Why Change? Why Now? Why You?

How to Use SCR to Answer the Big Three B2B Questions

Situation Complication Resolution (SCR) is a well-known framework used in problem-solving and storytelling. It works by organising arguments logically and persuasively and by creating a dynamic story structure. Because of its effective structure, it has been used by management consulting firms for many years. This article provides an introduction to SCR and describes how it can be used to answer your audience’s most important questions: ‘Why change? Why now? Why you?’

Why Use a Story Structure?

It is challenging to write or talk about a complex topic without falling into one or more of the common pitfalls that frustrate our audience.

We might make incorrect assumptions about what the audience knows about the subject or dive into the details prematurely. Going off on tangents and down proverbial rabbit holes are common, both of which might contribute to us taking too long to get to the point. Or, as a Stanford Professor put it, we might treat our audience as “receptacles for a series of facts” and lose their attention as a result.

A story structure helps us stay out of these pitfalls and improve:

Clarity: to enable the audience to follow the narrative easily.
Focus: making it easier for the audience to follow and grasp the key message.
Relevance: ensuring the story is pertinent to the audience’s needs and interests.
Pace: ensuring we get to the point quickly enough.
Tension: by creating dramatic tension and interest, we can keep the audience engaged and eager to hear what comes next.
Impact: creating a lasting impression that motivates the audience to take action.
Recall: facts are more likely to be remembered if they are presented as part of a story.

Why Use This Story Structure?

Over the course of human history a very large number of story structures have been developed. Perhaps the best known in Western Culture are the Three-Act Structure, Vogler’s Hero’s Journey, Campbell’s Monomyth and Freytag’s Pyramid. There are many more, with diverse origins in time and place from the Kishōtenketsu of antiquity to the 21^stCentury Pixar Story Circle.

We use SCR to support the development of B2B Go To Market Motions for three main reasons. Firstly, because it is particularly well suited to developing a story that makes a strong case for action. Secondly because formulating it requires getting past the obvious and finding some deeper insights. Lastly it’s structure is designed to help break the status quo, and to grab the audience’s attention whilst doing it – which is exactly what we need to do in B2B Sales and Marketing.

How Does SCR Work?

To understand how SCR works, the response we want from the audience is described next to the explanation of each stage.

Setting the Situation

We start with the Situation, which provides an introduction. What is most important to remember about the Situation is that it is the domain of the known facts. If the problem or problems we want to discuss are known to the audience, they can be introduced here. If not, they need to be part of the Complication.

Situation	Desired Audience Response
The Situation frames the important, recent context the audience already knows and accepts as fact. It should be concise and delivered in a neutral tone to set the stage for the Complication.	Agreement and anticipation. We want the audience to nod in agreement with a sense of anticipation.

Introducing The Complication

The Complication takes us beyond the known facts and provides a reason to act. If the problems we want to present are not known to the audience, we can introduce them here. Complications based on insights are especially effective, and there can be more than one Complication. Some SCR practitioners favour using the rule of three.

Complication	Desired Audience Response
The Complication is the reason the Situation requires action. It is introduced as a disruptive change or changes that disrupt the status quo and creates a conflict between the current state described by the Situation and a desired state that will be described in the Resolution.	Disruption and tension. The Complication(s) should grab the audience’s attention by disrupting the status quo and making the case for change. The Complication(s) should also create tension by highlighting what’s at stake and why there’s a need for action.

Providing The Resolution

The Resolution follows the Complication logically and provides a resolution to issues raised in the Situation and/or Complication. It solves the conflict created by the Complication and moves the audience towards a desired outcome.

Resolution	Audience Response
The Resolution provides what is required to solve the problem (or capture an opportunity). This could be a recommendation, plan, solution, or insight that helps to overcome the issue(s) of the Complication.	Desire for action. The Resolution should get the audience thinking, ‘This makes sense’. However, the response needs to go beyond agreement, building on the sense of urgency created by the Complication so that the audience is in favour of acting soon and adopting your proposed solution.

