Scenarios for Improvisation: Long Range Planning Redeemed

Abstract

Planning has been proclaimed dead over and over. Chaos and disorganization have been advocated as the new way of managing. Nonetheless, managers have yet to adopt these techniques and complexity theory tell us that if they do, their organization will be just as unbalanced and unfit as they are today. Complex environments call for both planning and creativity. In this article we propose a method for tackling this challenge, improvisational scenario planning, that relies on an organizational and a process infrastructure that, when aligned, create an action infrastructure that allows organizations to plan in real-time, as events and action unfold.