6

Scenario Thinking

For me, it is always important that I go through all the possible options for a decision.

—ANGELA MERKEL

WHAT WOULD YOU DO RIGHT now if you got a call from the Big Boss offering you a new job opportunity or a big role of some kind? His offer is about a role you’ve never considered. It is not directly on your current career path, and it is very high profile. What would your inner voice say to you? What stories would you tell yourself? Assuming that you would have the presence of mind to thank the Big Boss for his offer and tell him you need a day to think it over, what would your next steps be?

If you are like many of the women we coach, you are good at what you do and you like the people you work with. You have worked hard to gain professional recognition in your field and you are always thinking about your next move. Yet your current arrangement at work is comfortable and suits your lifestyle. A new role would entail navigating a steep learning curve, working harder, getting to know a new team, and potentially spending more time away from your family. Because the role is high profile, there is the risk of incurring disagreement and criticism. If you failed, it would be a very public failure. What will you decide? More importantly, how will you decide?

Let’s look to an executive working at one of our client companies to see how she responded. Then, later in the chapter, we will explore how another woman we coach handled a similar opportunity.

Yvette was a senior vice president and regional sales leader at a U.S.-based publishing company. She was the company’s most outstanding sales manager. She was not only respected by her staff and clients, she was loved. One of her clients told us, “I would do anything for Yvette Williams. She’s in a class by herself.”

A few months after we met Yvette, there was a change in leadership at the top of her company. The CEO retired and was succeeded by an outstanding internal candidate. A month or so later, the new CEO promoted Yvette’s boss, David, to a higher-level position. In short order, David did exactly what everyone expected him to do—he asked Yvette to accept the role of national sales leader. It was a major promotion into a highly visible role that everyone agreed she was qualified for. She would sit on the executive committee and assume national responsibilities. And, by the way, she would be only the second woman on the executive committee.

Yvette’s response to the job offer was trepidation. She hadn’t seen this coming. She couldn’t envision herself on the executive committee. When David sat down to talk with her, Yvette fixated on why she was not ready and listed all the things she didn’t know. She said she didn’t think she could do the new job and she didn’t want to let him down. David reassured her, saying that he knew her well and was certain she would be successful in this new role. He needed her. He even offered to have her continue to report to him directly until she felt more comfortable, and suggested getting her some executive coaching. He reminded her that an opportunity like this comes around very infrequently. Yvette asked for some time to think it over.

What was going on here? When we talked to Yvette, she explained, “I don’t see myself in a high-level role yet; maybe someday. . . . I’m just not ready and I have a lot going on.” She went on to say, “I was taken by surprise and I wasn’t prepared for the offer. . . . Honestly, it’s not even an option.” Yvette called David and turned down his offer.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with turning down a promotion or an assignment. If the opportunity is not strategically aligned with your career goals and interests, say no more. But that wasn’t the case here. Yvette allowed herself to get caught up in self-doubt. She did not stop to analyze the situation and think through all of her options. What a mess! Although Yvette is still at the same organization today, she regrets making this important decision in such a hasty manner.

Influence and confidence are inextricably linked. In this case, being strategic could have changed the outcome for Yvette because it would have enabled her to envision all of the possible alternatives of the situation.

THE UNWRITTEN RULE: Create Possibilities

In our work with women leaders, we talk about scenario thinking, the ability to see multiple alternatives at once and react fast in response to opportunities. One of the women we interviewed for our research describes scenario thinking this way:

I have to see five moves out. . . . If I do #1, then so-and-so is going to be for it and so-and-so is going to be against it. If I do #2, what’s going to happen? If I do #3, what’s going to happen? I try to be Sherlock Holmes and run each scenario out to decide how I’m going to move forward. I have to put the mental time into examining various alternatives in my head.

Also, you must figure out people’s motivations. You must do the deep listening and the deep thought and figure out what is it that they are driven by.

Yvette wouldn’t let herself accept a career opportunity that was so well suited to her experience and aspirations. Her story is a bit extreme, but we’ve seen this happen enough times to take note. Uncertainty, doubt, and fear can blind even the best of us and make it difficult for us to see that we are more agile than we think.

