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Scenarios and Forecasting: Planning for Uncertainty

Improve strategic decision-making with enhanced forecasting methods and by leveraging scenarios to foster insight.

Selecting the appropriate sources and methodology for forecasts is paramount to the success of your strategy. Systematic scenario planning can be an effective tool to improve the reliability of forecasts.


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Presented by a collaboration of the SDG Decision Education Center and our academic partner, Texas Executive Education

  • Description
  • Instructors
  • Earn a Certificate
  • CEU

Utilizing the integrated approach taught in this program prepares you to create value for your organization by broadening strategic thinking about the future and creating strategies that are robust across many possible futures. You learn how to select the appropriate sources and methodology for forecasts, and then design and develop effective forecasts that improve your decisions. You will build on data and analytics, and you will learn to incorporate better judgment systematically.

Benefits

  • Examine and employ a four-step process of developing and using scenarios within a strategic decision-making process
  • Discuss best practices for developing forecasting models, assessing quantitative information, and updating assessments with new information
  • Identify, graphically, the primary factors to be considered in a forecasting model and the relationships among them utilizing a relevance diagram
  • Parameterize the model by choosing formulas to represent projections in the model
  • Recognize the ambiguity and confusion created when people use words such as “likely,” “good possibility,” etc. in forecasts, rather than explicit probabilities
  • Learn to assess event probabilities by studying a company that has become extremely skilled at this process
  • Apply a rigorous quantitative approach to situations with very low probabilities and high consequences.


Prerequisites: None

Delivery Options
  • At UT Austin
  • At your workplace
 

 

 

Eric Bickel
Dr. Eric Bickel is an SDG Fellow and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin), where he is Director of the Graduate Program in Operations Research & Industrial Engineering, and Academic Director of the Strategic Decision and Risk Management Certificate (SDRM) Program. Dr. Bickel also holds courtesy appointments in the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering and the Energy and Earth Resources graduate program.

 

Bruce Judd
Bruce Judd is a partner and managing director at Strategic Decisions Group. He founded and co-leads the firm’s executive education program. Dr. Judd works with senior executives, internal consultants, facilitators, and analysts involved in making strategic decisions through a combination of on-the-job coaching, professional development and classroom work.

 

Carl Spetzler
Carl Spetzler has helped top business leaders over 40 years to create innovative new strategies that deal with the complexities of uncertainty and risk over long time horizons. Chairman of Strategic Decisions Group, he is the lead author of Decision Quality: Value Creation from Better Business Decisions (Wiley, 2016).

 

Trina Weller
Trina Weller has been a decision professional for more than 25 years, applying her expertise in consulting, software development and education. She frequently leads courses for SDG clients and has taught in programs at Stanford University and Santa Clara University. She is a Fellow of the Society of Decision Professionals.

The Strategic Decision and Risk Management Certificate Program provides executives and mid-career professionals with the concepts and advanced knowledge to make high-quality decisions and embrace risk and uncertainty for competitive advantage. The certificate is a recognition that you have the advanced skills to lead decision making in your organization. Earn the SDRM certificate by completing six 2-day classes.

SDG is pleased to collaborate with The University of Texas at Austin to offer the SDRM certificate.
 

Click to View the Full List of Courses


 

This course is ideal for those seeking continuing education units (CEUs) or continuing professional education units (CPEs) to maintain or advance your professional skills. Participants earn 1.75 CEUs and/or 17.5 CPEs for this course.