As we navigate March 2025, leaders across sectors face a familiar challenge: maintaining long-term focus amid constant change. Whether you're leading a growing business, scaling a non-profit organization, or just managing a team to meet this year's objectives, the pressing question remains: how can we focus on long-term goals while everything around us is in flux?
Change has been a constant for most of my professional life—I still remember navigating the 2008 financial crisis during the first years running my company, thinking things would eventually "get back to normal." But we are experiencing high change as the normal state of affairs these days. Elections upend long-held assumptions, funding sources become unstable overnight, central banks make unexpected interest rate moves, market conditions alter priorities, partners take an unexpected turn to a different business focus, and new technologies emerge demanding immediate attention. Leadership teams aren't under personal assault (though sometimes it feels that way!), but their carefully crafted plans certainly are.
During times of high change, strategic plans are suddenly called into question, and the real challenge emerges—sustaining strategic focus while still adapting to changing conditions.
Traditional approaches to strategic management fall dangerously short in today's environment. Annual plans appear outdated within weeks of the start of the year, and rigid strategic frameworks create blind spots in the adaptation process. Drifting away from priorities without a rationale leads to organizational confusion and erosion of leadership confidence. (Yuck!)
The entrepreneurial leaders thriving today—in both for-profit and non-profit sectors—have discovered that scenario planning isn't just a tactical exercise—it's a powerful strategic alignment tool that creates clarity and maintains strategic coherence through periods of high change.
Research from the big management consulting firms as well as academic institutions provides great insights into the staggering impact of strategic drift on organizations:
These challenges hit entrepreneurial-led organizations especially hard. They don’t have the resources to focus on the highest strategic priorities despite constant environmental evolution.
The question isn't whether to adapt—it's how to adapt while maintaining what matters most. Let's explore how scenario planning provides the framework to achieve this balance.
The solution isn't eliminating strategic adaptation—it's building an organization that can maintain clarity about its core purpose while flexibly responding to change. Here's how to use scenario planning to sustain strategic focus during high change:
Step 1: Develop Your Strategic Anchor Points
Start by establishing the non-negotiable elements that remain constant regardless of external change:
Step 2: Map Your Strategic Flexibility Zones
With your anchor points established, identify where strategic flexibility is both possible and desirable:
Areas where strategic consistency creates long-term value:
Areas where measured adaptation enhances strategic position:
Areas requiring maximum adaptability to maintain strategic relevance:
This mapping prevents both strategic drift (changing elements that should remain constant) and strategic rigidity (failing to adapt elements that require flexibility).
Maria Rodriguez, Executive Director of Healthcare Access Network, a 35-person non-profit focused on rural healthcare access, faced a strategic dilemma when a major policy shift threatened their traditional clinic-based model.
Instead of abandoning their strategy or rigidly maintaining it, Rodriguez applied scenario planning to maintain strategic focus while adapting their approach. First, she clarified their immutable core: "ensuring healthcare access for rural communities regardless of delivery model."
With this anchor established, Rodriguez's team developed three scenarios about how rural healthcare delivery might evolve post-policy change. For each scenario, they identified:
When the policy change took effect, they activated "Scenario B," which maintained their strategic focus on rural healthcare access, shifting from physical clinics to a hybrid telehealth/mobile clinic model. Because they had maintained clarity about their strategic anchor points while planning flexible delivery methods, they smoothly transitioned while preserving their mission integrity.
The results were impressive: they maintained 93% of their service coverage while reducing operational costs by 17%. Actually, they increased patient satisfaction scores by focusing their in-person services on the highest-need situations.
"Without scenario planning, we might have either stayed rigidly committed to our clinic model or panicked and lost strategic focus entirely," explains Rodriguez. "Instead, we adapted our methods while keeping our mission crystal clear."
For each scenario you identify, develop strategic options that maintain your anchor points while adapting your approach:
Create a clear strategic narrative that helps stakeholders understand both continuity and change:
When activating a new scenario, maintain strategic alignment through these practices:
What Doesn't Work
What Works
These practical tools help maintain strategic coherence during periods of high change:
Create a simple decision framework that guides strategic choices:
Develop a living document that maps key strategic uncertainties:
As an entrepreneurial leader, your own strategic clarity radiates throughout your organization:
In a constantly changing environment, strategic focus isn't achieved through rigid planning but through clarity about what remains constant amid what must change. Scenario planning gives you the framework to maintain this delicate balance.
Start implementing this approach with these immediate actions:
In our next post, "Scenario Planning: Using Agility to Create The Competitive Edge," we'll explore transforming your newfound strategic focus capability into market advantage through rapid experimentation and competitive positioning. Subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when the next article is published!
What strategies have helped your organization maintain strategic focus during periods of high change? Share your experiences in the comments below.