LIMITING BELIEFS That Decrease Our Options

How we think about ourselves has an outsized impact on what we can achieve. As we have seen, exposing negative thoughts and turning them around elevates our confidence and meaningfully increases our opportunities for advancement.

“I’m not ready”

Many of us become so blocked by uncertainty and fear that we can’t picture a path to success. We worry about the complexity of our lives and are concerned about failing and letting everyone down. Sometimes we get so wedded to our current situation, as Yvette did, that we fixate on the default option. The same holds true for all types of professional challenges in addition to career decisions. It can be difficult to cut through our limiting beliefs and envision multiple scenarios for success when we are trying to lead a project, find a sponsor, or deliver a key account.

Another dynamic that makes us less open to considering “riskier” alternatives is our status as minorities in the executive suite. Because of our underrepresentation, we are aware that all eyes are on us. For women, and for all minorities, the cost of failure is higher than for our white male colleagues. We feel we need to do everything right because we’re being judged more publicly and more harshly. We stay on the default path, where we know we can succeed, because we don’t want to be “the woman who couldn’t make it.”

There’s no single way to succeed, and locking ourselves into a black-or-white way of thinking drastically limits our options. It not only stifles creativity but also prevents us from seeing the entire spectrum of nuanced alternatives that exist between the obvious extremes. Black-or-white thinking is a sign that you are stuck and missing the nimbleness that comes with full-color thinking.

Yvette opted out of her big promotion because it didn’t fit into the rigid plan she had for her career at that particular time. Sticking closely to one plan may seem like a safe and smart way to go, but it actually compounds the pressure.

One way to escape the either-or trap is to practice becoming comfortable with cognitive dissonance. Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management, argues that the best leaders today work at holding “two conflicting ideas in constructive tension.”¹ This practice is diametrically opposed to all-or-nothing extremes. Holding two or more opposing ideas in your mind helps you find creative solutions to complex problems. According to Martin, “integrative thinkers” search for “creative resolutions of tensions, rather than accepting unpleasant trade-offs . . . and they keep the entire problem firmly in mind while working on its individual parts.”²

“I’ll be exposed as a fraud”

We mentioned the impostor syndrome in chapter 2. The biggest symptom of the impostor syndrome is the ongoing fear of being exposed as a “fraud.” In fact, when we described the impostor syndrome to Yvette, she said, “That’s me. That’s exactly how I feel.”

Most of us are not impacted in a permanent way by this syndrome. Yet many women we work with are held back by an out-of-sync self-image.

When the voice in our head is not in sync with our abilities and professional success, a few things can happen. First, we feel like we’re not ready—not ready to throw our hat in the ring for a promotion, not ready to dissent in a business meeting, and so on. We’re paralyzed and silenced. A second reaction is fear. Fear results in what we call default thinking. Our lack of confidence keeps us from being creative and looking at all our options. Following the default path causes us to “lock down” and therefore miss creative alternatives, options, and opportunities. Our fear and nagging feeling of inferiority cause us to always play it safe. Yvette played it safe because she did not want to “let everyone down.” The irony of her decision is that that’s exactly what she did.

We coach women to set the voices in their heads straight. Create a narrative inside your mind that is empowering. Look at yourself objectively, own your assets and accomplishments, and don’t hide behind the relative safety of the default path.

STRATEGIES for Creating Possibilities

One of the best “scenario thinkers” we know, Claudette, learned this skill through trial and error.

Several years back, when Claudette was a young partner at a Chicago-based firm, the demands of being on the fast track hit her hard. The better Claudette performed, the more work the senior partners passed down to her. Just about the time she was starting to doubt her capacity to manage the pressure, she was asked by the CEO to lead the high-visibility Corporate Women’s Program (CWP).

The CWP was designed to bring together women from across the organization to mentor female associates, share best practices, and create a national community of support. Managed by a different female leader each term, the two-year role was perceived as a high-visibility appointment and a vote of confidence. For Claudette, it was an opportunity to demonstrate her leadership talent. The problem? The CWP workload was in addition to the client work she already had on her plate.

After taking the weekend to think it over, Claudette accepted the new responsibility. She felt passionate about the work of the CWP and believed she could grow the program to have a greater impact at the firm. “The alternative was to pass on the opportunity, and it did not seem like the right option for me or the firm,” she told us.

