Should it be for business or personal life, you should always be ready for the worst-case scenario. But not only.
Preparing for the worst outcome does not mean you’re ready for all the other better scenarios.
One should think about 3 plausible situations that are more or less favorable, ranked by the best to the worst.
When you have prepared for these, no matter the case, you can always jump to the next if the one at hand is not happening.
In negotiation, the worst scenario is called the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). What are you left with if the other party to your negotiation leaves the table?
By planning the best to worst scenarios, you appear relaxed, confident, and you don’t get easily surprised.
You’d think that it applies only if you have few decisions to make, but the more decisions you have to make, the more prepared you need to be. One or two decisions without preparation could collapse your entire program.
By preparing various alternatives, your decision making process also improves.
Time to work. What are your 3 biggest decisions to make right now? What are the 3 alternative cases that you can see for each? Write them down, and devise a plan for them.
Have you been surprised and distraught before by a scenario that you had planned and which didn’t happen as you expected? What did you learn from it? What would you have done differently? Leave a comment in the section below.