Why would anyone suggest abandoning scenario work right now when uncertainty is greater than ever?

Speaking recently with Kauppalehti, Finland’s leading independent financial newspaper, Karen Harris, Managing Director of Macro Trends at Bain & Company, argued against using scenario work, claiming that today’s world is simply too uncertain for it to be useful. It is a surprising claim, because uncertainty is exactly why we need scenario planning. Scenario work is built for times when the future is foggy, the path ahead unclear, and the stakes are high – in other words, right now.

A forecast is not a scenario

Look closer at Bain’s approach, and it becomes clear that what they are doing is not really scenario work. Harris describes a process that builds a single base case and flexes it up and down by roughly 20 percent. That is forecasting, not scenario planning.

Forecasts can not handle deep uncertainty. They are built on probabilities, not possibilities. When those probabilities fall apart, Bain assumes scenario work has failed, when in fact, they never practiced it in the first place.

Real scenario work thinks differently

True scenario work was born from the need to escape the forecasting mindset, exactly the kind of thinking Bain represents. Instead of “ticking boxes in a dimly lit room using questionable methods and average ideas”, scenario planning was designed to open new perspectives and challenge entrenched assumptions. The pioneers of scenario work – including Herman Kahn, Pierre Wack, Shell, SRI International, and GBN – set clear principles from the start: scenarios should never be based on probabilities. Scenarios describe what is possible, not what is probable. So what does that mean today?

• Scenarios represent possible worlds, not probable ones.
• All scenarios are treated as equally possible, to ensure balanced consideration.
• The goal is not to predict the most likely future, but to understand how different futures could shape our choices today.

Scenario thinking frees organisations from the illusion of certainty. It helps leaders prepare for genuine uncertainty, structural change, and unexpected disruption. Forecasts, on the other hand, lean on trends and historical data and therefore miss the real shifts and inflection points that change the game.

Questions before answers

The path from scenario thinking to forecasting is paved with probabilities. Once we start talking about the “likelihood” of future events, we have already left the world of scenarios behind. Scenarios help us ask the right questions. Forecasts chase the right answers. Strategy often fails because leaders rush to seek answers before defining the right questions.

Harris is right about one thing: the external environment matters. But in strategic scenario work, the starting point is always internal. First, we define the focus – an investment, a business strategy, a technology portfolio, and only then identify the external uncertainties that matter most for that focus. That is how scenario work connects directly to strategic decision-making.

The right tools make the difference

Scenario work requires both mindset and method. Without the right tools, it easily slips back into forecasting or gets dismissed as too abstract to be useful. Capful’s Scenario Builder™ helps create logical, well-reasoned, and clearly differentiated scenarios, visualised on an intuitive scenario map. Our own CapfulAI tools support data analysis, trend detection, and exploration of alternative future development paths.

Scenario work – the fuel of a living strategy

Forecasts and scenarios serve entirely different purposes. The essence of scenario work is to use uncertainty, not flee from it. Bain’s way of treating scenarios as isolated forecasts risks locking strategy into the past. Real scenario work, by contrast, helps organisations see and seize future opportunities. Today, as geopolitical and economic turbulence make the future especially uncertain, scenario work offers a way to navigate complexity, to spot opportunities and risks early, and to build a genuine strategic edge.

At Capful, we connect scenario planning with the continuous monitoring of the external environment. By tracking early signs of which scenarios are starting to unfold, we help clients assess whether their short-term strategies still stand on solid ground. That is how strategy stays alive, evolving proactively and deliberately, not reactively in crisis mode.

Arto Kaunonen
Founder, Senior Partner, KM, MBA
+358 50 356 0717
arto.kaunonen@capful.fi