Scenario models and strategy development

Let’s follow our theme of uncertainty and scenario planning a little further. Like our own Century, the 20th Century was birthed in volatility and spectacular innovation and soon descended into war.

Back then, flying was the rage, and Great Britain was the great sea power wanting to put the two together. The Royal Navy invented optical landing aids and angled decks for aircraft carriers, but what was the point of a ship that looked like an airport? The answer changed the face of warfare, and scenario planning got it going.

In 1923, for example, when no navy in the world had 9 carriers, a war game run at the US Naval War College at Newport, RI, pitted a fleet with 5 aircraft carriers against one with 4. Such wargames typically used dice to simulate chance, but even this primitive approach explored possible futures that included packing crazy numbers of aircraft onto a single ship and flying them unimaginable distances and back to base. Turned out, the fleet with more carriers had a colossal advantage – if you could pack enough planes onto the ships and stop them from falling out of the sky for long enough.

The findings were tested, not least at Coral Sea and Midway, and endured. This hybrid service – part airport, part ship – rewrote naval doctrine and transformed the naval workforce. However, the confidence to build such hybrids in the first place flowed from the scenario planning.

Healthcare this century is looking for breakthrough services and continues to experiment with hybrids: Polyclinics, ‘virtual wards’, GP practices as mini-hospitals, and Community diagnostic centres. But what might work best in the future health and care context?

The problem is that nobody yet knows what any hybrid could deliver, and even the best of both visions cannot identify which features are critical to any mission. For example, going back to aircraft carriers, it was a shock to Admirals to discover they had to promote flyers all the way to the top to make carriers work. It shocked one carrier captain to discover that keeping his aircraft below decks was a bad move, even though it gave his gunners a clear field of fire against marauding fighters. Until we know what we have to do, we are unlikely to have the courage to go for it or the will to develop new intuition.

Good scenario planning cannot answer all questions, but it can spot the important questions and fuel our confidence just enough to change healthcare for the better and for good.

Greater insights for leaders at our FREE webinar
 

Join us on 26th March, from 3 pm to 5 pm, when we will host a FREE webinar on Strategy in Complex Systems with collaborators Terry Young and Andrew Liles.
 

To register for this FREE webinar, please email office@tricordant.com. Feel free to extend this invitation to colleagues interested in this topic.
 

Video Interview

Tricordant Director Alastair Mitchell-Baker recently interviewed Richard Watson, Deputy Chief Executive and Director of Strategy and Transformation, at Suffolk and North East Essex ICB. To watch this interview, please click here.