Consulting Lessons Learned 16: Use scenarios to reduce complexity
Let’s say you are calculating a business case. Usually, there will be a bunch of options you would like to take into consideration:
Closing plant A or B? Reducing or increasing product portfolio? and so on…
Of course you could build a super complex model that let’s you play freely with all these variables. But this isn’t very efficient.
Instead: Try to define a set of clever scenarios and build a model that only takes into consideration the scenarios and underlying variables you defined.
Scenario-based working is great whenever you are faced with a lot of complexity. So the next time you need to develop a recommendation for a complex problem: Think backwards – define scenarios – and evaluate which scenario is most beneficial.
