Now you're sitting at your table. You have the vision. And you know, you're aware of big changes in the world megatrends. Fine. How can you manage uncertainty? Because there is a lot of uncertainty about the megatrends. Some are likely to happen. Some of them, you don't know. And you need. To know how to cope with uncertainty. [BLANK_AUDIO] Let's first distinguish two, two kind of uncertainty. [BLANK_AUDIO] Uncertainty type one, for example, who's going to win Wimbledon next year? You don't know, I don't know, uncertainty, definitely, but we know exactly what we don't know. We know exactly we don't know the name of the winner of the tournament next year. This is not a big issue. Why? Because we can make like forecast if, or, etcetera. The real problem is uncertainty type two. When you even don't know, you don't know. Remember what happened with this volcano in Iceland with the name impossible to remember. When all planes, on at least on this side of the planet, were forced to be land, to land. They couldn't fly for three weeks. It was an event with huge impact, huge impact. That nobody ever imagined this could happen. And for event like that, you cannot make any forecast, by definition. And the danger is not to do anything. What's the good, the appropriate attitude for uncertainty type one? You try forecasts. Type two. You prepare yourself. You prepare yourself. You try to organize some company, your company on the robust mode, since you cannot make any forecast. Try to be ready. At least better prepared than other people. And this is the scenario. I have forgotten this, this image which is a good one because the events unlikely to happen with huge impact are called now, very often, black swan. Since this book has ma, made, made this concept famous. And I ask my cartoonist to be more black than the black swan, so that's why it happened here. Now, let's go back to the table. You see the vision in front of you? The world outside the room? And we have now, four. Boxes, four additional boxes. They are called scenarios. What is a scenario? You, now you know what's next, the definition of course. A scenario is a story, about a possible future. It's a box. It consists there is a beginning, there is a end, and it's a story that could happen. That could happen. So now you're planning is not new. Shell is doing that now for at least 50 years. That produce sets of scenario, that quite, I know, every seven years or something like that. [COUGH] One scenario makes no sense. Makes no sense. A company's not Hollywood. We don't have to produce films, of movies. You need a couple of scenarios to stretch the mind. And I go backwards. And this. You need, of course, you focus to the, to the the main vision. You don't change your vision. That's what you want to achieve but thanks to the scenarios, you are like remind at anytime, but if, but if, what could happen? And there are many, many way to do scenarios. But you need them to disseminate throughout the company the language of uncertainty. They're a bit extreme situation. I, for example, in the world of perfume. There is, I've been told, a problem with resistance. Sometimes a perfume is excellent, but after 12 hours, it doesn't smell good anymore. So they need perfume resistant, resistant. And in order to achieve. This resistance in, in those company to have like climate room with extreme climates. 100% humi humidity, 0% humidity, I don't know and they test perfume in extreme situations. And that's how they manufacture their perfumes. It's like if you take an airbus. If you fly with 1500 people, prob, it will never happen but you could learn a lot about the, the, the solidity of, of the airplane. Scenarios are extreme situations and a lot of companies are using them now. To test the robustness of, of the company. It, I had an example recently. A company had to hire, I don't know, exactly, a position in Switzerland and he told me, we had a shortlist of three people, of three people and. We couldn't choose, and somebody suddenly said okay, let's make scenarios. Let's imagine extreme situation that will never happen, but that will help us to select the more robust candidate in the shortlist. And that's what happened. That's what happened. We have developed at BCG, a lot of scenarios in different domain. And I give you an example about green. Green, everybody agrees. Green is important, green we should become green, etc. But this, at this stage, it's a bit weak as an analysis. So we build scenarios. We bid scenarios on different way, different mode to go to green. And I will show the the end product and of course again, I use cartoons. So, one, my definition is here. One scenario, green, was called the Big Clash. Illustrated by this, this drawing of a world where everything looks okay, and another world where everything looks not okay. It is called the Big Clash. Another scenario was like, yeah the dream. It was called locavore so people living close to the house to minimize the energy consumptions, etcetera. Another one was called I forgot the name, it was called, yeah, behind green doors. Behind green doors. It's a scenario where. Green is, is fake. Everything is painted in green but basically nothing has changed. But it's a possible scenario. And the last one was called Green Brother. Because sometime you can imagine in the name of green. You have like, a huge system watching everybody, everywhere. Don't do this, don't do that. And that's called Green Brother. Just an example, of course it takes a day to build scenarios like that. But it just help you to be a better manager in this green, green responsibility. The scenario is, a memory of a possible future. It's funny because, normally memory goes backwards. I remember this from the past. In this situation, and in order to be, to be a good manager today, you need to remember possible futures.
