What Everybody Ought To Know About Planning Under Uncertainty

The article “Discovery Driven Planning” was published in 1995. The book-length treatment came out in 2009. And yet, we’re only now catching up to what entrepreneurs and corporate innovators have long understood — when you are dealing with uncertainty, you need a plan to learn.

If it were ever possible for business leaders to opt out of having to deal with uncertainty, it definitely isn’t the case today. COVID, snarled supply chains, an end to globalization as we knew it, technology advancing in unexpected ways — you name it, there is no predicting what’s likely to happen next week, let alone over the length of your strategic planning cycle. Don’t despair — using the lens of being discovery driven, you can carve out a path that may not be predictable, but is at least lower in risk.

Creating breakthrough growth in a systematic way

Discovery driven growth involves pursuing your objectives under uncertainty in a way that is both pragmatic and low risk. The essential discipline is to specify a future that is attractive, then work backward into what would have to be true today, the…