Most companies have a strategy. Far fewer have a picture of the future. Alexander Friton, Managing Director of Qesar, explains that this is true of many companies in mechanical engineering, and that scenario thinking can close that gap.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
In two short conversations with the Futurewise Company, Alexander explains what scenarios add to strategy work. He also shares why developments that seemed merely plausible to him two years ago now feel very real.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Alexander is candid about where they started. For a long time, nobody really asked how industry, mechanical engineering and special-purpose machinery would evolve, or what role a partnership should play in that future. \u201cWe just didn\u2019t ask those questions.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Planning started from the present, with a horizon of three to five years at most. Nobody looked ten or twenty years ahead. \u201cIt may sound like a contradiction,\u201d he says, \u201cbut we work on strategy without really thinking about the future.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Carina St\u00f6ttner sums up the gap: strategy is derived from the here and now, or from the past, instead of being shaped by several possible futures. \u201cAnd that was what was missing.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
For Alexander, the first benefit of scenarios is clarity. \u201cFirst of all, it structures your thinking,\u201d he says. You\u2019re working with several options, each with its own set of conditions.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
That lets him see exactly where he stands. If these conditions hold, the future could look like this. If they change, or if he starts from different assumptions, it might look completely different.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The result is a set of three, four or five scenarios he can weigh side by side. Sometimes the answer turns out to be a combination of two, but that comes later. First he thinks each scenario through on its own, and only then decides whether his future matches one of them or a mix.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Only then comes the practical question: \u201cWhat does this mean for my company, for my strategy, for the company\u2019s future?\u201d For him, the benefit is twofold: he covers a whole range of possibilities, and he does so in a structured way.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Alexander connects this to what he sees happening around him. He remembers a chart Carina showed in one of her talks at Qesar on the fragmentation of the political landscape. Twenty years ago, things were fairly stable, with three or four parties. Today there are many more, and the results of the once-large and once-small parties are much closer together. That means more frequent changes of government, which is exactly what he\u2019s seeing now. Her point back then, that companies could no longer count on a steady political course and should take matters into their own hands, has increasingly become reality.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
He sees business owners doing exactly that and turning their focus inward. They concentrate on what they can control and shrug off the rest: \u201cIt\u2019s out of our hands anyway.\u201d The external conditions are still there, he says, but they matter less, \u201cor at least they\u2019ve lost some of their power to frustrate us.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
That\u2019s exactly why scenarios matter so much to him. Because external conditions are harder to predict than they used to be, companies need to ask what that means for the future and which scenarios might follow.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
When Carina raised this two years ago, it felt to him \u201cplausible, but not quite real yet.\u201d Today he says: \u201cOkay, this is real now. We\u2019re already there.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
A longer horizon doesn\u2019t mean waiting decades to find out whether you were right. Even with a long-term perspective, Alexander says, you can check after two years whether you\u2019re on track or need to adjust course a little.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
His advice to other leaders is clear: \u201cLook further into the future, and review more often to see whether it still fits.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
And what if things turn out completely differently? For him, that\u2019s part of it too: you have to learn to break out of familiar templates and patterns.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
For leaders rethinking their own approach, his experience offers three lessons:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Watch the full video here:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n