The current global landscape is complex, presenting organizations with both challenge and opportunity.

For leadership teams worldwide, this requires striking a careful balance between responding to immediate disruption and seizing arising opportunities to bolster growth. Importantly, it also means taking advantage of strong executive and board engagement to build long-term resilience and emerge stronger from the continued uncertainty.

Research conducted by Deloitte Global in 2025 sheds some light on the ways boards are evolving the way they govern and work with management. Of the 750 board members and C-suite executives surveyed, 86% said their boards had increased their focus on overseeing growth strategies and bolstering long-term resilience alongside risk monitoring. Seventy-three percent had stepped up their level of engagement around strategy development and scenario planning in particular.

Indeed, scenario planning is emerging as a key tool here for boards to lean into: 71% of respondents identified it as the area where board oversight can help boost resilience the most. While scenario planning as a strategic exercise has been used since the late 1990’s, boards and management teams now have access to far deeper economic modelling tools, greater ability to continuously scan and monitor early warning signs through AI, and the ability to use scenario frames in a more dynamic way than previously done.

But what does effective scenario planning look like in this new dynamic age, and what part does the board need to play?

Unlike sensitivity analysis which focuses on the response to a change in one variable, scenario planning looks at multiple divergent but plausible narratives which could significantly impact a company’s future.

At Deloitte, we know from our work with some of the largest and most complex global organizations that scenario planning can be a highly impactful tool - whether used to help prepare for existential risks, or to inform decision making at specific, strategic level. The latter could focus, for example, on informing AI adoption or responding to geopolitical change impacting the supply chain, while considering the inherent interconnections with other strategic priorities.

The goal of any scenario planning exercise is to envisage different plausible futures and use these to stress-test existing norms and assumptions, thereby identifying triggers for potential changes of direction – drawing up playbooks that consider a range of uncertainties, and effectively building the organization’s ‘readiness muscle’ to emerging risks and opportunities.

Given these objectives, scenario planning is best carried out using a clear but flexible structure, and as an initiative led by the executive and supported by the board. While there are several ways to conduct this, building and agreeing an appropriate framework is key. Figure 1 sets out one such possible framework for both executive and board teams to work through over three stages - planning, delivery, and follow up – to help ensure a value-enhancing exercise.

Asking the bold, pertinent questions is what boards are here to do. Increased collaboration with management on scenario planning allows boards to not only support good governance and oversight, but also to add significant value. Provided, of course, that the right balance between the board’s and management’s distinct roles is retained, and governance overreach is avoided.

Through open and supportive discussions, the board can help push the boundaries on the range of risks, opportunities and responses to be planned for. This helpful challenge can create clarity around the viability of strategic objectives and determine the actions required to reach them - enhancing the resilience of the organization to a range of ‘what if’ scenarios.

From the board’s standpoint, chairs can draw on the cognitive diversity of the board to help maximize the value added to scenario planning exercises. Working directly with the CEO and pulling together small working groups of board and C-suite members whose experience best aligns with the given scope, chairs can help curate the board’s input across the planning, delivery and follow-up phases. Again, AI tools can play a key supporting role here.

As the board works alongside management through the scenario planning process, important areas to probe include those in Figure 2.

Boards are tilting their priorities and attention towards longer term strategy. Scenario planning is increasingly seen as a key tool in this shift - leveraging the board’s diverse skills and constructive challenge to add significant value to management’s long-term thinking.

Indeed, by collaborating on a periodic (ideally annual) and structured scenario planning exercise, management teams and boards can respond more effectively to arising risks and opportunities, and ultimately help secure the resilience and agility their organization needs to thrive through uncertainty.