I sometimes answer business-related questions on LinkedIn that can be addressed with the principles of improvisation. This is one in a series of responses that was deemed ‘Best Answer’ by the questioner…

THE QUESTION: I have to run a workshop for a top management team that has recently adopted a new highly matrixed structure. As a result, there is a challenging amount of interdependence and ambiguity. While they have an understanding of the structure, very little work has been done on how it will operationalize, what operationalizing it will mean etc.

One of the activities I want the group to undertake is a scenario building exercise where they will build potential scenarios that will arise in the future, and then based on the scenarios, evolve in advance, an appropriate response to the scenario.

I have never run a Scenario Building activity before. Would appreciate if you could share:

a. A process for how to run it
b. Tips/Techniques
c. Do’s/Don’ts
d. Any other advice/input

Thanks in advance!

Gurprriet Siingh

THE ANSWER: The ‘highly matrixed structure’ you describe, Gurprriet, is in fact one small subset of a much more complex environment in which this management team will perform — and that is the Networked World. Because of the fluid, incredibly complex nature of these networks-within-networks, it is both impractical and impossible to run scenarios that can accurately predict any particular outcome. By the time you have created the scenario, run the scenario, analyzed the outcomes, then ratified and codified the outcomes, the environment will have changed, rendering the results irrelevant and passe’. (more…)