Clem Sunter Scenarios
Sunter's High Road / Low Road method builds two contrasting futures and a short list of observable flags, so an organisation can commit to watching for signals instead of guessing which future is coming.
Two roads run out from today - one climbing, one falling - and a short list of flags shows which one you're actually on.
Reach for this when…
- A big, hard-to-reverse investment decision depends on an uncertain external factor.
- Leadership disagrees about which future is coming and the argument is going nowhere.
- You need a shared way to talk about risk without pretending to predict it.
How to run it
- Set the planning horizon and the key uncertainty.
- Build the High Road scenario - the positive trajectory.
- Build the Low Road scenario - the negative trajectory.
- Identify the flags: observable signals of which road is unfolding.
- Develop contingent strategies for each road.
- Monitor the flags on a regular cycle.
A worked example
Situation. Marek Nowak's dairy co-op in Krakow, Poland, was deciding whether to commit to a large export infrastructure investment against uncertain global trade tension.
Applied. The co-op built a High Road (trade stays open, prices hold) and a Low Road (tariffs rise, prices crash), then agreed two flags: a specific trade negotiation outcome and a currency threshold.
Result. They held off the biggest spend until the High Road flags confirmed. Six months later a Low Road flag tripped instead, and the co-op had avoided the exposure entirely.
The catch
Two roads flatten what's usually a wider spread of possible futures into a binary, which is easier to discuss but can miss the scenario that actually happens. And flags only work if someone is actually assigned to watch them - most organisations build the scenarios once and never check the flags again.
A flag nobody is responsible for monitoring is not a flag, it's a slide from the workshop.
Origin: Clem Sunter