You’re walking into the meeting thinking: “Sarah’s going to push back on the budget. Tom will want more time for research. The CFO is going to ask about ROI. If I can get marketing to support this, finance will probably follow.”
You’ve built an entire script in your head about how the conversation will go. You’ve predicted reactions, planned responses, and mentally rehearsed your arguments. You know exactly how Sarah will react when you show the numbers. You can already hear Tom’s request for more data. You’ve prepared three different answers for the CFO’s inevitable ROI question.
Then the meeting starts, and none of it happens the way you expected. Sarah loves the budget—turns out her team just got additional funding and she’s looking for places to invest it. Tom’s ready to move fast because he’s under pressure to show results this quarter. The CFO isn’t worried about ROI at all; he’s concerned about timing because of an upcoming audit. And now you’re scrambling because your entire forecast was wrong.
Lesson learned
I learned this lesson during a system upgrade proposal I thought I had completely figured out. I spent days preparing for what I was certain would be pushback from the security team about implementation timelines. I had charts ready showing how we could phase the rollout. I practiced explaining our testing protocols. I was ready for their concerns about downtime.
The meeting started, and the security lead’s first words were: “We’ve been waiting for this upgrade for months. How quickly can we move?” All my preparation for resistance became irrelevant. Meanwhile, I was completely unprepared for the finance questions that actually came up about ongoing maintenance costs.
That’s when I realized the fundamental problem with forecasting: you’re trying to predict something that’s inherently unpredictable. People’s priorities change. Their moods shift. They have information you don’t have. Rooms are living systems where energy shifts, alliances form, and new information emerges in real time.
This is why you don’t forecast the room. You set scenarios instead.
When you try to predict exactly how a situation will unfold, you’re making dangerous assumptions. You assume you know what everyone’s thinking, that the dynamics will stay static, that your script will control the outcome, and that being right about predictions matters more than adapting to reality.
But flexibility beats forecasting every time. The professionals who handle meetings, negotiations, and complex conversations most effectively aren’t the ones who predict what will happen. They’re the ones who prepare for multiple possibilities and stay agile enough to work with whatever actually emerges.
Instead of walking into situations invested in being right about something you can’t control, you can prepare intelligently for multiple realities. You can plan without predicting. You can stay ready rather than trying to be right.
The goal isn’t to forecast the future. The goal is to be effective with whatever future actually shows up.