At first, Claudette took the default path. In prior years, the CWP director managed the program just as she would a client account. She did most of the planning and execution herself. The work culminated in three regional meetings per year, plus one massive conference at year-end and numerous other networking activities. Claudette would be the emcee and grand master at each of the four meetings.

It took her six weeks to realize that this approach was a no-go. Past CWP leads had much less client work than Claudette. She was exhausted, her accounts were suffering, and all the groundwork left her with no time to show her face as the program’s leader. Claudette came to her coach in tears, saying, “I never should have agreed to take this role. I’m afraid I’m going to fail.”

We worked with Claudette to calm the negative voices in her head and tap into her confidence by recalling her past accomplishments. We also reminded Claudette of her rationale for accepting the new role: she had big plans for the CWP.

Now she was in a better frame of mind—more empowered, more confident. Claudette took a deep breath and stepped up. She began by getting clear about her desired outcome. Then she mapped out a few different ways to approach the CWP position. She came up with three scenarios.

Claudette considered the three scenarios. She imagined how each one would play out and how she would measure success. For the likely case, she decided that a key success metric would be increased volunteer involvement. She even made a list of the specific leaders she would be targeting. For the best case, Claudette got creative. Her metrics centered on securing broad involvement from both male and female leaders, plus some additional outreach activities with clients. She did not know the exact details of the scenario, but she let herself dream big.

For the worst case, Claudette considered what she would do if everything went awry and she was removed from her CWP role. As she considered that scenario, she realized two things. First, this scenario was highly unlikely. It was based primarily on her own fear of failure as opposed to any real facts or probabilities. Second, Claudette realized that if the worst case did happen, she would still be okay. She wouldn’t be fired from the firm, and she would still have her clients. Yes, it would be embarrassing and she would need to repair her reputation internally, but overall, she would be fine.

Once Claudette had thought through her scenarios, she decided to create momentum around scenario 1, the likely case. First, she invited key female leaders to play a role in publicizing and planning the CWP. Second, she recruited six female partners to manage the regional events on a volunteer basis. Third, she recruited a group of associates to plan the annual conference. In the end, they expanded the conference. The women partners spent a day and a half together focusing on key topics related to supporting each other across the firm.

Claudette’s first year as CWP leader was a success, and the enthusiasm across the firm was noted by the CEO. Claudette was proud of what she and her colleagues had accomplished. Despite her success, however, Claudette saw room for improvement. In the subsequent year, she moved on to scenario 2, the best case.

With her colleagues feeling confident and empowered in each of the regions, Claudette stepped up her leadership role. She doubled the size of the annual conference to include all female partners and directors. She initiated CWP awards to recognize outstanding performance for women across the firm. Finally, she took the unprecedented step of inviting twenty male leaders to attend the annual conference. She called the men “CWP Champions.” They were honored to be included and learned a lot from attending the meeting. A final update was to institute a series of CWP events to benefit the firm’s female clients. All of these actions dramatically increased the impact of the program. Because Claudette was able to attract new stakeholders, many more people felt they “owned” a part of the success of the CWP.

Scenario thinking set Claudette up to be creative, bold, and prepared for multiple paths. She was able to manage her fear and modify her course in real time. Claudette gained stature and influence as a leader, and she was widely considered “a huge success” in the role of CWP leader.

STEPS for Scenario Thinking

We coach women to become comfortable with scenario thinking by experimenting with “what if” possibilities. In most cases, we want women to use scenario thinking as a lens as opposed to a major planning exercise. The idea is to discipline yourself to examine the surrounding landscape for multiple possible options, and then plan your actions accordingly. Scenario thinking is not about foreseeing the future; it is about adjusting your plans and decisions in response to real-time events and complexity.

1. Banish fear

This is the most important step because fear is a distortion that can stop us cold. When we let it take over, we become reactive and emotional instead of creative and practical. Yvette went directly into “default mode” and turned down a once-in-a-lifetime promotion because of her debilitating fear of failure. Claudette had fears, too, but she worked through them. She regained her confidence, used her optimism, and replaced the negative voice in her head with a positive message.

