A lot of organizations have been trying to pick up from where they left off before the COVID-19 lockdown. This means most of them want to continue with business as usual with the hope that the effects of COVID-19 are a passing cloud and that somehow, things will get better. Most do not fully acknowledge that something has fundamentally shifted. Whatever is going on has lasting future implications on how organizations are structured, how they deliver goods and services, as well as their relationships with their employees, customers, and other organizations or sectors in general. The reason why it is vital to revisit your strategic plan is that it is based on certain assumptions about the future, and these assumptions need to be reconsidered with the hindsight of the new realities.
The banking and the insurance sectors have been forerunners in coming up with a process of creating buffers that prevent their systems from collapsing if there are extreme shocks that adversely affect their operations like financial crushes. Through robust risk analyses, they can plan for uncertainties brought about by complex conditions. From the point of view of long-term resilience and sustainability, organizations also need to guard against the adversities of unforeseen circumstances in the future. Stress testing is deployed by futurists to explore the impacts organizations would face or the stresses the systems in the organizations would go through if certain scenarios were to occur. The idea is to test the fortitude of the strategic plan and, if necessary, to develop organizational work plans or amend the strategic plan so that it becomes more robust and/or flexible to future uncertainties and more inclusive of the emerging concerns.
In a stress testing process, we choose relevant and viable sets of scenarios and conduct a SWOT analysis of the strategic plan's performance in each scenario. This process brings out how various components of the plan (like the strategic goals or program strategies) would perform under various circumstances or eventualities while surfacing the trends with the highest future impact on the organization. These issues are then mapped out in what we call a heat map – which is a color-coded matrix that indicates the performance of the different components of the plan against the various stress factors identified in each scenario. The color code also shows the impact of the stress on the organization or on the organizational system. Abysmal performance means a very high impact of the stress and that the particular components of the plan are not viable or feasible in the future hence a red color code; marginal performance means the medium impact of the stress and that the components of the plan are somehow viable or feasible, but they need strategic enhancement hence an orange color code; while good performance means that there is no negative impact of the stress and that the components of the plan are feasible or viable hence a green color code. Apart from the color-coding aspect in the heat map, the reason why an impact and the performance of the plan's component warrants a particular color code should be indicated as it helps surface the assumptions made and enhances participants' clarity on the issues.
At the analysis stage, organizational members have an opportunity to zoom in on the problem areas with the highest potential impact on the organization and identify strategic interventions that would help them to be more prepared and agile in their responses. The heat map also shows certain patterns e.g., strengths in the program side of things and weaknesses in the institutional side of things – and such patterns clearly show the areas that need more work. Ultimately, a stress test should generate both internal interventions that strengthen the institutions' response to external eventualities but also it can help identify external strategies such as lobbying for certain laws or collaborating with certain partners to proactively work towards creating futures that help avert the scenarios that would cause the highest levels of impact on their organizations.
LongView Consult was privileged in October 2020 to work with a global organization - Publish What You Pay - on such a project, and this is what the client said about the process.
"You have taken us on our first journey of futures thinking at PWYP, and I hope this is the beginning of a new approach in our work. I also wanted to say that I have received really good feedback….."
Elisa Peter, Executive director
Publish What You Pay
Dr. Katindi Sivi
Afri-Futurist, founder and Lead consultant @ LongView Consult
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