Best Method for Worst-Case Scenario Planning

By Lisa Bodell for Forbes

From extreme weather disasters and geopolitical unrest to increasingly high energy prices and strained supply chains, the?Allianz Risk Barometer is predicting elevated levels of disruption for the next 12 months. If you’re not already prepared for everything 2024 may come with, now is the moment to proactively plan your response to worst-case scenarios.

When HBO did this exercise, it generated six pages of tactics that a competitor could use to destroy it. A city council in Texas uses it annually to anticipate potential threats to their city. Every quarter, an American mining company runs it to identify competitive and market forces.

Within your company, invite employees from all levels to a remote, in-person or hybrid session. Present this challenge to the group: “What could put us out of business in 2024?” Assure them this is not a prank and ask them to imagine all the ways to run the company into the ground.

When you reverse a highly conventional question — “how can we beat our competition?” — it empowers the people with insider knowledge of your business to reveal its weak spots. Ask everyone to write or type each threat on a virtual or physical sticky note. Sample threats could be “our main competitor starts selling our core product for one-third less” or “consumer demand drops suddenly by 40%” or “we’re exposed for a security breach of user data.”

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