators. These are indictors that, if they occur, will lead to you changing the most likely What-If to another one or more different ones.
Given what information you have, settle one one or more current most likely What-Ifs based on what your indictors are telling you at the current time.
Put in place a monitoring and decision regime to monitor the Switch Indicators and delegate a group that has the responsibility to decide when a Switch Indicator has turned positive and it is time to move to one or more other most likely What-Ifs for the next planning period.
Implement the strategies that are most relevant to the current What-Ifs that are in play.
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Copyright Dr Paul Duignan 2013-2023.