EDO 816 Module 5 Anticipating Change and Scenario Planning Example

Four Colleges in 2032: A Scenario Planning Exercise That Tests Strategy Against Futures Nobody Can Predict

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Doctor of Education Program, Aspen University

EDO 816: Leading in Highly Uncertain and Rapidly Changing Environments

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Month Day, Year

Four Colleges in 2032: A Scenario Planning Exercise That Tests Strategy Against Futures Nobody Can Predict

Halden College's five-year plan, adopted in 2024, rests on a single forecast: enrollment will fall about 1% a year, and modest cost cuts will balance the budget. Module 1 showed that the college faces several different kinds of uncertainty, and a single forecast cannot capture them. This paper uses scenario planning to describe four plausible futures for Halden in 2032 and to test the college's main strategic options against all of them. Halden, its planning group and these futures are fictional.

Why Not Simply Forecast?

Schoemaker (1993) examined the conceptual and behavioral foundations of developing multiple scenarios. He argued that people facing uncertainty tend to be overconfident, anchoring on a single view of the future and setting ranges around their estimates that are far too narrow. In a series of experiments, he found that participants who constructed scenarios before making estimates widened their confidence ranges, a correction to overconfidence, and that scenarios helped them consider a broader set of factors. Scenarios work, he suggested, not by predicting the future but by changing how people think about it.

The Method and Its Schools

Bradfield et al. (2005) traced the origins and evolution of scenario techniques. They identified three main schools. The intuitive logics school, associated with Royal Dutch Shell's planning group, builds a small number of qualitative stories from driving forces and key uncertainties, aiming to change managers' mental models. The probabilistic modified trends school uses quantitative methods to adjust extrapolated trends for the probability of future events. The French school of la prospective combines both and emphasizes desirable futures and policy. They noted that the field had grown with little agreement on definitions or methods. This exercise follows the intuitive logics school, which fits an organization with limited data and a need to change leaders' assumptions.

Driving Forces

The planning group, eight members of the president's cabinet and faculty senate, listed eleven driving forces and sorted them.

Four Scenarios

In Public Lift, a state program expands grants for students at private colleges and family preferences for residential study hold steady. In Steady Shores, preferences hold but federal and state aid shrink, families become more price-sensitive and discount rates rise. In Last Ones Standing, demand for residential study falls as more students choose online or local options, but public money supports the colleges that remain after a wave of closures. In Lean Years, both fall together, and Halden faces the steepest decline.

An Extreme Case

Wright and Goodwin (2009) argued that standard scenario methods may fail to anticipate rare, high-impact events, because groups building scenarios gravitate toward familiar driving forces and plausible combinations. They proposed enhancements, including deliberately constructing extreme scenarios, reasoning backward from surprising outcomes and evaluating strategic options more systematically. Following their advice, the group added a stress case outside the matrix: the merger of Halden's two largest feeder school districts into a regional district that partners exclusively with a public university, cutting Halden's applicant pool by a fifth in one year.

Testing Strategic Options

The test changes the conversation. The residence hall renovation, the largest item in the current plan, pays off only if residential demand holds and financing grows. The adult program and the shared services partnership help in every scenario, including the stress case. The tuition reset depends on which future arrives. A robust strategy would pursue the adult program and partnership now, phase the renovation so it can stop after the first building, and prepare the tuition reset as a contingent option.

What the Planning Group Learned

The exercise changed the group as much as the plan. The chief financial officer, who had built the original forecast, said afterward that he had never asked what would make it wrong. Faculty members, who had assumed the residence hall project was settled, saw for the first time how much it depended on one future. And the admissions director, who had argued for the tuition reset for two years, accepted that it was a bet worth preparing rather than a certainty worth making now. These shifts in thinking are what Schoemaker and the intuitive logics tradition aim for: not a correct prediction, but leaders who hold their assumptions more loosely and notice sooner when the world departs from them.

Signposts

The group set seven signposts with thresholds: regional high school graduation counts below projections for two years; application volume from residential students down more than 10% in a year; the state grant program's budget in each session; federal aid policy changes affecting private colleges; announced closures or mergers within one hundred miles; adult enrollment in regional programs; and the feeder districts' consolidation discussions. Each is reviewed every fall, and crossing two thresholds for the same scenario triggers a cabinet review of the plan.

Conclusion

A single forecast hid the futures Halden might face. Schoemaker shows that building scenarios counters overconfidence, Bradfield and colleagues place this exercise in the intuitive logics tradition and Wright and Goodwin justify adding an extreme case. Testing options across four scenarios and a stress case shows that an adult degree program and a services partnership are robust, while the planned renovation is a bet on one future, and signposts tell leaders which future is arriving.

References

Bradfield, R., Wright, G., Burt, G., Cairns, G., & Van Der Heijden, K. (2005). The origins and evolution of scenario techniques in long range business planning. Futures, 37(8), 795-812. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2005.01.003

Schoemaker, P. J. H. (1993). Multiple scenario development: Its conceptual and behavioral foundation. Strategic Management Journal, 14(3), 193-213. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.4250140304

Wright, G., & Goodwin, P. (2009). Decision making and planning under low levels of predictability: Enhancing the scenario method. International Journal of Forecasting, 25(4), 813-825. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijforecast.2009.05.019