INDUSTRY, GLOBAL, AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEVELS SCENARIO PLANNING

Phuoc D. Nguyen

Industry, global, and organizational level scenario planning aims to reach long-term strategic vision and goals; while process, team, and individual levels scenario planning aims to reach short-term strategic objectives and decisions. “Rummler and Brache’s nine performance variables include organizational goals, process goals, job goals, organization design, process design, job design, organization management, process management, and job management. Additionally, he presented Swanson’s performance diagnosis matrix. The critical variables in Swanson’s matrix are mission/goal, system design, capacity, motivation, and expertise.” (Chermack, 2011, Loc. 2168). “These synthesis tools are particularly helpful in cases with a history of ongoing scenario planning or other change initiatives… these tools are intended to assess overall organizational viability, which fits well with scenario projects aimed at organizational learning, or the continuous quality improvement of anticipatory and strategic thinking inside the organization.” (Chermack, 2011, Loc. 2176). Based on vision-driven scenarios leaders establish organization goals, process managers establish process objectives, and team leaders establish job targets for team members. Based on organization goals process managers establish process objectives, and based on process objectives team leaders establish job targets. Based on organizational goals leaders will implement an appropriate organizational design to reach the vision and achieve organizational goals. Based on process objectives process managers will implement appropriate process designs to achieve process objectives in the interaction between processes in the whole management system. Based on job targets the team leader will implement appropriate job designs to achieve job targets. Organization management, process management, and job management are a ‘management value chain’ bottom-up approach from job management, process management, and organizational management respectively. Compare Rummler and Brache’s nine performance variables with Swanson’s matrix are mission/goal, system design, capacity, motivation, and expertise that we can integrate mission/goal into organization goals, process objectives, and job targets; integrates system design and capacity into the organizational design, process design, and job design because capacity is the outcome of designs; integrates motivation, and expertise into organizational management, process management, and job management.

Moretto (2012) suggests a conceptual framework and indicates the interaction between high-velocity environments, decision-making, decision-driven scenarios, and decision confidence. He concludes “Decision scenarios helped the leaders feel more comfortable and have more confidence in their decision.” (p. 115). In high-velocity environments that vision-driven scenario is not enough to conduct scenario planning just it alone, it needs to be combined with a decision-driven scenario because of the use and integration of Rummler and Brache’s nine performance variables and Swanson’s matrix to diagnose problems of organization, process, and job and support decision-driven scenario planning aims to help decision making and create decision confidence.

Courtney (2003) proposes “Decision-driven scenarios are used to inform a well-specified strategic choice – a choice where the ‘best’ option is unclear due to uncertainty over the impact of that choice… Decision-makers face Level 2 of uncertainty when they can define a limited set of possible future outcomes, one of which will occur, and when the best strategy to follow depends on which outcome ultimately occurs.” (pp. 14-17). Courtney (2003) classified four levels of uncertainty, but he indicates level 2 of uncertainty which best suits decision-driven scenarios. Process, team, and individual level scenario planning depends on organization goals, process objectives, and job targets which are expected and achieved possible future outcomes, but outcome ultimately occurs when levels of uncertainty of scenarios are defined; while specified strategic choice depends on decision confidence.