Rethinking Strategic Planning a Futures Perspective 1195972053658615 4

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8/3/2019 Rethinking Strategic Planning a Futures Perspective 1195972053658615 4

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STRATEGIC PLANNINGREVISITED: A FUTURES

PERSPECTIVE

Maree Conway Association of University Administrators Conference April 2007

A BIT ABOUT ME

• 25+ years as a manager in higher education and TAFE, in a range of institutions in Brisbane and Melbourne, and in a range of jobs (studentadmin, faculty admin, secretariat, policy, planning, quality andstatistics). Almost 15 of those years at Swinburne University - in six

• Five internal re-structures at Swinburne led me to foresight in 1999,when I established a Foresight and Planning unit that lasted until 2004.

• After the demise of foresight at Swinburne, I moved to VictoriaUniversity in March 2005 to pursue futures work (as well as quality,planning, statistics and surveys).

A BIT ABOUT ME

• Enrolled in Masters in Strategic Foresight at Swinburne.

• Planning a PhD on the conflicting and converging images of the future

held by academics and administrators in universities.

• Consulting work (scenario planning) internally at Swinburne and VU, for government (eg DEST, Centrelink) and business organisations (eg GoldCoast Water).

• Practitioner focus - how to use futures approaches in strategydevelopment processes in universities and organisations.

A BIT ABOUT ME

• My other life is working with ATEM:• to build ATEM‟s profile in the sector; • to develop the emerging profession of tertiary education administration and

management; and• to build understanding of administrators and managers about what it means to be

“professional‟.

• What I‟ve learned: • people find it very hard to „let go‟ of deeply held assumptions and ways of thinking

and operating (ATEM has spent 30 years struggling with its identity); and

• passion and commitment don‟t matter if there isn‟t a shared view about what the Association‟s core business is, and where the Association is going in the future.

• Learning Outcomes

• To appreciate the essential differences between strategic thinking,strategic decision making and strategic planning.

• To use an integral model to design strategy and planningframeworks.

• To explore how futures approaches may be appropriate in your

institution (lessons from practice).

• Will be working fast today and covering a lot of material to provide anintroduction to a futures perspective on strategic planning.

• I work in a university and use them as my reference point, but applies toall types of educational institutions.

• Please interrupt and ask questions as we go along.

• Participate as much or little as you want.

1. Strategic Planning? Or Strategy Development and Implementation?

2. Futures• What is Futures?

• Why futures?• Integral Futures

3. Futures in Strategy Development & Implementation

4. Building a Strategic Foresight Capacity

5. But … this wouldn‟t work in my institution! Or would it? Lessons fromPractice

STRATEGIC PLANNING?

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT ANDIMPLEMENTATION?

WHAT IS STRATEGIC PLANNING?

• What are we talking about?

• Your definitions?

STRATEGIC PLANNING

• Strategic planning is not about planning strategically.

• Strategic planning is the process of documenting an plan toimplement and monitor an agreed strategy.

• Just semantics? Perhaps, but …

STRATEGIC PLANNING

• “Planning lacks a clear definition of its own place in organizations”(Mintzberg, 1994:5).

• “It may well be that the typical strategic planning exercise now

conducted on a regular and formal basis and infused with quantitativedata misses the essence of the concept of strategy and what is involvedin thinking strategically” (Sidorowicz, 2000:2).

• “While the need for planning has never been greater, the relevance of most of today‟s planning systems and tools is increasingly marginal”(Fuller, 2003:2).

So, is what we commonly understand

to be strategic planningthe whole game?

STRATEGIC PLANNING?

Strategic PlanningTaking Action

How will we do it? Actions

No … it‟s the last step …

STRATEGIC PLANNING?

Decisions

Strategic Decision Making

Making choices

What will we do?

The Vice-Chancellor usually ends up making the

ultimate strategy decision.

But … what informs that decision?

STRATEGIC PLANNING?

Strategic Thinking

Generating Options

What might happen?

Options

Strategic thinking is probably the least defined and

least well understood part of the strategy process.

