Abstract
Since the financial crisis of 2008, the business world has to cope with the new reality of being in a
perpetual state of high volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguity. Typically businesses would develop
a 3 to 5 year strategic plan to address these changes and would review the progress of the
implementation of these strategic plans quarterly. This situation does not exist anymore, now business
is in a constant state of flux and needs to react at a much faster pace to the external environment. The
issue faced by many a business leader is how to do this?
To deal with this new reality, strategic planning needs to have 3 layers, Known Issues, Emerging
issues, and Wildcards. Once you have narrowed the possible wild cards to a manageable number the
planners can select just a few scenarios to tackle. This method will allow you to cut through the noise
and select and focus on issues that are highly likely to affect your business. Emerging issues can easily
be identified, relevant data is available to be collected and analyzed and trends and patterns can be
easily identified. As soon as a given emerging or wildcard issue becomes a clear enough future, by
virtue of its indicators, planners must treat it as a new know issue and integrate it into the current
strategic plan for implementation. In all of this, the leader’s ability to take fast decisions becomes a
critical factor in the life of the business. The OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) Loop provides the
leadership a basis for this fast pace of decision making
Keywords: VUCA, OODA, Strategic Planning, Known Issues,
other publications
Unified Model for Strategic Planning in a High VUCA World
Abstract Since the financial crisis of 2008, the business world has to cope with the new reality of being in a perpetual state of high volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguity. Typically businesses would develop a 3 to 5 year strategic plan to address these changes and would review the progress of the implementation of these strategic plans quarterly. This situation does not exist anymore, now business is in a constant state of flux and needs to react at a much faster pace to the external environment. The issue faced by many a business leader is how to do this? To deal with this new reality, strategic planning needs to have 3 layers, Known Issues, Emerging issues, and Wildcards. Once you have narrowed the possible wild cards to a manageable number the planners can select just a few scenarios to tackle. This method will allow you to cut through the noise and select and focus on issues that are highly likely to affect your business. Emerging issues can easily be identified, relevant data is available to be collected and analyzed and trends and patterns can be easily identified. As soon as a given emerging or wildcard issue becomes a clear enough future, by virtue of its indicators, planners must treat it as a new know issue and integrate it into the current strategic plan for implementation. In all of this, the leader’s ability to take fast decisions becomes a critical factor in the life of the business. The OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) Loop provides the leadership a basis for this fast pace of decision making Keywords: VUCA, OODA, Strategic Planning, Known Issues,
