altMBA - Scenario Canvas
A scenario canvas forces you to test today's strategy against four different futures built from your two biggest uncertainties, so you are not just planning for the future you happen to expect.
Uncertainty on each axis crosses into four quadrants, each sketching a different version of tomorrow.
Reach for this when…
- You're committing to a plan based on one assumed future.
- The team keeps arguing about which trend will win, without naming the uncertainty underneath.
- You want people to think past next quarter without turning it into abstract futurism.
How to run it
- Frame the focal question: what decision are we actually testing?
- Name the two uncertainties that would change the answer most.
- Cross them to build four scenarios.
- Give each scenario a short, memorable name that captures its logic - a name people will still use in six months.
- Test the current strategy against each one in turn.
- Agree the actions you'd take regardless of which future arrives.
A worked example
Situation. Zhang Wei ran a freight brokerage, Jinjiang Cargo, out of Chengdu, China, and was about to sign a five-year lease on a bigger warehouse, betting on steady growth in road freight.
Applied. On the canvas, her two uncertainties were fuel price volatility and the pace of national rail freight investment. Crossed, they produced four futures, and in three of the four the warehouse bet looked shaky.
Result. She signed a two-year lease with an expansion option instead, and moved early into rail partnerships that the fourth scenario had flagged as the real threat.
The catch
The four scenarios are only as good as the two uncertainties chosen - pick the wrong axes and you get four elaborate but irrelevant stories. It also produces a plausible spread, not a forecast; treating any one quadrant as 'the plan' defeats the purpose.
If every scenario leads to the same action, you haven't found the real uncertainty yet.
Origin: Dale Williams, adapting the scenario planning method (Shell / Wack tradition)