A Leader's Guide to Strategic Foresight & Scenario Planning
At CU Conferences’ 2025 National Director’s Roundtable, I had the pleasure of presenting a framework for building a more resilient strategy. The core idea is that in today's unpredictable world, the old playbook for strategic planning is no longer sufficient. The old playbook, a rigid process of annual forecasting that produces a static, rarely-used document, creates a dangerous gap between a credit union's current operations and the realities of the emerging environment. The most important question for leaders is not just "What is our plan?" but "How resilient is our plan?"
The answer lies in moving from static planning to building a resilient model. This is achieved through a disciplined, three-part process designed to stress-test your business against the forces of change and build a deep awareness of your unique vulnerabilities and opportunities.
Part 1: The Blueprint – Mapping Your Business Model Canvas
Before you can plan for the future, you must agree on the present. The process begins with the Business Model Canvas—a powerful, one-page blueprint of your entire operation that provides a shared language to describe exactly how your credit union functions right now. It creates a clear, honest snapshot of how you create, deliver, and capture value through nine interconnected blocks:
Segments: The unique groups of people you aim to reach and serve.
Value Proposition: How you “ease pains” and “produce gains” for your segments.
Channels: How you communicate with and deliver your value propositions to your segments.
Service Relationship: The context for how you relate to and serve your segments.
Revenue Streams/Impact: How your value propositions make money or create impact.
Key Activities: What you do to deliver or support your value propositions.
Key Resources (Assets): What you need to deliver your value propositions.
Key Partners: Third parties that help you deliver or support your value propositions.
Cost Structures: The major drivers of cost necessary to support your value proposition.
Part 2: The Test – Stress-Testing with Plausible Scenarios
A business model blueprint is static, but the world is not. The next step is to introduce dynamic "what-if" scenarios to see how your model holds up under pressure. A scenario is not a prediction; it's a plausible story about a potential future that helps you challenge assumptions. Using a framework like PESTELC (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal, Competitive) helps ensure you explore a wide range of external forces. For example, a credit union might ask:
What if a major FinTech launches a high-yield checking account targeting our core member demographic?
Part 3: The Intersection – Focusing on What Matters
Not all scenarios are created equal. To prioritize your focus, each scenario must be assessed on its Likelihood (probability), its potential Impact (severity), and its Time Horizon (urgency). This analysis produces a "Significance Score" that tells you how quickly you need to act.
The real work is in diagnosing the specific impact. For each significant scenario, you must ask: "If this happens, which parts of our Business Model Canvas break first? Which are strengthened?" This forces a deep, actionable understanding of cause and effect. For example, a "New Remote Work" trend directly impacts your Channels (less branch traffic) and Member Relationships (demand for digital).
A Practical Example: AI-Generated Scenarios
When presenting this concept at the conference, I fed a sample credit union business model to an AI and tasked it with generating three plausible future scenarios. The output provides a clear example of the types of challenges boards should be considering.
Scenario 1: The Digital Disintermediation (Mid-term)
A major tech consortium launches a fully-integrated financial platform with a "personal CFO" that offers hyper-personalized advice, making the credit union's digital offerings feel antiquated. This scenario fundamentally challenged the core Value Proposition and Customer Relationships of the sample business model.
Scenario 2: The Great Rate Compression (Near-term)
A prolonged, ultra-low interest rate environment virtually eliminates the spread between deposit and loan rates. This scenario directly attacks the credit union's primary Revenue Stream, making it impossible to cover the existing Cost Structure.
Scenario 3: The Autonomous Commute (Long-term)
The rise of affordable "Mobility-as-a-Service" platforms leads to a rapid decline in personal car ownership. This scenario threatens the obsolescence of a cornerstone Key Activity (auto lending) and a Key Partnership (auto dealerships).
Conclusion: From Awareness to Action
This three-part process—Blueprint, Test, and Intersection—builds the deep awareness required to forge strategic objectives that are a direct and robust response to your most critical challenges and opportunities. Your strategic objectives are no longer created in a vacuum; they are directly tied to mitigating threats and seizing opportunities identified through rigorous analysis. The result is a strategy that is robust, resilient, and prepares your credit union to not only weather disruption but to find opportunities within it.
Our Strategic Planning process is built on this powerful framework. To learn how we can facilitate this process for your board, schedule a private consultation.
