Post on 13-Sep-2014
description
Strategic Thinking: Strategy’s Orphan
Maree ConwayThinking Futures
A bit about me
Long and good career in CAEs, TAFE, universities
2007….integrating long term thinking into strategy development, using futures approaches
Managed their planning units
1999-2005
2005-2007
• A bit of theory around strategic thinking
• Process
• Environmental Scanning
• Take-aways
This Presentation
Improvement action identified/changes to
plans identified
Making VU 2016: A Statement of
PurposeStrategic vision and objectives
University Priorities2008-2010
Outcomes & Strategies to implement
Unit Strategic Plans2008-2010
Faculties, Schools& Service areas
Implementation of University Priority strategies
Internal & External Planning Inputs
Ongoing environmental scanning
•Educational & societal trends•Government policy drivers•Legislation•University cross-sectoral strategies•Other University Plans (eg OHS, Disability, Staff Equity etc)
SPDP: individual Staff Plans
Quality Improvement Reviews (QIRs)
Approval of operational plansReview of current year’s
performance
Reviewed each year in first half
of year
Reviewed and updated in
August/September; finalised following QIRs in November
Held in November each year
University Budget ProcessIterative process to align
budgets and plansBudget sign-off at end
SeptemberQuarterly Budget Reviews
Department Plans
Current until 2016
QIR Inputs Organisational Unit QIR
PortfoliosFaculty Review OutcomesAnnual Course Reporting
Course ReviewSubject Evaluation Outcomes
AQTF outcomesAUQA Follow up
• The plan itself is not the critical element of your planning process.
• It’s the process and the thinking that goes into the decisions about what goes into your plan.
• Everyone can think strategically if that capacity is surfaced and used.
• Tapping into strategic thinking across the organisation increases the likelihood of successful implementation.
Strategic Thinking
Strategy without people is strategy without a future...
You want me to think about what!!
You develop strategy for the FUTURE to inform decision making and action today
Too many decisions to make, not enough time or information to make them properly?
• Positioning• Fit• Distinctiveness• Impact
• Long term context for decision making today
Strategic ThinkingGenerating Options
What might happen?
Strategic Decision MakingMaking choices
What will we do?
Strategic PlanningTaking Action
How will we do it?
Options
Decisions
Actions
Strategic Thinking
• Long Term Thinking• Foresight• Futures Thinking• Out of the box
• Taking a big picture AND long picture view of your context
Strategic Decision Making
Strategic Planning
DocumentImplementTrack MonitorReport
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them (Albert Einstein).
Challenge your assumptions
Old thinking…
New thinking…
New thinking…
New thinking…
The Broad Process
• Environmental scanning is at the heart of your strategy development process.
• It locates your organisation in its external environment.
• It combines information and data with the knowledge held by your staff.
Making strategic decisions in an uncertain context
• Focus
• Worldviews
• Involve many
• Scan, analyse, interpret
• Think and imagine
• Test, question, challenge
• Ensure relevance and plausibility for
your organisation
THEN
• Decide, write your plan, implement and
monitor
Competitor Intelligenceunderstanding the nature of our competitors and their likely responses to change
Competitive Intelligenceunderstanding how our competitors interact with the business and market environment in which they operate
Business Intelligenceunderstanding the present and future environments with a focus on future competitive environments
Environmental Scanningdeveloping a broad understanding of the external environment
Social Intelligenceunderstanding how a country uses its intelligence (knowledge industry and information networks) to meet its developmental challenges
Future Viewbuilding a long-term foresight view about the future of the country and the planet
Long-term
TIMEHORIZON
Short-term
Narrow SCOPE OF INFORMATION GATHERING Broad
Adapted from Choo, Information Management for the Intelligent Organization, 1998
Where environmental scanning fits…
Types of Futures
Time
Today
Possible
Plausible
Probable
Preferable
Scenario
“Wildcard”
Futures Cone developed by Clem Bezold
Where to Focus ES
Time
Today
Plausible
Probable(Trends)
(Deep Drivers)
• How robust do we want our planning inputs to be?
• Breadth – how wide are we looking?
• Depth – are seriously are we questioning?
• Distance – how far ahead are we looking?
Why do it this way?
Doing ES
Open Minds
• What might seem real to you probably won’t seem as real to the next person.
• How you filter information to create meaning is critical to understand.
