Explaining the 3 Scenarios and the flags - Liminal Leadership

14 Oct 2026 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:48

In this segment of the Liminal Leadership video, the speaker illustrates how scenario planning can be operationalized through the use of “flags” – observable indicators such as sales trends, expense changes, or supply‑chain disruptions – that signal which future trajectory a business is heading toward. He outlines a three‑scenario framework: the middle‑of‑the‑road (projected) future, the utopian (preferred) future, and the dystopian (undesirable) future. By interpreting flags, leaders can diagnose whether they are veering toward an unwanted outcome or a promising one, and then decide on concrete actions – adjusting strategy, acquiring new competencies, and rallying stakeholders – to steer the organization toward the preferred scenario while distancing it from the dystopian one. The talk blends practical business examples with futurist terminology, encouraging leaders to be proactive in shaping outcomes.

Chapters

There's another one. Let's just look at sales figures. You look at last year's data, you look at your hopes and dreams, and you create a budget. You've got a set of data, something to measure against. And then all of a sudden, you look at your sales figures and they're not working. Your sales are down, your expenses up. There's suddenly tariffs, there's a war, your supply chain is interrupted, and the flags that you're seeing the declining sales, the increasing expenses, those flags are telling you a direction that you're going in, and this is a problem for your business. You need to take some kind of action. Or maybe something that you do is brilliant. It's, uh, oh, people just love you. You're going viral. Um, you're flavor of the month. Everybody wants to buy you, um, and money is pouring in, and your expenses are fine, and now you're thinking time to buy that fancy new car. So you can take action based on the indicators of those flags. Those aren't the only ways to name them. I always start with that, you know, your middle of the road, your utopian and dystopian, but you could have other names. And to my futurist colleagues here, just cut me a little slack because I'm going to play around a little bit here with some of the words. But it's just for us to get an idea of how we can use scenarios. So the middle of the road is our projected future, where we think we're going, where we're kind of like planning to go there. Our utopian could be our preferred future. We're going in this direction, we would much prefer to go in that direction. What do we need to change now today to go in that other direction? Who do we need to get on board? What skills do we need to learn? What competencies do we need to develop so we can get closer to our preferred future and much, much further away from the future we're trying to avoid?