People IntelligenceScenarios are more valuable when they don't pretend to be predictions
A scenario does not say what will happen. It shows what your assumptions mean if it does.
Björn Slegers ·
Management looks ahead. That's part of the job. What happens if attrition rises? If critical vacancies stay open longer? If the wage bill grows faster than planned? If a reorganisation is delayed by three months? We want answers to those questions. And that's when the word 'prediction' quickly comes up. But for many organisational questions, a scenario is a better tool.
A scenario makes the assumption visible
A prediction tries to say which future is likely. A scenario asks a different question. If this assumption is correct, what does that mean? That difference seems small. In a management conversation, it is significant. Suppose attrition rises not by two, but by four percentage points. What does that do to capacity? Which roles then become critical?
How much extra recruitment pressure does that create? What happens to the cost if vacancies stay open longer and have to be filled externally on a temporary basis? The moment the assumption is made visible, people can discuss it. Finance may have a different hypothesis from HR. Operations might see an operational constraint that was not immediately visible in the data.
That is not a shortcoming. That is precisely why scenarios are useful.
False certainty rarely helps management
A model that shows a single, very precise number can suggest more certainty than reality allows. "Personnel costs will rise by 7.3 per cent next year." Perhaps. But what happens when one key assumption changes? A scenario keeps that uncertainty visible. Not to make decisions more difficult. To make it clearer what the decision is sensitive to.
Which factor makes the biggest difference? Where is the tipping point? Which intervention changes multiple outcomes at once? Those are valuable management questions.
AI can explore uncertainty faster
Therein lies an interesting role for AI. Not to determine which future will happen. But to structure, compare, and calculate the effects of different assumptions much more quickly. A manager then no longer needs to rebuild the same spreadsheet over and over again to see what a different assumption does. But choosing which assumptions are credible remains a management question.
So a scenario is not a weaker prediction. It is a different tool.
And in a fast-changing environment, it is often a more honest tool.