What informs strategy at your institution?

STRATEGIC PLANNING?

• Strategic planning is but one of three interdependent

and overlapping steps in the development andimplementation of strategy.

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT ANDIMPLEMENTATION

Strategic ThinkingGenerating Options

What might happen?

Making choices

What will we do?

Strategic Planning

Taking Action

How will we do it?

Options

Decisions

Actions

• Differentiating among the three steps is important.

• It is simpler to use „strategic planning‟ but, it blurs the boundaries

between the three steps.

• Each step has a distinct focus.

• Each step needs different methods and approaches.

• Strategic thinking: synthetic, intuitive, inductive, deals with incompleteinformation

• Strategic decision making: options, choices, decisions, destinations

• Strategic planning: analytical, logical, deductive, staying on track

REFLECTION: STRATEGY DEVELOPMENTAND IMPLEMENTATION

• Can you describe your institution‟s strategic thinkingprocesses?

• So, while it is more words and harder to say quickly ...

• strategy development and implementation is a moreaccurate term for what we are talking about (SDI?)

• But, where does a futures perspective come into it?

FUTURES AND STRATEGY

Strategic Thinking

Generating Options

What might happen?

Making choices

What will we do?

Strategic Planning

Taking Action

How will we do it?

Options

Decisions

Action

Futures

Approaches and

Methods

FUTURES:

WHAT IS FUTURES?

UP FRONT, SOME TERMINOLOGY

• Foresight: an often unconscious individual capacity tothink about the future.

• Strategic Foresight: an organisational foresightcapacity.

• Futures: the broad academic field now developingglobally; interdisciplinary and inclusive in its approach.

• Futurists: those who work in futures, either as

academics, consultants (outside organisations) and aspractitioners within organisations.

• Scenario planning: a futures methodology.

FORESIGHT?? FUTURES??

• „Foresight‟ is the capacity to think systematically about thefuture to inform today's decision making. It is a capacity thatwe need to develop as individuals, as organisations, and as asociety.

• 'Futures' refers both to the research, methods and tools

that are available for us to use to develop a foresightcapacity, and to the field in which futurists work.

FUTURES STUDIES

• Futures Studies is an emerging academic discipline focusedaround the development of alternative futures:

• to assist people in choosing and creating the most desirablefuture, using any combination of the past, present knowledge,

imagination, desires and needs,• to highlight that individuals, groups, cultures etc., are not set on adeterministic path to a single unitary future but, by using their powers of foresight and decision-making, can select from a widerange of future trajectories and outcomes, and

• to explore the unanticipated, unintended and unrecognisedconsequences of social action.

Source: http://www.cambridgeuniversityfutures.co.uk/home.asp

FUTURES PRINCIPLES

• There is always more than one future.

• The future is not pre-determined – we have alternatives.

• The future is not predictable – we have choices.• The future can be influenced – there are consequences of our choices and action today for future generations.

• Hence, we have a responsibility to act wisely in thepresent.

Adapted from Amara, and Voros

A MESSAGE FROM FUTUREGENERATIONS…

• You are alive at a pivotal moment in humanity‟s development. You aremaking some of the most important choices in human history. Your era is marked by positive and negative potentials of such newness and

magnitude that you can hardly understand them. Through your publicpolicies and daily lives, the people of your era have tremendous power to influence the future course of humanity‟s story. We strongly careabout your choices, of course, since we benefit or suffer from themquite directly. We live downstream from you in time; whatever you putinto the stream flows on to our era.

Allen Tough, A Message from Future Generations,

http://www.wfs.org/fgtough2.htm

• We cannot „know‟ the future in the same way that we „know‟the present.

• There are no future „facts‟.

• Futures work explores ideas about the future, not the future

itself .

FUTURES PRINCIPLES

FUTURES TIME

• Near Term Future - Up to one year from now

• Short Term Future – 1-5 years from now

• Mid-Term Future - 5 - 20 years from now

• Long Range Future - 20 - 50 years from now

• Far Future - 50 plus years from now

FUTURES TIME

• From our vantage point of the present, we interpret the past,and we anticipate the future.