Perceptions
• Need to challenge your filters so that you don’t miss anything that might be important.
• Understand your filters and those for whom you are doing the scanning.
• And…try and understand the worldviews of the people you are scanning.
Worldviews
Worldviews
What might you miss because of your worldview and internal filters?
• Blind spots emerge from the past.• What changes were missed in the past and why?
– In what areas?
• Who in your industry has fewer blind spots/picks up weak signals better than others?
Blind Spots
Blind Spots
What might we miss because of our blind spots?
Then decide who scans
• Staff• Executive Team• Board
• Someone has to coordinate, manage and communicate findings
• But…they have to be trained.
Focus
• Lots of information out there, so how to focus effort?
Focusing your Scanning
• What is the key strategic issue?– This is the focal question.
• What do we need to know about the issue?– These are the factors that will influence the decision.
• What are trends and drivers of change affecting these factors?– This becomes the focus for environmental scanning:
• industry specific, and• broad, global forces.
The anchor
• So, the core of scanning work is looking for trends and emerging issues that relate to the strategic issue or focal question now and into the future.
The anchor
What do you look for?
OrganisationOrganisation
Industry
Learning
EducationalGaming
Funding
Engagement
Online
Sustainability
VocationalImperative
The External Environment
OrganisationOrganisation
Global
Industry
Technology
Lifestyle
Values
Politics
Economy
Environment
Demographics &generational change
Learning
EducationalGaming
Funding
Engagement
Online
Sustainability
VocationalImperative
The External Environment
Globalisation
OrganisationOrganisation
Global
Industry
Technology
Lifestyle
Values
Politics
Economy
Environment
Demographics &generational change
Learning
Educational Gaming
Funding
Engagement
Online
Sustainability
VocationalImperative
The External Environment
GlobalisationWildcard
Wildcard
Wildcard
Wildcard
Trends And Emerging Issues
Emerging Issues
Trends
Mainstream
Time
Number of cases; degree of public awareness
Few cases, local focus
Global, multiple dispersed cases, trends and megatrends
Adapted from the work of Graham Molitor and Wendy Schultz, and Everett Rogers
InnovatorsEarly adopters
Late Adopters
Late Majority
Laggards
Today
Time from emerging issue to mainstream varies between 18-36 years
Trends And Emerging Issues
Emerging Issues
Trends
Mainstream
Time
Number of cases; degree of public awareness
Scientists, artists, radicals, mystics
Newspapers, magazines, websites, journals
Government Institutions
Few cases, local focus
Global, multiple dispersed cases, trends and megatrends
Adapted from the work of Graham Molitor and Wendy Schultz, and Everett Rogers
InnovatorsEarly adopters
Late Adopters
Late Majority
Laggards
Today
Time from emerging issue to mainstream varies between 18-36 years
Trends And Emerging Issues
Emerging Issues
Trends
Mainstream
Time
Number of cases; degree of public awareness
Scientists, artists, radicals, mystics
Newspapers, magazines, websites, journals
Government Institutions
Few cases, local focus
Global, multiple dispersed cases, trends and megatrends
Adapted from the work of Graham Molitor and Wendy Schultz, and Everett Rogers
InnovatorsEarly adopters
Late Adopters
Late Majority
Laggards
Today
Time from emerging issue to mainstream varies between 18-36 years
Most scanning takes place here
Trends And Emerging Issues
Emerging Issues
Trends
Mainstream
Time
Number of cases; degree of public awareness
Scientists, artists, radicals, mystics
Newspapers, magazines, websites, journals
Government Institutions
Few cases, local focus
Global, multiple dispersed cases, trends and megatrends
Adapted from the work of Graham Molitor and Wendy Schultz, and Everett Rogers
InnovatorsEarly adopters
Late Adopters
Late Majority
Laggards
Today
Time from emerging issue to mainstream varies between 18-36 years
But we need to look on the fringe as well
• Extrapolations of the past and present, not future facts
• Counter-trends• Wildcards• Uncertain future
trajectories• What assumptions
underpin your thinking?
Using Trends
But don’t get lost in the data smog!
• Trends don’t tell you anything – someone has to interpret the trend for it to be meaningful.
• Otherwise you are engaged in trend spotting/watching as opposed to trend analysis.
