Scenario Planning in Optometry

We’re always obsessed with measurements and scales because we want to be in control and because we have a hunger for managing things around us. If you want to manage you have to be able to measure; those are words we often hear repeated by optometrists or even sometimes: you cannot manage what you cannot measure. Today’s advancement of technology and since we grew our practices to paperless practice and electronic medical records, the access to data and the extraction of insights have become common tasks. We gather data, prioritize investments, link the commercial results to what data insights inform us, and incorporate everything into the overall strategy of the practice.

In the middle of those stages, specifically, when we try to link the commercial results to what the data insights inform us, we need to make sure that the data provides good insights that inform the future strategy. A way to do this is to test those insights using scenario planning. Basically, what is done in scenario planning is first a “what would you need to believe” analysis, followed by “what conditions would need to be true for X to be a good idea”?

Being able to ask these couple of questions returns a set of potential hypotheses which lead to different scenarios and different outcomes. We should be able to determine each scenario strengths and weaknesses. One scenario may return high rewards for higher risks, while another scenario would yield completely different rewards at low risk. We often hold on to the most credible hypothesis and the most probable scenario to achieve the best outcome. Accordingly, the practice strategy will be gradually shaped making assumptions based on those different scenarios. Using scenario planning will help us test and understand what the outcomes will be without having to completely implement the strategy and risk wasting time and energy.