Scenario planning is increasingly used to test decisions against several possible futures, yet adoption remains uneven. Recent surveys found that roughly one-third of organizations did not run scenario analyses across the risks examined, while only 14% of US private-company directors were very satisfied that management’s scenario planning identified and quantified strategic risks. The figures below show where scenario planning is established, where it remains informal, and how its use varies by context.
Contents
- Adoption across organizations
- Boards and strategic decisions
- Crises, cash, and supply chains
- Public-sector policy
- Climate and sustainability
- Geopolitical risk and emerging technology
Adoption across organizations
The 2025 survey reported by McKinsey shows a broad gap between recognizing uncertainty and building a repeatable scenario process. About 33% of surveyed organizations said they did not run scenario analyses across the risk types examined. A separate McKinsey exhibit from the same 2025 survey reported that about 50% of organizations did no scenario planning. These figures describe survey findings rather than a universal estimate of all organizations.
Among organizations that did use scenarios, the depth of use varied. Across risk types, 9% to 40% of respondents reported using qualitative scenarios on an ad hoc basis. Another 13% to 31% said their organizations applied structured scenarios for select decisions. The ranges indicate that practice differed by risk type, and they should not be read as a single adoption rate. Source: The art, science, and technology of geopolitical scenario planning (McKinsey, 2025 survey).
Supply-chain planning showed a similar divide. Only 37% of supply-chain survey respondents said their organizations had implemented scenario planning in the 2022 survey. In a 2025 survey, only 2 in 10 organizations said scenario planning was fully integrated into supply-chain strategies. The two measures use different surveys and should not be treated as a time-series comparison. Sources: Supply chain disruption and resilience and Supply chain scenario planning.
Government planning is more institutionalized in the OECD evidence. More than 66% of OECD countries had a national long-term planning or strategic foresight unit at the centre of government in 2018. More than 90% of those units considered regional elements and dimensions in their work. About 66% of OECD countries used both forecasting and strategic foresight in regional planning processes, while trend analysis had been applied at least once in 28 of the 35 countries responding to the OECD Regional Outlook Survey. Source: Adapting regional development policy to future megatrends (OECD, 2018 and 2018 survey).
Boards and strategic decisions
Board-level statistics suggest that scenario planning fits naturally with oversight responsibilities, but satisfaction with execution is limited. In a 2025 survey of US private-company directors, 50% said their boards add value by challenging strategic assumptions. Another 48% cited fresh perspectives on markets, competitors, customers, and trends, while 46% said their boards help management identify potential opportunities and risks.
The remaining responses describe other ways boards contribute to strategic planning. Thirty-six percent said their boards help align strategy, risk, controls, incentives, and culture. Thirty-four percent cited monitoring strategic execution, and 3% selected “other.” These are response shares for reported sources of board value; the categories are not presented as mutually exclusive. Source: Directors Quarterly Q4 2025 (KPMG, 2025 survey).
Directors were less positive when asked whether management’s scenario planning identified and quantified strategic risks. Fourteen percent were very satisfied, 34% were satisfied, and 38% were somewhat satisfied. Another 14% were not satisfied. In compact form:
| Director response | Share of US private-company directors |
|---|---|
| Very satisfied | 14% |
| Satisfied | 34% |
| Somewhat satisfied | 38% |
| Not satisfied | 14% |
The distribution shows that scenario planning can be recognized as a board priority without producing uniform confidence in the resulting risk analysis. The survey measures directors’ views, not an independent assessment of the quality of each company’s scenarios. Source: Directors Quarterly Q4 2025.
Crises, cash, and supply chains
The COVID-19 crisis produced unusually high use of scenario-based planning among finance leaders. In a 2020–2021 CFO survey, 90% of respondents said they used at least three scenarios to support planning during the crisis. More than 40% dedicated a significant share of crisis-management efforts to scenario-based cash planning, and more than 70% said they would hold back a reasonable amount of cash based on scenario planning. Cash-constrained companies typically used 13-week cash-forecast models to navigate the 2020–2021 crisis. Source: Scenario-based cash planning in a crisis (McKinsey, 2020–2021 CFO survey and crisis period).
Supply-chain data from 2022 links scenario planning with resilience measures, although the reported relationships are survey associations rather than proof of causation. Sixty-seven percent of supply-chain respondents had implemented digital dashboards for end-to-end visibility. Companies with those dashboards were 2 times as likely as others to avoid disruption-related supply-chain problems. Supply-chain organizations that had implemented scenario planning were also 2 times as likely as others to have avoided supply-chain challenges.