• But, we have blind spots.

• We can deny past acts, and we can avoid/negate future acts,depending on our perspective in the present.

• We need to understand our worldview and how we see andmake sense of the past, present and future.

FUTURES PUSH AND PULL

Technology, Demographics,

Economics, Science etc

PRESENT Ideas, Images, Hopes, Fears

FUTURE

CONSTRAINTS

THE FUTURE AS A STRATEGIC LANDSCAPE

The ‘self’

journeys across the chessboard to the mountain,which lies in the medium term future

The strategic objective: • A compelling, relevant future • BHAG—“Big Hairy Audacious Goal”

• A concrete, specific goal

• A challenge, but achievable

The strategic environment: • Strategic implementation and tactics • Threats and opportunities • Actions of other strategic actors • Driving forces • Mapped and understood using scenarios

The purpose of the organization• A “future-focused role image”

• Not completed or “used up”

Strategic identity: • Current reality • Self -knowledge• Strengths and weaknesses • Values • Preferences and experience

‘The Chessboard’ — Issues and challenges we are likely to face

‘The Star’ — Our enduring and

guiding social role

‘The Mountain’ — What we hope to achieve

‘The Self’ — Our values and attributes as a strategic player

TYPES OF FUTURES

Potential – all futures, imagined or not yet imagined

• Possible - “might” happen (future knowledge)

• Plausible – “could” happen (current knowledge)

• Probable - “likely to” happen (current trends)

• Preferable - “want to” happen (value judgements)

TYPES OF FUTURES

Possible

Plausible

Probable

Preferable

Scenario

“Wildcard”

Inputs

Strategy

Outputs

Analysis

Interpretation

“what might we need to do?”

“what will we do?” “how will we do it?”

“what’s really happening?”

“what seems to be happening?”

things happening

F or e s

i gh t

“what might happen?” Prospection

GENERIC FORESIGHT MODEL

FUTURES:WHY FUTURES?

WHY THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE?

What we don‟t know we don‟t know What we know

we don‟t know

What we know

Most of what we need to know to make good decisions today is

outside our comprehension: we don‟t even know it‟s there.

All our knowledge is about the past, but all our

decisions are about the future.

• “Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hopefor future development”: Roman engineer Sextus Julius Frontinus, 1st Century

• "Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.“: Pierre Pachet,Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

• “Heavier than air flying machines are not possible”: Lord Kelvin,President of the Royal Society, 1895

• "There is no likehood man can ever tap the power of the atom." Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

• “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently highplateau”: Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929

• “Space flight is hokum”: Astronomer Royal, 1956

BECAUSE THINGS CHANGE!

• “We don‟t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out”: Decca Recording Co. rejecting The Beatles, 1962.

• “I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers”: ThomasWatson, Chairman of IBM, 1943

• "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home”: Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment, 1977

• “640K [of RAM] ought to be enough for anybody”: Bill Gates, 1981

• “The fact that conflicts with other countries [producing civiliancasualties] have been conducted away from the U.S. homelandcan be considered one of the more fortunate aspects of theAmerican experience”: Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) for the US Deptof Defence, 2001

• “We live in a time of clashing conflict and massive institutional failures,a time of endings and of beginnings. A time that feels as if something

profound is shifting and dying while something else … wants to be born… The crisis of our time is about the dying of an old social structure, anold way of institutionalizing and enacting collective social forms.”

C Otto Scharmer, 2005

www.ottoscharmer.com

• At a time when human societies are altering the fundamental conditionsof life on planet earth, the dominant outlook remains a focus on short term thinking .

• Short term thinking is a major systemic defect within the industrialworldview.

• The world we are creating leads to Dystopian futures.

