Future-Focused Scenario Planning

To move above transactional tasks and think strategically, cabinet members need to get above their day-to-day and develop new strategic thinking skills. Use multiple potential futures to think outside the norm and develop a strategic mindset by determining how their institution would remain solvent in various disruptive environments.

This toolkit will help community college leaders put on a scenario planning workshop for their campus to better prepare for the future. Facilitators of the workshop will immerse participants in three future scenarios that look dramatically different than the present. Participants will then work together to craft a strategic enrollment management strategy that allows them to be successful in the imagined future worlds.

Use these workshop tools from the Community College Executive Forum to exercise strategic thinking muscles, align college strategy with the needs and challenges of tomorrow, and create institutional strategy that is responsive to market forces. By the end of the exercise, participants should be able to:

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This resource is part of the Craft a Future-Oriented Strategic Enrollment Management Plan Roadmap. Access the Roadmap for stepwise guidance with additional tools and research.

Visualize and imagine a dramatically different future world and articulate the impact on their institutionsOutline an approach for how to remain solvent (in terms of enrollments) in such a disruptive environmentUnderstand the value of strategic enrollment management planning for community colleges, and have a strong sense for why it’s important to consider a multiplicity of future and external states when crafting enrollment plans

Download the full toolkit or explore each of the three workshop scenarios below.

In contrast to the…