Scenario Planning for the moon or the stars - Russell Colbourne

Russell Colbourne - "Your Money Machine"

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Introduction
Your business is Your Money Machine.  In this Show – I’ll take you under the hood of your enterprise and show you how to fine tune your business.  Get ready for lift off as we add rocket fuel to your profitability!  This show is focused on businesses that have launched and are preparing for exponential growth.

Are you sure you’re ready for exponential growth?  Getting your mindset right to transition from business owner to CEO.  Are you prepared to give up some control and trust others to help you build?  As well as ensuring all your systems and standard operating procedures have been documented and are in place, you will need to ensure your financial reporting provides you with the feedback you need to run your business.  

Scenario Planning attempts to eliminate the two most common errors made in any strategic analysis - Overprediction and Underprediction of the company's future. Most of the organizations make this error while analyzing their strategies. Even if the rate of change in our life is accelerated to a great extent, the future might not hold what we expect.

Scenario planning will help us draw a line between over and under predictions. It will expand the range of opportunities your see while keeping you from drifting into some science fiction movie. Scenario planning will do this by segregation of the knowledge we have into two areas.

1. Things we know about

2. Things we are uncertain about

Scenarios give us a view on what can happen in the future, but it does not provide us with the strategies to deal with them. The overall purpose is to build strategic thinking that encourages variety and provides us with a sharper approach about the available opportunities.

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Show Objectives - The Why
It goes without saying, though I am saying it, that you want the maximum level of growth possible without hitting the Stage IV Failure Point - Destruction of Working Capital.

Based on previous shows, we discussed how to build a scenario spreadsheet so you can change the variables to the impact on different parts of the business. Now we are going to establish the best case given your current configuration and how long to reach full capacity.

Key Issues - Owner Perspective:

1. A model of cause and effect relationships,
2. Work forwards from marketing spend to impact on cash flow - best case,
3. Work backwards from cash flow to marketing spend - realistic case,
4. Plan hyper growth scenario - 40% plus to determine bottlenecks,
5. Plan fast growth scenario - 25-40% to determine bottlenecks

What You Need to Know - The What​​​
​Step 1: Brainstorm Future Scenarios
Step 2: Identify trends and driving forces
Step 3: Create A Scenario Planning Template
Step 4: Develop a Scenario
Step 5: Evaluate a Scenario
Step 6: Update Strategies and Policies Accordingly

​What You Need to Do​​ - The How

1. Make sure your scenario planning spreadsheet has all of the variables separated from the formulas.
2. Start with known constraints - i.e. the number of people available, and place those into the spreadsheet.
3. If you didn't fix the constraints, how much growth is possible by month (total dollars sold, built, and delivered)?
4. Divide your estimated total capacity by growth per month - how long will it take to maximize the businesses potential?
5. What is your annual growth rate?
6. Change the scenario to 25% growth over the year, where are all of the constraints?
7. What will that require?
8. Change the scenario to 40% growth over the year, where are all of the constraints?
9. What will that require?
10. What is your target growth, how long to reach full potential, what must happen prior to starting aggressive growth?

Shows

• Previous: Episode F3.009Leaving Earth's Orbit - are you ready for exponential growth?
• Next: EPISODE A3.011 Reorganizing - Right Structure for the Future

Written by Russell Colbourne, FCCA, GAICD
Your Money Machine

Russell is a CFO and Entrepreneur who has worked across a diverse range of industries over the past 25 years.  After a short service commission as a pilot flying Seaking Helicopters in the British Royal Navy, Russell studied business and qualified as a Chartered Certified Accountant (ACCA) in the UK. Since then he has been integral with the start-up of many successful companies and operations within larger organisations.  He has bought, sold and spun off business operations in the UK, Australia and the US. 
 
​In 1994 Russell joined Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic Airlines where he was responsible for a number of innovative services that were, at the time, ground breaking and helped revolutionise air transport.  From launching the world’s first limo boat on the River Thames to developing the world’s first handheld check-in device and implementing drive through check-in booths around the world, Russell has helped the Virgin Group deliver unparalleled customer service. In 2000 Russell was the first of the Virgin team to arrive in Australia to start a new low cost Airline, and within 8 months had built a team operating flights between Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

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