Richard Slaughter, 2003www.foresightinternational.com.au

• Because:

• it is largely unknown, unpredictable, unpredictable and non-determined, so we need to:

• try and understand that uncertainty to make sense of what is going on today,and

• find ways of understanding possible futures that are only just emerging,

• it helps to assess the potential future risk of action we areconsidering today

• And because:

• we create the future through our actions and decisions today,individually and collectively, so we need to pay attention to it

• we are responsible for future generations as well as ourselves

• and … you want to avoid saying something that sounds really smartat the time but which ends up as a quote in a presentation like this

20 years later

WORLDVIEWS…

• Humans do not make rational, logical decisions based on informationinput, instead they pattern match with either their own experience, or collective experience expressed as stories. It isn‟t even a best fit

pattern match, but a first fit pattern match … The human brain is alsosubject to habituation, things that we do frequently create habitualpatterns which both enable rapid decision making, but also entrainbehaviour in such a manner that we literally do not see things that fail tomatch the patterns of our expectations.

Dave Snowden 2003: 1

WORLDVIEWS…

• The majority is not always right, the conventional wisdom is not alwayswise, and the accepted doctrine could well be flawed. The morefashionable an idea, the more it is likely to be exempt from critical

evaluation. Breakthrough thinking sometimes calls for contradicting themost widely held assumptions and beliefs.

Karl Albrecht

Corporate Radar, Tracking the Forces That Are Shaping Your Business, 1999.

WORLDVIEWS (THE INNERPERSPECTIVE)

• Being aware of our particular worldviews, our expectations, and how wesee the world.

• Understanding what our blind spots are – what is it that we don‟t seebecause of who we are.

• Being open to accepting different worldviews – not better or worse, justdifferent. And, it‟s okay (or it should be) to say “No, I don‟t see the

world in the way that you do.”

REFLECTION: WORLDVIEWS (THEINNER PERSPECTIVE)

• Can you identify assumptions underpinning your worldview?

FUTURES:

INTEGRAL FUTURES

• Integral Futures• Ken Wilber‟s four quadrants (www.kenwilber.com)

• SDI using the four quadrants

• Understanding your role in the process

INTEGRAL FUTURES

• A holistic view of all phenomenon, not just the empiricallyobservable or quantitative.

• Integrating Eastern and Western traditions, philosophies,sciences and approaches.

• Recognises that there are many ways of knowing, and that noone way is dominant.

WILBER’S FOUR QUADRANTS

Interior Exterior

Collective

Individual

Intentional “I”

Upper Left

Behavioural “It”

Upper Right

Cultural “We”

Lower Left

Social “Its”

Lower Right

THE SCARY VERSION OF WILBER

FOUR QUADRANTS: INDIVIDUAL

Interior Exterior

Collective

Individual

Individual values, beliefs

attitudes and meaning

Cultural context of theindividual, creates

shared context

Observed

Behaviour

The collectiveexternal world

Intentional “I” Behavioural “It”

Cultural “We” Social “Its”

FOUR QUADRANTS ORGANISATION

FOUR QUADRANTS: ORGANISATION

Interior Exterior

Collective

Individual

Organisational

Culture

Organisational

Behaviour

External

Positioning andRelationships

FOUR QUADRANTS: SDI

Interior Exterior

Collective

Individual

Views of Staff:

Focus Groups,

Interviews

Understanding the Internal

Environment:

Casual Layered Analysis,

Slaughter‟s Transformative

Cycle, Anthropological

approaches

Inclusive Planning and

Decision Making Processes:

Strategic Planning Workshops,

Strategic Plans

Understanding the External

Environment: Scanning, Delphi,

SWOT, Scenario Planning etc.

O Q S S

Interior Exterior

Collective

Individual

Ken Wilber‟s Four Quadrant Model http://www.kenwilber.com

Business as Usual

Strategy and „Fit”

Organisational Culture

FOUR QUADRANTS: SDI

We get rewarded for our

performance here, sowe spend most time

We don‟t get rewarded

for how well we think or

understand culture, so

we don‟t spend muchtime here

Visible and

measurable

Invisible & not

measurable

UNDERSTANDING YOUR ROLE

Interior Exterior

Collective

Individual

Individual values,

beliefs attitudes –

your perspective

and worldview, your

meaning

Cultural

Observed

Behaviour

External

What we don‟t know we don‟t know What we know

we don‟t know

What we know

Most of what we need to know to make good decisions today is

outside our comprehension: we don‟t even know it‟s there.

