How to Use SPOD
1. Find a scenario
There are two ways to find something worth discussing today:
- Browse by industry. Use the industry dropdown to narrow the archive to your world — SaaS, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Retail Banking, Hospitality, Medical Devices, High Tech, Automotive, or Retail — then scan the cards for one that fits where your team is right now.
- Search by keyword. Use the search box to look for a theme instead of an industry — try something like "cashflow" or "profit" to surface every scenario touching that pressure point. Keyword search works across all industries at once, so you can pull a cross-functional exercise even if your team spans multiple sectors.
2. Choose a scenario framework (optional)
If you want more structure than a single scenario, borrow a lens from strategic planning to organize a whole session or roadmap. Here are six worth knowing:
PESTLE
Scans the macro environment across six forces: Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural, Technological, Legal, and Environmental. Good starting point when you want broad coverage of what's changing outside your walls.
Porter's Five Forces
Maps your competitive position: competition in the industry, threat of new entrants, power of suppliers, power of customers, and threat of substitute products. Best when the question is about industry structure, not the outside world.
MIT Sloan Forces of Disruption
A wider disruption lens spanning wealth distribution, education, infrastructure, government, geopolitics, economy, public health, demographics, environment, media & telecommunications, technology, and cost of capital. Useful for long-horizon, systemic thinking.
Black Elephants
The risks everyone can see coming but keeps ignoring — pandemic, AI disruption, climate change, authoritarianism, homelessness, poverty, recession, aging population. Use this lens to force a conversation about the obvious risk nobody wants to plan for.
The Brookings Institute (economic shock lens)
Models how a shock propagates through the economy: shock to labor supply, cost of production, consumption demand, government expenditure, equity risk premium, and country GDP. This is the lens Brookings used to analyze COVID-19's economic impact.
MIT Sloan: Scenario Planning in Practice
Pairs classic scenario development — scanning political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal drivers — with three organizational capabilities: adaptive strategy, ongoing monitoring of external change, and a learning culture. The core lesson: scenarios only pay off when they're wired into real decision-making, not left as a one-time workshop exercise. Read the MIT Sloan article →
Pick one lens, pick a few forces from it, and let your team draft scenarios of their own — or just use it to stress-test the scenario you already picked in step 1.
3. Run the exercise
Each scenario opens with a short setup and three discussion questions. A simple process that works well:
- Read the setup aloud, or drop it in your team channel the night before.
- Give everyone 5 minutes to think or write their own answer before discussing as a group.
- Work through the three questions in order — they're sequenced from immediate decision to longer-term lesson.
- End by naming one thing you'd actually change if this happened to you next week.
4. Get the one-pager
Want a printable process guide to run this with your team, offline or in a workshop? Download the one-pager:
Download the Daily Scenario Planning Guide (PDF)Want to go deeper?
SPOD is built around the same habits explored in Connected Planning by Ron Dimon — especially Chapter 4, which digs into building a scenario-driven planning rhythm inside a real organization.
Read Connected Planning