Goal Core · Long term goals · Module
Assumptions and scenarios
What has to remain true for the goal to make sense, written down where it can be checked. A long goal is a claim about the future, and claims can be falsified.
The idea
How it works
Every long-range goal rests on a set of beliefs about how the world will behave. Those beliefs are usually held confidently and stated nowhere, which means they cannot be checked and are never formally abandoned.
Scenario work is not forecasting. The point is not to predict which future arrives but to have thought about more than one, so that the arrival of an unexpected one is a recognised situation rather than a surprise.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Ask what would have to be true
List the conditions the goal quietly depends on — about customers, costs, technology, regulation, competitors.
- 02
Mark which are uncertain and important
Most assumptions are safe or trivial. A handful are neither, and those are the ones worth work.
- 03
Build two or three futures
Vary the critical uncertainties and describe the resulting worlds. Enough detail that you could tell which one you were in.
- 04
Name the signals
For each scenario, what would show up first if it were becoming the real one?
One level in
The components of assumptions and scenarios
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
The assumption register
The stated conditions the goal depends on, each marked for certainty and importance.
Learn
The register is worth more than the scenarios. Most of the value is in having written the assumptions down at all.
The other modules in long term goals
Long-range ambition
The single stated destination: specific enough to recognise on arrival, distant enough that the route is not yet designed.
LearnGrowth horizons
Separating what defends today’s business from what builds the next one and what merely keeps an option open. Each needs different funding, measures and tolerance for failure.
LearnDirection of growth
Whether the ambition is reached through existing markets and offers, new offers, new markets, or genuinely new ground. Naming the direction is what makes the risk visible.
Learn