NextStorm

Scenario Simulation for Strategic Leaders

Inspired by Best Practices from Emergency Preparedness and Incident Command Systems

The next disruption won’t wait

Rapid shifts in public policy, economic conditions, and global systems are already reshaping how organizations operate. From changing land use regulations to evolving environmental mandates, today’s decisions are being made in an increasingly volatile context. Add to that climate-driven extremes—wildfires, floods, and heatwaves—and intensifying demographic and market pressures, and the picture becomes clear: complexity is the new normal. NextStorm applies scenario planning and systems thinking to help organizations see what’s coming, explore plausible futures, and prepare for disruption before it hits.

What is it?

NextStorm is a two-day, immersive experience for leadership teams who need to navigate high-stakes uncertainty with clarity, confidence, and foresight. Rooted in best practices from emergency preparedness and incident command systems, this offering blends the rigor of contingency planning with the creativity of strategic scenario thinking.

Working together, your team will develop and explore a set of 7–8 plausible but disruptive “VUCA” (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) scenarios — each designed to test your assumptions, challenge your systems, and reveal hidden vulnerabilities. You’ll then prioritize three of the most consequential scenarios and simulate your organization’s response in real time.

This isn’t about predicting the future. It’s about building the leadership capacity to adapt to it.

Program Goals

  • Strengthen your leadership team’s ability to think clearly in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous conditions (VUCA)

  • Build confidence in your organization’s ability to adapt to sudden change or disruption

  • Apply proven emergency preparedness strategies to non-crisis strategic planning

  • Align leadership around priorities, protocols, and core assumptions

Learning Objectives

By the end of the NextStorm experience, your team will:

  • Co-create a set of 7–8 VUCA scenarios grounded in real-world concerns (e.g., political shifts, funding shocks, environmental crises, policy reversals)

  • Identify and focus on three high-priority scenarios that pose the greatest strategic threat or opportunity

  • Simulate your team’s response to these scenarios using techniques adapted from emergency management and incident command

  • Surface internal strengths and weaknesses in your current strategy, systems, and leadership alignment

  • Generate a set of adaptive strategies and clear next steps for increasing organizational resilience

Who It’s For

  • Executive and leadership teams

  • Public land and protected area agencies

  • Parks and public lands conservancies, friend’s groups, nonprofits and foundations

  • Boards and senior staff of mission-driven organizations

Format

  • Two-day facilitated in-person session

  • Day 1: Scenario Development + Prioritization

  • Day 2: Scenario Simulation + Strategic Response

  • Includes pre-session planning consultation and optional post-session report

Methods Used

  • Scenario mapping and VUCA risk modeling

  • Modified emergency preparedness frameworks

  • Real-time team simulation and facilitated debriefs

  • Strategic reflection and group synthesis

How NextStorm Works for Leadership Teams

Ready to explore your organization's NextStorm?

Contact us at info@newlineconsulting.com to learn more.

What they are saying

Photo Credit: Yosemite Conservancy

“I’ve had the privilege of working with New Line Consultants for over 20 years during my service with the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service. As a line officer leading high-performing teams, their tailored sessions were transformative—spanning leadership development, seamless transition sessions into new roles, and strategic planning that delivered truly transformational results.

Over the decades, New Line’s facilitators consistently demonstrated deep expertise in leadership development, strategic planning, and team building—the very offerings at the core of their practice since the 1990s. They crafted strategic action planning sessions that not only output detailed plans, but also energized hearts and minds to implement change—a hallmark of their human-centered methodology.

What sets them apart is adaptability: more recently, they repurposed one of their longstanding preplanning exercises by taking elements from “Table Top Exercises” — held by federal agencies that respond to natural disasters, and created their new offering — NextStorm — to help the Yosemite Conservancy navigate today’s volatile and uncertain landscape within national parks and nonprofit settings. Their capacity to pivot and apply proven frameworks in a new context has been invaluable.

If you're seeking thought-provoking facilitators who bring out the best in your team—and in you as a leader—I strongly endorse New Line Consulting.”

Cassius Cash

Yosemite Conservancy CEO, former Superintendent of Great Smoky Mountains National Park