All our knowledge is about the past, but all our

decisions are about the future.

Interior Exterior

Individual

Collective

What we don‟t know

we don‟t know

What we know we

don‟t know

What we

we don‟t know

What we know we

don‟t know

What we

we don‟t know

we know we

don‟t know

What we

we don‟t know

we know we

don‟t know

What we

INTEGRAL FUTURES

• The future is not just „out there‟, but „in here‟ as well.

REFLECTION: INTEGRAL FUTURES

• How is information about staff views of the future collected atyour institution?

FUTURES IN STRATEGY

DEVELOPMENT & IMPLEMENTATION

THE HOME OF FUTURES IN SDI

Strategic ThinkingGenerating Options

What might happen?

Making choices

What will we do?

Strategic Planning

Taking Action

How will we do it?

Options

Decisions

Action

FuturesApproaches and

Methods

Inputs

Strategy

Outputs

Analysis

Interpretation

“what might we need to do?”

“what will we do?” “how will we do it?”

“what’s really happening?”

“what seems to be happening?”

things happening

F or e s

i gh t

“what might happen?” Prospection

FUTURES AND SDI

What will we do?

What might we need to do?

What’s happening?

What’s really happening? What might happen?

What seems to be happening?Strategic Thinking

Generating OptionsWhat might happen?

Options

Making choices

What will we do? Decisions

F or e

s i gh t

Strategic Planning

Taking Action

How will we do it? Action How will we do it?

FUTURES AND SDI

Analysis

What seems to be happening?

FUTURES AND SDI

What’s happening?

Interpretation

What’s really happening?

Prospection

What might happen?

Gathering

Categorising

Contextualising

Sense Making

Innovation

Right hand quadrants

Left hand quadrants

FUTURES AND SDI INPUT

FUTURES AND SDI: INPUT

Focus on past, present and future. Collect qualitative and quantitative

information.• Delphi

Genius based – sampling of expert opinions, reducing divergence over a series of surveys(Japan‟s futures program does this well)

• Environmental Scanning• Voros - 4Q/11L scanning – taking into account both the worldview of the scanner and the

worldviews of the users of the information. Integrating spiral dynamics into the equation. Aims to merge upper left and lower right quadrant activity.

• Choo (1998) – different levels: competitor intelligence, competitive intelligence, businessintelligence, environmental scanning, social scanning (at level of country)

InputInformation

Gathering

FUTURES AND SDI ANALYSIS

FUTURES AND SDI: ANALYSIS

Analysis

What seems to be happening?Categorising

Forecasting – extrapolates trends out, useful for short-term work.

Cross Impact Analysis – how trends interact and impact on each other.

Trend Analysis – data over time, underpinned by assumptions about how data is behaving

– those assumptions condition what we see in the data.

Emerging Issues Analysis – looks earlier in the trend cycle to identify issues before they

emerge in the mainstream. Moving beyond quantitative data focus.

Current approaches at this level are largely quantitative in nature.

FUTURES AND SDI ANALYSIS

FUTURES AND SDI: ANALYSIS

Emerging Issues

Trends

Mainstream

Number of

cases;degree of

public

awareness

Scientists, artists,

radicals, mystics

Newspapers,

magazines, websites,

journals

GovernmentInstitutions

Few cases, local focus

Global,

multiple

dispersedcases, trends

megatrends

Adapted from the work of Graham Molitor, Wendy Schultz and

Everett Rogers

InnovatorsEarly adopters

Late Adopters

Late Majority

Laggards

Look on the fringe

(weird and whacky!)

Worldview issues will affect uptake at this

stage –

“I don’t believe

that!”

Future

FUTURES AND SDI INTERPRETATION

FUTURES AND SDI: INTERPRETATION

Interpretation

What’s really happening?

