Advisers’ Choice Series: What If …

3. Scenario swing
A swing is a defined, predicable movement. Well-developed scenarios don't just identify possible outcomes; they might help you work out probable results or situations. The process of describing or analyzing data to identify possibilities could make one outcome seem very likely. The logic of the data could make logical narrative sequences of events seem almost inevitable. Pierre Wack, one of the lead planners at Shell oil company — the commercial scenario-planning pioneer — called this logical narrative "predetermined outcomes." He used the example of the 1,500-mile-long Ganges river in India. A heavy rain in the Himalayas would lead, he said, certainly to a water rush in Allahladad and then inevitably to a flood in Benares at the end of the water journey on the plains.