The same 2022 survey found that more than 90% of respondents in almost every surveyed industry had invested in digital supply-chain technologies in the prior year. Just over 80% expected to make further digital supply-chain investments in the current year and beyond. A separate 2026 survey found that 73% of supply-chain leaders planned a comprehensive operating-model transformation within three years. These results come from different periods and sources, so they describe separate snapshots rather than a single trend. Sources: Supply chain disruption and resilience and Supply chain scenario planning.
Public-sector policy
Scenario planning is also used to make policy choices more robust under changing conditions. In a 2022 survey of UK regulators, 12 of 18 organizations used scenario planning to explore alternative ways a policy area might develop. Three of 18 used it to identify key policy requirements under different conditions, while 2 of 18 used it to consider how key actors might behave under different conditions. One of 18 organizations reported that it did not undertake future scenario planning.
These counts describe the uses selected in a specific UK regulator sample; they are not estimates for every public-sector organization. Source: Closing the gap: Regulators’ survey findings (UK regulator survey, 2022).
The OECD evidence provides a broader government-planning perspective. About 66% of OECD countries combined forecasting and strategic foresight in regional planning rather than using forecasting alone. The OECD regional survey covered 35 country responses. Alongside the finding that more than 66% of OECD countries had a national long-term planning or strategic foresight unit at the centre of government, these results point to scenario work becoming part of formal planning capacity in many countries by 2018. Source: Adapting regional development policy to future megatrends.
Climate and sustainability
Climate statistics show a sharp mismatch between exposure to disruption and preparedness. In a 2021 global CEO study, only 7% of CEOs reported having advanced early-warning systems or scenario planning for climate disruption. At the same time, 50% said their companies were already grappling with supply-chain disruption from extreme weather. Among the largest companies in Europe and North America, 63% of CEOs reported extreme-weather supply-chain disruption. Source: Businesses need clearer governance to get to net zero (World Economic Forum, 2021 CEO study).
The same study found that 71% of CEOs said their companies were actively working to develop a net-zero emissions target, while 57% believed their companies were operating in line with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal. Only 2% of companies represented in the study had a net-zero target validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. Only 18% of CEOs said governments had given them enough clarity to operate in line with a 1.5°C warming trajectory. More than 1,000 companies had set 1.5°C-aligned science-based targets during the COP26 period in 2021. These figures concern different aspects of climate planning and should not be interpreted as one consistent validation rate.
More recent Asia-Pacific CEO Outlook data reported that 74% of Asia-Pacific CEOs said AI could enhance climate-risk modelling and scenario planning. Seventy-seven percent said AI could improve sustainability-related data quality and reporting. These are expectations about potential capability, not measured improvements in scenario accuracy. Source: ESG: KPMG Asia Pacific CEO Outlook 2025 (2025 CEO Outlook).
Geopolitical risk and emerging technology
The 2026 geostrategy evidence separates organizations by their approach to risk. Risk Strategist organizations were 48% more likely than other organizations to reduce their proportion of unexpected risks. Sixty-two percent of Geostrategist organizations proactively conducted scenario analysis to identify risk-mitigation measures, compared with 33% of Observer organizations.
Political-risk scenario planning showed an even wider difference: 73% of Geostrategist organizations proactively used it to design and test strategy, compared with 35% of Observer organizations. Sixty-three percent of Geostrategist organizations reported improved response time to political-risk events, compared with 47% of Observer organizations. The study’s organizational labels and comparisons are retained here because the results are reported by those categories. Source: Geostrategy in Practice 2026 (EY, 2026 study).
Disruption-response data also favors broader change programs in the 2026 survey. Among organizations pursuing enterprise-wide changes, 83% said they fully or mostly achieved intended disruption-response outcomes, compared with 28% of organizations pursuing incremental approaches. Yet 46% of executives identified scenario planning or rapid-response processes among the disruption responses with the highest failure rates. The contrast suggests that scenario planning may be useful while still being difficult to embed in an operating model. Source: The Focus Factor (KPMG, 2026 survey).
Board-risk data points to a remaining governance gap. Forty-four percent of board-risk survey respondents said their boards needed stronger scenario planning and stress testing. Forty-three percent said their company’s risk appetite was formally articulated and documented, while 58% said their boards continuously reassessed risk appetite as conditions changed. These results cover a 2024–2026 survey period and reflect respondent assessments rather than a common maturity test. Source: How boards can support risk-aligned strategy.