Contextualising

Sense Making

Interpreting the analysis for the organisation‟s context. Making sense of the data for the organisation.

Most strategy work stops at this step. Decisions are made once interpretation has

occurred.

Events

Patterns, Trends

System Structure

News Items

Recurring Themes

Underlying “Drivers”

“Core” Human Intelligences

Mental Models

Thinking Systems

Mindsets, Worldviews,Metaphors, Myths

Levels of Structure

• What‟s really happening?????

• Aim to challenge categories of analysis in the previous step – what

does it mean?

• There are layers of reality, and layers of depth – how deeply do wewant to go in interpretation? What is appropriate for my organisation?

• Macrohistory – cycles of large scale change over time; how socialsystems change; grand unifying principles are sought.

• Causal Layered Analysis (Sohail Inayatullah):• Litany• Social causes• Worldview• Myth/metaphor

• How do you challenge the prevailing worldview and assumptionsunderpinning it? What will your organisation be comfortable with?

Particularly good for digging deep

to find those valued assumptions

FUTURES AND SDI: PROSPECTION

Prospection

What might happen?Innovation

Focus on the future. Deriving a broader range of strategy options

from the analysis: what options are available to us in the long-term? What might be the impact of those options in the long-

term? What will influence those options? What are potential

obstacles?

Scenarios, visioning, futures workshops.

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Scenario 3

Inductive

Scenario 1 Scenario 2

Scenario 3 Scenario 4

Deductive

Official

Future

Alternative scenario

Incremental

Vision

Normative

Adapted from Ged Davis, Scenarios as aTool for the 21st Century, Shell International, 2002

GENERIC FORESIGHT MODEL @ VU

Inputs

Strategy

Outputs

Analysis

Interpretation

BROADER STRATEGIC OPTIONS

DECISIONSIMPLEMENTATION

CAUSAL LAYERED ANALYSIS

TREND/EMERGINGISSUES ANALYSIS

ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING

F or e s

i gh t

SCENARIO PLANNING Prospection

REFLECTION: FUTURES AND SDI

• What methods would you use to establish strategy processes

underpinned by futures input at your institution?

FUTURES:

BUILDING A STRATEGIC FORESIGHTCAPACITY

BUILDING A STRATEGIC FORESIGHT

• Foresight: an often unconscious individual capacity to think aboutthe future.

• Strategic Foresight: an organisational foresight capacity.

• Foresight is the capacity to think systematically about the

future to inform today's decision making. It is a capacity thatwe need to develop as individuals, as organisations, and as asociety.

• Planning happens only after a decision has been made – you plan howyou will implement the decision and keep track of achieving your goal.

• A decision is made only after some strategic thinking has taken place.

• How do you think strategically? How does an organisation „think‟ strategically?

• Can only the executive of an organisation think strategically?

• Strategic thinking is about systematically and routinely:

• using a wide range of information and data from the past and the present,including that held by individuals,

• using that information and data to consider a range of alternative and plausible scenarios about what might happen in the future,

• thinking about how the organisation might respond in terms of risks and

opportunities if those scenarios came true – Van der Heijden‟s „strategicconversations‟, and

• making decisions based on the enhanced understanding that results.

• Without explorations of what the future might hold, strategic planning aswe know it today creates a default scenario:

• A future that validates the plan, and this view of the future dominates … decision

making (Hodgson, 2004).

• This is sometimes called the „official‟ future - the one that‟s written in our vision and mission statements.

• Not thinking about the future risks depending on a business-as-usual approach, or the „official‟ future (also known as “let‟s bet the farm cos Iknow best” sometimes espoused by some Vice-Chancellors).

• Strategic thinking involves exploring:

• Lower Left and Lower Right Quadrant factors in the internal and externalenvironment that are critical uncertainties for the organisation, and recognisestheir interconnections and interdependencies, and

• Upper Left Quadrant hopes, dreams and images of the future held by individualsin the organisation.

• Successful strategy development deals with both - because, ultimately,people implement or undermine strategy.

