Why do organizations get blindsided by market transformations that could have been anticipated? After all, scenario planning has been a widely used strategic management tool for decades and most managers are familiar with the process of considering how they would operate in alternative futures. The reason most organizations get surprised by game-changing events, in my experience, is not that their planning methods are bad. The problem is that many firms undertake strategic planning processes like scenario development without seeing them as a unique opportunity for learning about and exploring the future. In some cases this is because management lacks sufficient appreciation for the uncertainty and ambiguity their organizations face. More often, however, management is fully aware of the uncertainty of their situation but is seemingly powerless to prepare to adapt to new business realities, especially unpleasant ones.
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