How do you plan for something you can't predict? Strategist Lance Mortlock demonstrates how scenariolanning can help identify risks and expose vulnerabilities. Listen in for practical steps so that projectmanagers can be better prepared by strategically incorporating scenario planning into project planning.

Table of Contents

02:04 … Writing the Book: Disaster Proof03:41 … What is Scenario Planning?07:09 … Examples of Scenario Planning Implementation11:37 … Essential Questions for Scenario Planning11:45 … Step 1: Defining Scope14:38 … Step 2: Explore Environment16:32 … PESTEL18:16 … Porter’s Five Forces21:25 … Step 3: Analyze Trends, Risks, and Uncertainties22:21 … Step 4: Build Scenarios and Signposts24:45 … Storytelling27:05 … Step 5: Confirm Scenarios and Stress Test29:41 … Step 6: Monitor Signposts and Execute Strategies31:40 … Applying AI in Scenario Planning35:04 … Connect with Lance36:27 … Closing

LANCE MORTLOCK:  With storytelling, we talked earlier about how project managers take their discipline to the next level.  There’s the basics of what’s expected.  But the truly great project manager leaders again are using the different tools out there like scenarios, like the power of storytelling, to create a more compelling vision of what the future could look like.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and with me in the studio is Bill Yates.  I just want to thank our listeners who have reached out to us and leave comments on our website or social media.  We always like hearing from you. We appreciate your positive ratings on Apple Podcast or whichever podcast listening app you use.

So today we’re talking with Lance Mortlock.  Lance is a senior strategy partner with Ernst & Young. And he’s provided management consulting services on over 150 projects, to more than 60 clients in 11 countries.  The topic of our conversation today is based on his book, “Disaster Proof:  Scenario Planning for Post-Pandemic Future”.  And Bill and I both really enjoyed reading this book.  This was very interesting, talking about how you plan for something you can’t predict.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, yeah, the uncertainty.  None of us project managers like uncertainty.  Yeah, Lance has written a brilliant book.  Okay, this is not basic project management stuff.  This is taking it to another level.  Lance’s explanation of scenario planning is spot-on.  The six steps he’s going to talk through with us are so practical and I think will resonate with the listeners.  These are some practical steps that we can use as we look at those tough questions that sponsors and customers come to us where they want us to look in the crystal ball and predict the future.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Lance, welcome to Manage This.  We are so grateful to you for being our guest today.

LANCE MORTLOCK:  Thanks for having me.  Looking forward to it.

Writing the Book: Disaster Proof

WENDY GROUNDS:  We’re talking about your book, “Disaster Proof:  Scenario Planning for Post-Pandemic Future”.  And my question is, did you already have this book in the works prior to 2020?  Did you write it as the pandemic emerged, or were you already on this project?

LANCE MORTLOCK:  I have been writing for quite a bit in a more serious way and professionally for about 10 years. You know, ever since I joined Ernst & Young.  And I’ve been writing over the years about resilience, business resilience, around continuous improvement, different topics around strategy and integrated planning.  And really in, I guess, two years ago I started to think, well, I’ve done all this writing.  I’ve explored all these topics.  There’s a tremendous opportunity to kind of bring these topics together in an integrated way.  So I started to think about that and work on that two years ago.

And then I would say a year ago, when we got hit with COVID, it really came to light for me that future thinking in organizations is just so important.  And so while the book is positioned and framed around this post-pandemic future and positioned around COVID, that’s certainly not the primary emphasis.  It’s much broader than that.  So it’s been a multiyear journey, and really a two-year journey specifically writing the book; and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, you know. Particularly in the last year, getting it over the line, which I finally did.

What is Scenario Planning?

BILL YATES:  The timing is just amazing to me.  I laugh when I look at Chapter 1, page 1.  You make reference to what’s called Event 201. A macro-level scenario-planning exercise where they simulated an outbreak of a coronavirus transmitted similar to what we hit just months later.  So we look at scenario planning; and we look at, oh, well, is it really worth the investment?  Is it applicable?  And right off the bat, you know, you give us a prime example of something that would have given us better preparation. And given us more insight into how to respond to this pandemic.