• There will be many, many competing images of the future. Only whenthose images are articulated can the possibility of a shared view of the

future – and a shared strategy - begin to emerge.

• You need overt organisational processes to be able to articulate imagesof the future.

• Because images reside in the Upper Left Quadrant, you needprocesses that engage people as individuals.

• All individuals have the capacity for foresight – we use that

capacity every day.

• The aim is to move that individual capacity to a shared,organisational capacity.

Individual foresight is:

unconscious

implicit

solitary

Strategic Foresight is:

conscious

explicit

collective

Individuals recognise and build their

foresight capacity

Individuals begin to talk about and use

futures approaches in their work

Individual capacities generate organisational capacity (through structures & processes)

Adapted from the work of Joseph Voros and

Richard Slaughter

• Generates a challenge: strategic foresight takes time todevelop because:

• we are dealing with how people think,

• we are asking people to question their thinking and to surface theassumptions upon which their thinking is based – this is often scaryand uncomfortable.

• And, in today‟s „business‟ environment, it is easy to dismiss the need tothink about the future.

• “I am too busy dealing with the here and now to think about the future” (University

Council member).

• “I think about the future every day, and it‟s an insult that you are here to teach mehow to think” (Deputy Vice-Chancellor).

• “I don‟t get paid to think about the future, I get paid to produce results” (CorporateDirector).

• In our jobs, we are rewarded not for thinking about the future, but for results in the present.

• We are rewarded for certainty in the present, not uncertainty about thefuture.

• We can speak confidently about the past and the present (or seem likewe are), but it is difficult to speak confidently about the future.

• But, strategy is about the future.

• Thinking about the future is thinking about uncertainty.

• How do we incorporate thinking about uncertainty, and hence, thinkingabout the future, into our decision making processes?

• How do we demonstrate the value of taking time out in the present toconsider long term issues to inform decision making today?

Past Present Future

20071927 2027

Strategy Decisions

We start in the present, wanting to make

strategy for the future.

Past Present Future

With the power of strategic hindsight, we add in the

past, and focus on trends over time, maybe taking

those trends a few years into the future.

1927 2027

Strategic Hindsight

Strategy Decisions

Past Present Future

20071927 2027

Strategic Hindsight Strategic Foresight

Strategy Decisions

To enhance your future strategy and make wiser decisions,

you need to use the power of strategic foresight to explore the

future – just as you explore the past and the present.

REFLECTION: BUILDING A

REFLECTION: BUILDING ASTRATEGIC FORESIGHT CAPACITY

• How will you convince whoever needs to be convinced of thevalue of strategic thinking using a futures approach?

BUT, THIS WOULDN’T WORK IN MYINSTITUTION … OR WOULD IT?

LESSONS FROM PRACTICE

• Language• Maintaining Support at the Top

• Organisational Positioning

• Organisational Context and Politics

• Thinking is Work Too

• People

• Implementation

• Worldviews and Assumptions – the „glazed eye‟ syndrome • Knowledge

• Language

• Get used to crystal ball jokes

• Choose terms that will be understood

• Develop clear and unequivocal messages about what you aredoing, and why you are doing it

• Stay strong!

SSO S O C C

• Maintaining Support at the Top

• Obvious, but critical

• Need to ensure futures work is not dependent on an individual

• Need a CEO who will support you and follow through

• Not only CEO, but executive group• in my experience, it is this group that has the real influence on the degree to

which futures work is accepted

• Organisational Positioning

• Setting up an organisational futures program is different to using

futures approaches in your work.

• At organisational level, needs clear mandate and support. TheViable Systems Model (VSM) is useful here.

• In your work, will depend on your job and your boss!

• Organisational Context and Politics

• This is the one I misread badly.

• Who needs to be involved?• Who can derail your work?

• Futures work competes with the power of people‟s egos andpersonal positionings, animosities and ambitions. You need to

understand these.

• Thinking is Work Too

• Convincing people to take time out to participate in futures work willbe difficult.

