How to do 'What If ' Planning for AI
How to do 'What If ' Planning for AI
Planning for artificial intelligence is so fluid that it requires new planning methodologies
Traditional Planning
Traditional strategic planning is based on working in an environment where change takes place over years, if not decades. Planning in the past was done in the following way. Information was collected on the current situation and possible future trends. Strategic options were considered and a single course of action was selected for the particular organization to pursue during the next implementation period. Longer-term planning was often for periods of five years, and annual plans were developed within the general strategic pathway set by such planning. This made sense in the past because it was possible to determine the most likely future pathway. There was the option for course correction, which was usually conceptualized as risk management around implementing a strategic plan.
We Now Live In A Radically Different World
We no longer live in that world. Many organizations' extremely fluid operating environments require a new planning paradigm. The need for planning to be agile is embodied within project planning and implementation approaches such as Agile planning and within that in specific techniques such as Scrum. These methods provide ways of quickly producing project deliverables. The philosophy of these approaches is short-term planning and quick action in short bursts. This is combined with a rapid response to feedback and changes in one’s operating environment. As a result of this these planning techniques naturally tend to be focused on action in short time-frames.
AI has supercharged this problem
We already had a problem with rapidly morphing strategic environments. The introduction of artificial intelligence into the mix has supercharged the need for planning to be agile and adaptive. This challenge is made even more complex by how AI is developing almost month by month at the moment. Planning for artificial intelligence demands new ways of doing planning.
Complement Agile With Longer-Term ‘What-If Planning’
Agile and similar methodologies need to be complemented with a planning approach that has a longer planning horizon if we want to avoid zigzagging along a pathway of extreme short-termism. The problem when considering the longer term is that traditional strategic planning’s attempt to discern a single most likely path forward will not work anymore, given the dynamic and poly-crisis environment in which we are now operating. What-If Planning picks up on an alternative and less utilized strand in planning in the past - scenario planning. What-If Planning does not attempt to define only one single most likely future. Rather, it defines a set of What-If possibilities (‘What-Ifs’) that may conceivably come to pass in the future. You develop strategies for these and then develop Switch Indicators that are used to determine which one or more What-Ifs you are counting on as being most probably in the current planning period.
Key Steps In What-If Planning (WIP)
Identify a set of alternative What-Ifs.
Describe in detail what each of these possibilities will look like. If wished, you can draw a visual strategy diagram capturing details of each What-If.
Develop strategies you can use if you have to deal with each What-If and identify strategies that could apply to more than one What-If (these can be particularly useful because they can be used under several different What-Ifs) scenarios.
Where decision-making will have to take place under tight time frames for certain What-If, further work can be done on firming up decision-making for sub-parts of the strategy diagram in the event that the What-If possibility occurs.
If possible, develop rough estimates of the probability of the different What-Ifs occurring. This can help guide how much resource to spend on working-up the details (or strategy diagrams) for particular What-If possibilities.
Identify Switch Indicators. These are indicators that, if they occur, will lead to you changing the most likely What-If scenarios to one or more different ones.
Given what information you have, settle on one or more current, most likely What-Ifs based on what your indicators are telling you at the current time.
Put in place a monitoring and decision regime to monitor the Switch Indicators and delegate a group responsible for deciding when a Switch Indicator has turned positive, and it is time to move to one or more other, most likely What-Ifs, for the next planning period.
Implement the strategies that are most relevant to the current What-Ifs that are in play.
Contact us if you are interested in our involvement in What-If planning for your organization.
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