Thirdeye Advantage's Future Navigation Process is based on Scenario Planning - typically used by large organisations to help them make predictions around different possible futures and to apply the thinking about these different possible futures to their planning processes. It helps you to recognise the full range and impact of critical events that might affect your organisation in the future - not just the risks traditionally considered in planning - but also thinking around how to create competitive advantage and opportunities from these events.
The Future Navigation Process will help you to consider different futures and how they might materialise. You can learn how to identify what sort of future is unfolding and think through what this could mean to your business. This is not just about risk management, but also about creating competitive advantage and opportunities from events which could be disastrous, but have been negated, and used to your advantage.
How does it work?
Traditionally, very large organisations employ outside specialists to run scenario planning projects. They carry out research, run workshops, use obscure tools to analyse the information they have gathered, develop lengthy reports and facilitate organisation wide communication programmes. It is a complex, mysterious, time consuming and expensive process. For most organisations this approach is not realistic or appropriate and the Future Navigation Process has been developed as a logical alternative. It applies the principles and key tools of scenario planning through a simplified process to enable you to undertake scenario planning inside your own organisations, generating results from limited preparation and a single internally facilitated workshop.
What are the benefits of the Future Navigation Process?
It provides you with all of the key features of the traditional approach (using the key principles and techniques to make predictions and apply them) in a simple, effective, low cost way that can be lead and controlled in-house. As a result you are better positioned to identify and exploit opportunities particular to you and to gain competitive advantage by responding to opportunities and threats more quickly and with better understanding.
How do I learn to use the Future Navigation Process?
The process is introduced through a one day workshop and the provision of supporting materials. The key elements of the workshop are:
- The purpose and principles of scenario planning.
- The Future Navigation Process and how to apply it.
- A confidence building "real world" workshop to confirm and fix understanding, rehearse practice and develop some useful futures.
- Think about how these futures could affect you and your organisation.