LANCE MORTLOCK:  It’s quite amazing, actually.  When you dig into Event 201, when you dig into some of the work that CCIS was doing in the U.S., like there were international experts around the world warning us, using scenario thinking, that we’re going to get hit by a global pandemic.  And it happened.  And we ignored them.  We didn’t learn from our environment, learn from our stakeholders.  We chose to, by all intents and purposes, ignore the experts.  And we’re dealing with the consequences right now, socially and economically.

BILL YATES:  Well, let’s step back.  Scenario planning.  Give us a definition of “scenario planning.”

LANCE MORTLOCK:  At its basic level, it really is about thinking through multiple futures.  So it’s not looking at one future and trying to predict the future because that’s forecasting.  And project managers would do that all the time and say, I’m going to forecast the budget, the spend on my project.  I’m going to forecast the results that I’m going to deliver and the benefits that I’m going to realize.

Scenario planning, which can be applied, by the way, and I have applied it in project management situations, is more about what are the multiple futures that can play out?  What do those futures look like?  And it helps leaders at different levels in organizations and in society deal with complexity and uncertainty.  It’s about envisaging those different futures, stretching mental models beyond what’s comfortable and normal to say, now, what happens if this worst-case situation occurs, or this best-case situation?  How would we react and adapt?  And it’s about monitoring the signals in the big bad world to say, okay, if that signal starts to show signs of X, Y, and Z, what would we do to kind of respond to that?  So I think of it as a methodology that helps with imagination around different futures at its basic level.

BILL YATES:  Your book really pushed me to think next level, to do strategic thinking.  To your point, scenario planning is not forecasting.  Forecasting is, okay, let’s try to predict the future.  This is big-time what-if analysis.  So if I think about a project manager listening to our podcast, maybe they don’t think about scenario planning day-to-day in their project.  But as they aspire to grow in their career, they need to have awareness of this and think about, okay, how can I understand and embrace scenario planning. Because it could really help take me to the next level in my career.  So appreciate you drawing a line between forecasting, which is a regular part of project management, and scenario planning, which has a lot of potential for project managers.

Examples of Scenario Planning Implementation

WENDY GROUNDS:  Would you have an example that you could share with us?  Maybe one or two examples of companies that have used scenario planning and successfully implemented it?

LANCE MORTLOCK:  Yeah, there’s lots of examples in the book.  And that was definitely the approach I tried to take is, yeah, there’s the theory, but what about the practice?  And so I tried to bring that to life in the book in terms of the practice.

One of the examples that I think hopefully will resonate with your audience is, as part of my day job as a partner in a professional services company, 90% of my time is delivering complex change as a consultant on projects with different clients.  And so I was working on a project with a municipality with a big city, and we were focused on helping this organization reduce costs.  So it was kind of your classic cost-reduction, cost-management project.  And I was the overall lead from a consulting perspective. I had a team of great professionals from EY and a great team from the client, and we were working together on this big program, trying to take out significant costs.

So really, really tough, tough environment to do that because you’re always trying to balance in the public sector that you want to reduce costs, but services to citizens need to stay the same.  And so as we were kind of working through the program, it struck me that we got to a moment in the program where we had a target of cost reduction that we were trying to achieve, but there were risks that we were trying to manage as a project management, project leadership group. 

And what I suggested and what we ended up doing was saying, let’s play out different scenarios in terms of the way this project is going to unfold.  So best-case situation is we hit the target of cost reduction, and we’re good to go.  So job done.  Worst-case is we’re significantly lower, and we actually put numbers behind that.  And then medium case is we’re somewhat lower.

So we started to paint these pictures of different futures for the program and the project that we were trying to drive.  And then we had a dialogue as a leadership team to say, okay, if the worst-case situation does play out,