Art over at Mapping Strategy has produced a subtle and fascinating response to my earlier comments on the limitations of scenario planning. There is much on which we are agreed (although his reading list contains some of my bette noirs so we shall see). For example that narrative considered as story-telling is limited to a pre-scenario planning process or (I am making an assumption here) the communication or refining of a scenario or scenarios. We are also agreed on the inherent limitations of what Art calls paleo-scenarios (the classic Peter Swartz type approach). However there may be (I hesitate to say are in the context an emerging dialogue)some differences of varying significance and possible agreement through a dialectic process. He also has a really nice analogy (and pictures) which may assist this process.
Firstly, I think Art may not realise that I am not advocating an alternative to scenario planning, but rather its essential limitation (even in modular piece parts form) to the ordered domains of the Cynefin framework, or those aspects of the complex domain that are inherently knowable, namely boundary conditions and stable attractors (basin and limit cycle but not strange for those who have studied the field). There are various reasons for this but two standout.
- The focus of scenario planning on a range of possible future states, where in a complex system there is no inherent predictability and the advocacy of future states, not matter how derived will reduce the sensitivity to weak signals and minor deviations from those outcomes in practice.
- The use of the word modular, which implies a reductionist perspective, when a complex system is inherently non-reductionist in nature.
Secondly, we have the question of the facilitator or expert. Here there may be a misunderstanding, but I am not sure. To quote Art:
The classic 'pure facilitator' model is much like the classic journalistic, psychiatric or pastoral ethic: one must enter an almost Zen-like zone, dispensing with (or at least setting aside) biases and assumptions in order to draw out the best input from others. Nice ideal. I buy it--to a point. Only problem: we're all human. Better to clarify, understand and declare one's biases--and let others do the same. Call it the ethic of the blogosphere: an incredibly wide range of authentic and thoroughly biased voices get heard. Nobody can say that he or she is above it all.Now I think we are agreed that the facilitator cannot stand aside from the process. However I think (and this is also a limit on some aspects of action research) that it is enough to declare bias and engage in certain core processes. What one has to do is to remove facilitation as far as possible from the content, or even better the process. In some of our methods we developed them in environments where the language of the group discussion was not known by the facilitator to take one example. Again this is less of an issue if your core strategic processes are not dependent on scenarios.
Thirdly, Art uses a the analogy of a sculpture compared with a Tinker Toy construction (I would have talked about Mechano (which shows my age) but the principle is the same. He argues that:
If on the other hand, some basic assumptions can be reasonably made (and others dispensed with) via some front-end interviews, research, listening, narrative, analogizing and sense-making, then a rapid prototyping approach to future possibilities using modular piece-parts can enable a far greater range of strategic innovation.Now I think we are in part agreed here. In effect this is my first point but I think I may argue that the conditions under this applies is more limited. Here I am being more exploratory (in search of emergent meaning and dialectical creation of something more than the sum of the parts between us). Firstly I would argue strongly that the following are limited in use, and dangerous in constraining the space to what can be known or imagined: interviews, analytical research, listening, narrative (in the sense of story telling, Appreciative Inquiry and other interventionist forms) analogizing (as opposed to the use of metaphor as a cognitive device). In other words the use of such techniques may eliminate material and provide false evidence that enables the problem space to have those basic assumptions made.
Now, critically I don't think the gifted sculptor is the only alternative to Tinker Toys. The use of mass narrative capture (say 50K stories told by your customers in the checkout queue, indexed and interpreted by those customers) combine with visualisation tools such as fitness landscapes (to take one of our methods) and an approach to strategy which is based on safe-fail experimental probes, rather that doomed attempts to create a fail-safe scenario (or scenarios) is to my mind much more appropriate to complex domains. This represents something beyond a qualitative or quantitative technique used as a precursor to a strategy process. Rather it provides qualitative material with direct access to raw narrative material for senior decisions. This strategy is a truly emergent process engaged with reality and provides the larger organisation the dynamic flexibility of the entrepreneur. Of course this must be accompanied by more formal processes, including scenario planning. However it is a scientific process, it does not require a sculptors gift.
Comments (2)
Follow-the-sun blogging. I love it. I'll wait 'til the next caffeine muse strikes... which in this part of the world won't be tonight. :)
Short take: complementary approaches... probably in many more ways than either of us has had time to write about. Look me up next time you pass through Boston.
Posted by Art Hutchinson | June 15, 2007 11:18 PM
Posted on June 15, 2007 23:18
I'll respond here lest this balloon to something larger than is warranted by our respectively limited inside knowledge of one anothers' specific processes and practices.
Re. point one (reductionism): to the degree that that term is being used non-judgmentally, I happily plead guilty. One must be reductionist to some degree so long as time, money and collective cognitive bandwidth are at issue--and they always are.
An analogy: When I am trying to decide what to have for dinner, I consider the menus posted on my refrigerator, the food in it (and the pantry), the cookbooks I own and maybe an on-line search of Zagat and some cooking sites. Already, that is a vast universe of possibility. Its size is practically constrained by things such as my budget, my cooking skill, my hunger level and the time I have. Only in the rarest of cases would it be worthwhile to open up my dinner search to every possible foodstuff, cookbook, technique and restaurant on the planet.
Another, closer analogy: alphabets and languages are inherently reductionist of the human mind--limiting the range of thoughts that may be communicated--yet we find them essential as a basis for social organization.
Re. facilitator's role: agree. The first time I ran a group that preferred to converse in a language with no hooks to my own was a watershed experience.
Re. point three and your conclusion: see my analogies above. When one's time and resources are unconstrained, I would agree: the more open-ended the better. We have powerful brains. We should use them. No sense putting on blinders, parking brakes, rev-limiters or the like. Thus my thought that your processes are (among other things) better thought of as preceding scenarios rather than following them. (One boils the syrup at the beginning not the end of the candy-making process.)
Cognitive condensation of some kind must happen at some point between ideation and implementation. I think we are sparring over where and how that should take place and how transparent it needs to be and not whether it is essential. We can agree (I hope) that there is a case to be made for cognitive condensation happening with high transparency in a large-group meeting versus outside of it via other processes that involve individuals delegated to and specializing in such tasks (e.g., the consultant) to a greater or lesser degree.
One thing we haven't touched on is risk. Both over-condensation and under-condensation of the problem space each involve it. On a very long continuum between super-reductionist ("my way or the highway") tyranical thinking and totally fantastical and unconstrained ("all ideas are equally worthy, including colonies of pink elephants growing endive on Mars"), different organizations, faced by different types of problems and resource constraints will (and should) choose different flavors of risk and thus different approaches to condensing the range of possibility they need to consider.
Posted by Art Hutchinson | June 20, 2007 2:32 PM
Posted on June 20, 2007 14:32