Using Trends
• Starts with a shift in values/perspectives – need to search at the fringes
• Emergence – people start to talk about it, but a minority – easier to influence now
• Champion – look for the thought leaders and rebels• Defining event – brings the issue to public attention –
morphs into a trend/harder to shape and influence
Emerging Issues Analysis
• Because emerging issues are weak, obscure, crazy, and fragile, good practical people usually ignore or ridicule them. Since these “useful” ideas are not part of their commonsense, people conclude they are nonsense.
• And this fact led me to formulate Dator’s Second Law of the Future. Namely, “Any useful idea about the future should appear to be ridiculous”.
Emerging Issues Analysis
Jim Dator, US Futurist
• Particularly useful for challenging long held assumptions about how things will be.
• Good for ‘what if’ questions.
Emerging Issues
• How will I separate weak signals of real change from the noise?
Emerging Issues
• First, assume you miss important signals• Use the ‘three times’ test• Test ideas with others inside and outside• Trust intuition• Test the signal in the future
• Where are the outliers? What are your mavericks saying?
Emerging Issues
Where to Look
• Newspapers, websites, blogs, wikis, podcasts, videos, news sites, newsletter, magazines, books, book reviews, presentations, reports, surveys, interviews, seminars, chat rooms, trend observers, advertisers, philosophers sociologists, management gurus, consultants, researchers, experts, universities.
Where to look…
• Trendwatching• Future Scanner• Brain Reserve• Shaping Tomorrow• Now and Next• The Tomorrow Project• SRIC-BI• Arlington Institute (wildcards)
Some Scanning Sites
• Identify opinion leaders, the voice in the wilderness on the fringe:– Expert– Professional– Pundit– Amateur– Fringe
Looking for…
• New• First• Idea• Change• Surprise• Opportunity• Threat
Looking for…
• Ideally, a scan hit identifies an emerging issue that is objectively new even to experts, confirms or is confirmed by additional scan hits, and that has been identified in time for social dialogue, impact assessment, and policy formation.
Wendy Schultz, Infinite Futures 2004
Looking for…
• We need to engage in outrageous thinking about learning environments. Now, I realize that outrageous means exceeding all bounds of reasonableness; it means something shocking. However, I think that we need to deal with concepts of space and education that are indeed shocking. We need to realize that reasonableness is defined by present context. We further need to realize that what is unreasonableness today may be very reasonable in the 21st century and it is for the 21st century that we are contemplating education space.
Hunkins, Reinventing Learning Spaces, 1994http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/learning_environments/hunkins.html
Thinking Outrageously
Do your analysis in a group, not as individuals.
The aim is to look for divergence and value difference – many voices, not just the loudest.
Explore what might be possible for your organisation.
Then, consider what is possible today.
Analysis
Some questions to ask
• Whose voice is being heard?• Who says this is fact or fiction?• Who wins, who loses? Who gets left behind?• What are we missing?
• Then ask, what does it mean for us?• What are the opportunities?
Identify the trends that are most relevant for your organisation.
Look for inter-connections and cross impacts among the trends
Use scenario planning to explore what might happen in the future.
Assume nothing.
Dismiss nothing.
Strategic ThinkingGenerating Options
What might happen?
Strategic Decision MakingMaking choices
What will we do?
Strategic PlanningTaking Action
How will we do it?
Options
Decisions
Actions
Make the decision
Write the plan
Convincing your people
• Knowing how to do it is one thing, but…how do you convince your people that this is worth doing?
Convincing your people
• CEO with an open mind - willing to listen and hear alternative ideas
• Organisation that recognises the need to change – the present doesn’t work any more
• Willingness to open the strategy process up to staff – not being afraid of losing control
How?
• Staff driven environmental scanning process• Representative reference group – staff from across
the organisation• Staff Workshop before the Board/Executive workshop
– identify what staff think is important in the future• Strategy Workshop – staff, Executive, Board and
externals• Communication plan
How?
• Be brave…
Take-Aways
• Take the time to make this work…and it will take time.
Involve your people from the beginning
Continuous Activity
• Environmental scanning• Regular strategic events
• Tap into global networks (they do a lot of the work for you)
• Make it someone’s job.
Question and challenge all those assumptions that underpin how you see the world - and what you don’t see.
...because what works today will probably not work for those who follow you in the future...
Most importantly, it’s about being ready for the future rather than waiting for it to bite you...
Questions?