Every planning cycle ends with one number on a slide: the target. Set it too high and you demotivate the business; too low and you leave growth on the table - and a single-point target says nothing about the assumptions beneath it.
Taimur Abdaal (Managing Director of Lucanet's xP&A product, former founder of Causal) and Carsten Gerger (Lucanet VP Finance) make the case for setting targets against a range of scenarios instead of one fixed forecast, and show how multi-scenario planning in xP&A helps finance teams pressure-test assumptions, balance top-down ambition with bottom-up reality, and commit to targets they can defend and adjust as conditions change.
Key takeaways:
- Why single-point targets create false precision and the wrong incentives - sandbagging on one side, demotivation on the other.
- A repeatable framework for reconciling top-down ambition with bottom-up plans, instead of negotiating in the dark.
- How to build base, upside, and downside scenarios that actually drive the target rather than sitting beside it on a slide.
- How driver-based, multi-scenario planning in xP&A makes a target defensible to the board and adjustable as conditions change.
- Practical first steps to bring scenario-based target-setting into your next planning cycle.