2. Determine your outcome

When the stakes are high you need to spend some time on preparation. Think creatively about the outcome you are looking for, focusing strictly on your ideal end-result, as opposed to how you will achieve it. Be specific and keep it simple. Claudette’s desired outcome was: Drive success and growth for the CWP, enhance my reputation as a leader, and continue to be an outstanding partner in the firm.

3. Create your options

Consider three ways to achieve your outcomes. We suggest mapping out a best case, worst case, and likely case. In your likely case, things proceed as expected with nary a speed bump or unexpected event. Simply thinking through that scenario will help clarify your expectations and queue up your plan. The worst case involves imagining every major snafu you can think of (all hell breaks loose, you’re left holding the bag, and so on). Considering this extreme helps you prepare for the worst, even as you expect the best—you are ready for any eventuality. Finally, your best case can be anything you want—so long as it satisfies your objective and is outside the box. Brainstorm the most innovative ways to proceed and see what sticks. If you had asked Claudette early on if she expected to invite men to the women’s conference, she would have said no way . . . but it worked!

As you map out your options, remember that scenario thinking needs to be dynamic. As demonstrated in Figure 10, try to anticipate what may happen over time, taking other people and outside forces into account.

FIGURE 10 Scenario Thinkers Are Nimble, Proactive, and Prepared

Keep in mind that it is possible that none of your scenarios will come to pass exactly as you’ve mapped them out. The idea is to consider the possibilities and identify ways to move ahead.

4. Identify and assess your stakeholders

Consider your outcomes with key stakeholders in mind: How will peers, competitors, and clients impact the likelihood of achieving your goal? In what ways might their views impact your decisions and help or harm your chances of success? Claudette needed to please her bosses, engage women in the firm, and manage her clients. Taking this even further, think about what is most important to your stakeholders and where you interests overlap with theirs. A male executive we interviewed described how this works for him: “I had to figure out early on: What is this person’s motivation? I had to listen deeply and probe to become skillful at understanding what they wanted and what motivated them.”

5. Respond to your constraints

Think about project deadlines, end dates such as fiscal-year goals, and any personal timing constraints you may face. Do any of these dates have the potential to shift? Claudette had an annual conference, a two-year term, and other fluid client-oriented deadlines to factor into her planning.

What else is occurring inside your business, or outside in the competitive landscape, that might impact success? Constraints (and opportunities) might include budgeting and resources, competing products or programs, or even legislation that will affect the success of your plan.

After you consider your stakeholders and constraints, think about the specific if-then rules or options you would build into your scenarios. If my budget is slashed, then I will look for outside funding; if my customers push back, then I will decrease the price; and so on.

6. Remain nimble and proceed

A primary point of scenario planning is to clear a safe path for action. Having peered into the future to consider what might occur, you are now fully prepared to proceed and can advance when the light is green.

As you confidently move forward, remember that the process should remain iterative: constantly scan the environment, remain dynamic, and be ready to adjust and adapt. When something starts working, stand poised to leverage the momentum. When Claudette recruited volunteers to join her in leading each of the CWP’s regional events, it was viewed as a considerable early win. She was later able to build on that and include both female and male sponsors to grow the program in directions that no one would have predicted was possible.

During her tenure as the CWP lead, Claudette went from being seen as a future star to becoming an influential leader who earned the trust and respect of executives all across the company. She was able to proceed with confidence, take risks, and respond to opportunities.

Most professions and industries are in some type of transition or flux. Things change fast. The most successful female leaders we know are flexible and open minded, and they realize that there’s never only one response to an opportunity. Being decisive amid uncertainty, leaning into unexpected opportunities, and seeing multiple paths to success are all a part of achieving influence and working toward achieving the Influence Effect.

Executive Summary

• Default thinking limits our options, stifles creativity, and prevents us from seeing the entire spectrum of nuanced alternatives that exist between the obvious extremes.
• Creating an empowering narrative inside our mind makes it simpler to seize opportunities and bypass barriers.
• Scenario thinking is not about foreseeing the future; it is about adjusting our plans and decisions in response to real-time events and complexity. It is a dynamic process.
• Scenario thinking is iterative and dynamic as we run through our if-then options.
• Staying nimble to seize opportunities requires confidence, conviction, and a willingness to take action.