An SCR Example

This example uses fictional players to describe a real-life SCR. Globalmigratecom (GMC), a specialist in enterprise Microsoft 365 tenant-to-tenant migrations, is presenting a solution to executives from Fictmarkco (FMC), a large, highly acquisitive, global marketing network. FMC grows by acquisition and integrates newly acquired companies as quickly as possible. Speed of integration ensures effective collaboration across the global network, which is essential for FMC’s continued growth.

Situation

FMC’s marketing network is growing rapidly, adding a newly acquired company every two months. A vital aspect of the integration that follows every acquisition is the consolidation of Microsoft 365 tenants. Until consolidation is completed, Microsoft users in the acquired companies need to use guest accounts. This inhibits collaboration across the network. Moreover, the creation of many new guest accounts also increases the workload and cost of IT and creates unnecessary security risks.

Complication

With the requirement for global collaboration increasing and the network of companies constantly expanding, FMC’s integration backlog is growing by 700 users per month. However, not only is the backlog growing, but the rate at which it is growing is also accelerating – at the unsustainably high rate of just under 7% per month. Unchecked this means the backlog will double every twelve months and will necessarily result in a pause in acquisitions in the medium term.

The primary factor in the accelerating growth of the backlog is the time taken to consolidate the Microsoft tenants. Accordingly, FMC needs to take decisive action to ensure the company can continue to scale through acquisition, as per the growth strategy.

Specifically, FMC needs to a) reduce the time required to integrate new companies, b) contain the rising operating costs of the Microsoft estate, and c) reduce the security risk of the proliferating guest accounts.

Resolution

FMC needs to establish a faster process and toolset to consolidate Microsoft tenants as part of a worldclass capability to consolidate newly acquired companies rapidly.

The consolidation process needs to be fast, reliable, traceable and nondisruptive. After consolidation, the estate should be less costly to manage and more secure. This improved process requires identifying dependencies and moving users in logical groups to avoid disruption. It must also overcome known throttling limitations and track every item that is migrated.

At GMC, we have a proven track record in meeting these requirements with some of the world’s largest companies and have a detailed plan tailored to meet FMC’s needs.

Why SCR is Effective

SCR helps us organise our thinking logically and creates a simple but dynamic story structure that helps engage the audience. Although it is ‘a formula,’ it is so simple and so effective that it never seems to get tired.

Here’s what we found so appealing about SCR:

With SCR, you never need to wonder about where to start the story. The Situation requires a crisp summary of the most relevant known facts as the starting point.
While the exercise in summarisation required for the Situation is demanding it is helpful in that it ensures we focus on what is most important.
While demanding to formulate, The Complication requires you to get beyond the obvious. Clearly, Identifying the Complication (s) is the most challenging part of SCR because it requires an insight or set of insights. That might sound like a bad thing, but given insights are what your audience wants most, the effort is absolutely worthwhile.
SCR is well suited to conveying a logical argument but is also designed to engage the audience through tension created by the Complication and resolved in the Resolution. It is not easy to accomplish both simultaneously, but SCR provides us with the mechanism to do it.
SCR provides a sophisticated method for presenting a solution. Going straight from problem to solution can come across as overly simplistic and self-serving. Happily, SCR ensures we include both sufficient context (in the Situation) and some insight (in the Complication), which creates a far more sophisticated and compelling narrative.
SCR is flexible in terms of accommodating what the audience knows and does not know. If the problem(s) is known to the audience, it can be included in the Situation. If not, it can be included in the Complication.
SCR enables the writer/speaker to address three pivotal questions: ‘Why change? Why now? Why you?’

Conclusion

There is power in SCR’s structure, but it is brought to life by the work done by the writer/presenter on behalf of the audience. Accordingly, it takes a little time and effort to master.

It is extremely versatile: SCR can be used as a framework for problem- and storytelling in many ways – in presentations, written communications, business plans, and even investment pitches to VCs. It works because the writer/presenter invests time in understanding the audience and structuring the resultant communication.

Whatever the use case, the three elements of SCR should create a simple but dynamic story and answer your audience’s most important questions: ‘Why change? Why now? Why you?’