Monthly Archives: July 2014

Scenario Planning

Futures, Scenario Planninng, Strategic Foresight

Scenarios. A method that enables an organization to peer into the future with a degree of certainty.

Scenario planning has a long history. According to some historians, scenario planning was birthed in the US military in the early stages of the Cold War and was further developed by Herman Khan. The touchstone for this prospective method is the work done by Wack, among others, at Royal Dutch Shell from the mid 1960’s.

The scenario development process is in essence a two part issue development process. The first part of the process is where the group is split into teams of three stakeholders to run through the issue at hand. The second part is where the teams come back together to form a group consensus around the issue.

Process Overview:

  1. Define the Issue
  2. Determining Driving Forces
  3. Cluster Driving Forces
  4. Identify Extreme, but Plausible, Outcomes
  5. Occurrence Impact – Occurrence Probability Matrix
  6. Scenario Framing
  7. Scenario Scoping
  8. Scenario Development

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Wilber’s “Integral Theory”

Futures, Futurist, Strategic Foresight

Ken Wilber’s “Integral Theory” (2011) is a comprehensive view of life.  In his words, he was aiming for a comprehensive theory about the fullness of life:

“I sought a world philosophy—or an integral philosophy—that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world’s great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details—that is finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos, a plausible Theory of Everything.”

This Integral Theory, or Theory of Everything, is a four quadrant model.

  • Q1 [Upper Left]: Interior; Individual (“I”, intentions)
  • Q2 [Lower Left]: Interior; Collective (“We”, culture)
  • Q3 [Lower Right]: Exterior; Collective (“Its”, social)
  • Q4 [Upper Right]: Exterior; Individual (“It”, behavioural)

Wilber adds depth and richness to this model through the overlaying onto each of these quadrants succeeding waves and lines of development, as well states and types of consciousness.

This model’s  primary purpose is for developing multiples frame of reference. That is, this model is used as guide to understanding an issue from many orientations. A simple example is money. When viewed from the Upper Left Quadrant money is seen as an indicator of the relative value that an individual places on a good or service. When viewed from Lower Right Quadrant, money is seen as socially acceptable form of facilitating  the transfer of ownership of goods and services.

Whilst there are critics of Integral Theory, from my perspective the shortcomings of this model are around the biases, preconceptions and worldview that one would bring to using this for the purposes of analysis.

Despite the propensity for the influence of personal worldviews and preconceptions upon the operation and of this model, the value in using Integral Theory is that emerging issues are rigorously examined.

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Wilber, K. (2011).” A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science, and Spirituality”  Shambhala Publications. Kindle Edition.

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For more, visit Dellium Advisory, follow on Twitter, connect using LinkedIn, or review my IT-centric blog.

Molitor’s “Emerging Issues”

Cognitive Strategy, Futures, Strategic Foresight

At a conceptual level Molitor’s (2010)“22-step Model for Tracking and Forecasting Public Policy Change” can be applied to areas other than public policy. For, as he states in the article’s abstract “Things don’t just happen. A cascade of incremental developments and pressures coalesce and help to shape destiny”.

Broadly, his model has three stages:

  • Framing topics:                 situation, ideas, events
  • Advancing change:          change agents, communication, catalysts
  • Resolving issues:              informal acceptance, general accommodation, rule establishment

Schulz (2006) argued, using an adaptation of Molitor’s model, that the weak signals of emerging issues are indeed the portents of change that are experienced by all. That there is indeed a lifecycle of an issue and that this lifecycle has a path from its genesis through catalysts to being an accepted aspect of life.

So, for the purposes of issue capture threshold, the stages of Molitor’s model provide guidance. For an issue to be classified as emerging  a pattern of related events, of which the public is generally unaware of, needs to be identified. This identification process views the progression of idea, to innovation, to event as a continuum. Thus it can be seen that an issue that is already publicly accepted, or indeed in the process of creating change, could no longer be classified as an emerging issue.

Molitor argues that this process of issue tracking can reveal fundamental empirical and measurable quantitative forces for change. He states that a solid understanding of the issue’s context is foundational in realising high quality forecasts.

One of the difficulties of this model is in the precision with which one can place an issue. One needs to be fully cognisant of the extent of the issues acceptance in order to arrive at a suitable classification

Although there are problems with this model, it is a valuable tool from a Strategic Foresight perspective in terms of determining trend timescales and impact scope of any particular issue.

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Molitor, G. (2010). “Timeline 22-Step Model for Tracking and Forecasting Public Policy Change”, Journal of Futures Studies, March 2010, 14(3): 1 – 12

Schulz, W (2006). “The cultural contradictions of managing change: using horizon scanning in an evidence-based policy context”, Foresight, vol 8, no 4 pp 3-12]

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For more, visit Dellium Advisory, follow on Twitter, connect using LinkedIn, or review my IT-centric blog.