• How many of you have commented along the lines of … “if only Ihad time to think?”

• And, how many think planning workshops and retreats are usually awaste of time?

• We need to schedule in time to think.

• We need to start viewing thinking as work too.

• People

• People doing futures work need established credibility and goodwill,because this work will strain working relationships:

• „you were well respected when you worked in the teaching divisions, but onceyou started this foresight work, things went downhill‟ (said a DVC to me)

• While you need to maintain support at the top, you will probably findthat people at the „grass roots‟ are more open to futures.

• Feedback to my work suggests they like and see value in the prospectivestage in particular (scenarios and creating futures)

• Implementation

• Conceptual framework• Strong methodology• Clear project plan – purpose and structure, roles and responsibilities

• Communication strategy – explain why there is value• Differentiate between content and process

• If we are to find out what staff think about the future, we need to letthem tell us, not present them with pre-packaged views of where theuniversity should be going.

• Long term – this will take time.

• Worldviews

• Watch out for the „glazed eye syndrome‟ (you are hitting a strongworldview when this happens).

• Challenging deeply held assumptions is critical but very, verydifficult.

• Watch out for your own worldview – develop a strong, reflectiveunderstanding of how you see the world – what you look for, andwhat you miss altogether.

• Knowledge

• Need to have a firm grounding in the futures field and concepts.

• Reading a book is not enough (and deluded!)

• If you are serious about this work, get a qualification in it, or use afutures consultant who specialises in knowledge transfer as part of

the deal.

• Doing futures work is both challenging and very hard work,but it will also be some of the most rewarding and exciting

work you have ever done.

• It will change the way you think, and it will change the wayyou see the world.

STRATEGIC PLANNING REVISITED:

SOME KEY MESSAGES

• Terminology: SDI

• Three steps (thinking, deciding, doing)

• Responsibility for future generations

• Past, present and future• Integral approach – consider both inner and outer worlds/perspectives

• Understand your worldview and accept the worldviews of others

• Generic foresight model (input, analysis, interpretation, prospection)

• Strategic thinking and strategic foresight

• Any others?

REFLECTION: BACK TO WORK

• Consider … what messages will you take back to your institution about this session?

• Nothing? That‟s okay

• How will you describe this session to colleagues who did notattend?

BACK TO WORK

• You are but one person in your institution.

• You are very busy. You often feel overwhelmed (“the heat of an ever

increasing workload and pressure to do even more”, Scharmer 2005).

• Where can you make a difference? Because you can.

• But you will be at the cutting edge in strategy development…andsometimes that hurts!

BACK TO WORK

Andy Hines, An Audit for Organizational Futurists: 10 Questions Every

Organizational Futurist Should be Able to Answer, 2003

MESSAGE

Have good organisational

diagnostics: can smell the

cheese, but will jump ship.

Get it, and can use the

system – very rare.

Don‟t bother – they are waiting

for you to fail! They will follow you

blindly – just like

lemmings!

LAST WORD … ALMOST

• “…using futures thinking and tools improves our decision-making and our lives, on a personal, organizational,community/social and global level”, but changing an entire

organisation “requires an enlightened CEO and upper management that sees the need for this thinking. Thisunfortunately remains the small minority of situations.”

(Hines, 2002)

LAST WORD … REALLY

“The near term future can be clearly understood by developing the rightcapacities, asking the right questions and nurturing the right people.The careful use of such resources provides organisational access to anevolving structural overview of the next couple of decades …Organisations that participate effectively in this process will find a range

of valuable outcomes: they will seldom be overtaken by change, theywill not succumb to crisis management, they will find it easy to avoidproblems and seize opportunities, they will develop long term vision anda kind of forward looking prescience … strategic foresight can supply acoherent forward view that will be a cornerstone of organisationalsuccess in the 21st century.”

(Slaughter, 2004)

Q ti ?More information:

Questions?More information:

http://www.thinkingfutures.net

maree.conway@thinkingfutures.net

Tel: 03 90169506Skype: mkconway1

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