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Futures · Explore

Scenario planning

Not forecasting. The point is not to guess right — it is to build a strategy that does not depend on guessing right.

The printable canvas and the handoff into Claude Code are part of a paid plan. See what a plan includes. It needs the Claude desktop app on this machine, and your team and the prompt library already installed in that project — we cannot see your disk, so open it there.

Stage
02 Explore
Works at
Corporate, Business
Maturity
Scaling → Large organisation
Time
A full day, or two hours with Claude for a first cut

What it is

A method for building strategy that survives more than one future, developed at Shell in the 1970s. It is explicitly not forecasting: the aim is not to identify which future arrives, but to construct a small number of plausible, internally coherent worlds and test your options against all of them. Robustness beats accuracy.

Predetermined elements
What is broadly knowable — demographics, most regulation, infrastructure in build. These are the same in every scenario and are not what the exercise is about.
Critical uncertainties
The forces that are both highly impactful and genuinely unpredictable. Two of these become your axes; everything else is detail.
The scenarios
Three worlds, named and written as short narratives. If people cannot picture a day inside one, it will not be used. Three works better than four — the fourth quadrant is usually incoherent.
Leading indicators
For each world, the observable signal that would tell you within a year that you are heading into it. Without these, scenarios are entertainment.
Options tested
Each strategic option scored across all three: thrives, survives, dies. Robust options plus one deliberate bet is usually the right shape of a strategy.
The mistake people makeScenarios are expensive thinking, and only worth it when the uncertainty is real and the commitment is hard to reverse. For a cheap, reversible decision, just make it.
What it’s forThe future genuinely could go several ways and you need a strategy that survives more than one.
What it’s not forUncertainty is low, or the decision is cheap and reversible. Scenarios are expensive thinking.

How you run it

  1. List the forces, then split themSeparate the broadly predictable from the genuinely uncertain. Only the uncertain ones drive scenarios.
  2. Pick the two axesThe two uncertainties that are both most impactful and least predictable. Use three of the four quadrants and discard the incoherent one.
  3. Write each world as a storyName it, describe a day in it, say what a customer does differently. A scenario people cannot picture is one nobody uses.
  4. Attach a leading indicatorThe observable signal that would tell you within a year you are heading into it. Without this, scenarios are entertainment.
  5. Test your options against all threeWhich thrive, survive or die in each? Robust options plus one deliberate bet is usually the right shape.

The prompt

Two ways to run it

Run this tool in your own Claude

The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.

🔒 Prompt locked

Everything above is free — what this tool is, what it is for, what it is not for, and how to run it as a workshop. Three tool prompts a month are free with an account; beyond three, and for the printable canvas, it is the paid part.

See plans — from £19 a month

Your playbook

It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.

You’ll need

  • A scan of external forces
  • A view on which uncertainties are genuinely uncertain
  • The strategic options you are weighing

You’ll end up with

  • Three named, plausible worlds
  • A leading indicator per world
  • A read on which options are robust and which are bets

Runs well with

Acquisition screen and synergy thesisAdjacency mapAnalysis planAnsoff matrix