Scope Works Consulting

Viability, Liability and Consequence - VLC An approach to aid decision making prior to taking action VLC (Viability, Liability and Consequence) provides structure to what we term ‘Spacial Thinking’ in that it encourages the practitioner to examine and investigate the full spectrum of short, medium and long term effects in the immediate, near and far field regions. Viability examines the immediate effect of the action within the investment time frames and within the confines of the business. This typically is covered by feasibility studies, will the action provide benefit, for businesses, this tends to focus on the bottom line profits or progress towards an intended objective. Viability can be considered the short range view Liability tends to look a little wider, examining the risks over the entire life cycle of the action and expanding to investigate the impact of those directly involved. Questions such as what if something goes wrong and what negative impacts may be associated with the intended action. Limited companies by definition have limited liabilities, established by rules and regulations. Liability can be considered the medium range view Consequence is an attempt to gain understanding of the long term impacts over time and in the broadest sense of connectedness. Based on the principle that everything is connected, nothing exists in isolation, the action will impact everything, and sometimes even the most remote of connections can have huge impacts. By way of example, the forming of the internet initially enabled people to easily communicate and share data over large distances, but the consequence has been that today nearly all businesses, banking, communications and social monitoring depend on the internet. Consequence attempts to examine the impacts far reaching in terms of distance and time.