Scenario Planning and Strategic Foresight

Scenario Planning and Strategic Foresight is a 5-day senior foresight course delivered by Mars Training Centre UK across Europe, the Gulf and Asia — in London, Vienna, Amsterdam, Dubai and Tokyo — designed for directors, strategy leaders and senior planners working under conditions of significant uncertainty.

Most strategic plans assume one future. The future, predictably, refuses to cooperate. Scenario planning, as developed in industry over the last fifty years and refined in many sectors, is the discipline of taking uncertainty seriously rather than averaging it away — building a small number of internally consistent, plausible futures and stress-testing the strategy against each one. This programme is built for senior leaders who want to make better strategic decisions in conditions where forecasting alone is no longer enough.

Across five focused days, you will work through the scenario-planning method end-to-end — driving forces, critical uncertainties, scenario construction, implication analysis and strategy stress-testing — apply it to a real strategic question in your own organisation, and learn the wider toolkit of strategic foresight, from horizon scanning to weak-signal detection. The programme is delivered by senior practitioners with strategy and foresight experience.

What You Will Learn

• Distinguish scenario planning from forecasting, contingency planning and risk analysis.
• Identify and rank the driving forces shaping your operating environment.
• Select the critical uncertainties on which to build a scenario set.
• Construct a small number of plausible, internally consistent scenarios.
• Stress-test a strategy across multiple scenarios.
• Identify early-warning signals and design a monitoring system.
• Apply horizon-scanning and weak-signal detection methods.
• Communicate scenario thinking to boards and the wider organisation.
• Build a scenario-thinking discipline into the strategic planning cycle.

How You Will Benefit

You will leave with a working scenario set for a real strategic question in your organisation, a sharper way of thinking about uncertainty, and a Mars Certificate of Completion.

Your organisation will gain a senior leader who can lead disciplined scenario conversations at executive level, reduce the over-reliance on single-point forecasts, and build adaptive resilience into strategic decisions.

Who This Programme Is For

This programme is designed for senior leaders working under uncertainty, including:

• Chief Strategy Officers and Directors of Strategy
• Heads of corporate planning and risk
• Directors of business units and country managers
• Heads of policy, regulatory affairs and government relations
• Senior public-sector executives leading long-horizon planning
• Family-business principals preparing for succession and transition
• Senior leaders in energy, financial services, healthcare and other long-cycle sectors

The seniority floor is senior manager and above. The course is delivered in person over five consecutive days and carries a fee of £4,950.