Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)(First posted at Systems Thinkers site. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SystemsThinkers/)
Russell Ackoff once (and only once?) identified a problem without solving it. During a lecture he asked two questions:
- Is there progress in science? All agreed, yes.
- Is there progress in art? All agreed no -- except me!
We didn't discuss the results except to recognize the oddity. At the time I was not prepared with an explanation of my vote, but here is what I might have said:
1. Social science is literature, hence art. (See Barbara Czarniawska, Writing Management: Organizatonal Theory as a Literary Genre. The linguistic and narrative turn is overcoming a misconception about social science.)
2. Art evolves through generations. (See Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence. All writers are derivative, except for a very few who break past their influences to become original. The result is a succession of originals by which we track the evolution of literature.)
3. Evolution is adaptive, not progressive. (See Stephen J. Gould, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin. Excellence tracks with variety and diversity. There is no one-way path toward complexity.)
Is systems thinking evolving? By the evidence in this book, the capacity to generate variety from systems thinking has not expired. Some chapters are surely derivative, others adaptive, and a few are perhaps pregnant with something original.
Derivative. The explanation of turbulent environments is ably recapitulated and employs recently published materials. The additional discussion of the experience of turbulence is a very helpful. Ramirez and Selsky argue that person who is able to adapt may not actually experience the environment as turbulent, while that person's harried neighbor may disagree. Also, the authors speak of creating enclaves or micro-environments where turbulence is kept at bay. These variations on the concept may be useful in discussing coping strategies, but they inadvertently raises questions about how truly salient the condition is, if it can be fenced off or wished away. Trist's old-fashioned argument is that turbulence is out there as a constant and it affects your strategy, regardless of your level of sensitivity or success in coping.
Multiple authors explain the history of scenarios, offering overly brief discussion of alternate traditions before settling in for close examination of the Peter Wack and Shell tradition. Mercifully, there is almost no how-to information, clearing the way to answer the real question: why should we bother with scenarios? They restate Wack's crucial insight that the purpose of the scenario process and product is not to predict but to affect the cognitive framing of decision makers. Scenario work can often accomplish this better than other approaches. Here, more recent work might have been pointed to on the psychology of narrative -- why it changes minds, and why rational arguments do not. (Steven Denning's site identifies many relevant sources.) This is dangerous territory, however, since it seems to undercut the scientific basis of strategic advice.
Adaptive. The main theme of the book is that scenario work is particularly well suited to the situations one faces in a turbulent environment. Further, if you better understand the causes, evidence, and array of adaptive responses to turbulence, you will have a much better idea of how to use scenarios. Moving in the other direction, if you understand why the scenario process works and situations where it is effective, you will have a very powerful tool to apply to the growing range of challenges that arise in a turbulent environment. This is indeed a happy marriage of theory and practice. One may wonder why it has taken so long for these two venerable traditions to cross paths. It may simply be that theorists want to add to theory, while narrators want to generate more stories. It is only recently that the theorists have realized that they were engaged in narrative. They had been living next door to story tellers who were aware that they were using theory but were paying more attention to practical justifications for their work.
George Burt's chapter is a compact account of how scenarios are effective at representing environmental factors, especially at separating the factors that are more constant from those that are more variable, and gaining insight on that basis without slipping into prediction. Ramirez again emphasizes the cognitive and subjective aspect, arguing that scenario work employs the aesthetic of "clarity" to generate an impact on thinking.
Pregnant. The pregnant part of the book traces unsuspected combinations that have high potential. Trudi Lang and Lynne Allen explain how Checkland's soft systems tradition is a rich source for improving scenario practice. In particular, they point out that "the scenario practice literature does not include a well-developed tool for understanding the socio-political context of a scenario project." This is a surprising claim, but probably true. They point to the Geoffrey Vickers tradition of appreciation as a source, and outline what such a tool would look like.
Mary Bernard compares Trist with Prigoine's account of 'order through fluctuation'. While there are other accounts of complexity, social systems thinkers tend to pay attention to Prigogine and not the others. There may be historical or aesthetic reasons for this. In any case, it is another rich vein that, as a starting point, says much more about what occurs in a turbulent state and how one may profitably interact with it. The touch points between the two traditions are identified, but unlike with the Lang and Allen chapter, it will be difficult for the reader to walk away with new ideas for application to projects.
Rob Roggema's chapter on "swarm planning" is offered as an application of Prigogine. The planner's intent is different. The players don't come to agreement, but instead find a better way to stay loose and allow for positive opportunistic solutions. Swarm planning, he writes, "provides an opportunity for finding those special interventions that change the region and creates space for surprises to be dealt with in time. This allows designers to continue connecting with the profoundest desires of citizens: the search for beauty, safety, comfort and the absence of worry about their children's future." Climate-induced flooding in The Netherlands, the background of his case study of planning, will create many such opportunities!
Angela Wilkinson provides a rousing Postscript. The familiar tropes are all there -- 21st century, interdependence, etc. But instead of a call to arms, which so often amounts to pointing to obvious negatives and simplistic positives, she develops a fresh synthesis that passes beyond the "rhetoric of embracing uncertainty." One of the challenges she addresses is "whether we have the will to create and nurture the capacity for more effective (and therefore reflexive) future-mindedness, and whether we are capable of doing so rapidly enough and on a sufficiently global scale." The pressures that lead to future-mindedness, a nicely stated consciousness and practice, also lead to several derailments that we need to guard against. These include non-reflexive practice, attending to knowledge but not uncertainty, and defaulting to contingency planning. The most troublesome constraint is that "decision makers still want certainty." Education and leadership development need to change.
Summing Up. There are 15 chapters, and it is likely that any reader will find something interesting and useful. What all readers will come away with is a new confidence in using scenarios on tough problems for the right purpose, which is to change thinking. In addition, one gets a glimmer of a new way of doing strategy, by engaging in co-evolution, by cutting loose from old thinking that doesn't work in a turbulent environment. This book is part of the education that we need as a civilization. Take no pride that you are among the few who understand and can use these concepts. Examine instead why so much recapitulation is necessary, and why we have reached so few with the insights of Trist, Emergy, Wack and others. Time, gentlemen.
==========
Addendum on Eric Trist. By Frank Voehl
Trist's Socio-Psychological Perspective on planning for turbulent times had roots in the object-relations approach in psychoanalysis and in 'field theory' and 'open-systems' theory. Trist was a founding member of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. In the late 1960s he partnered with Russell Ackoff in building the Social Sciences Department at Wharton.
The Tavistock Institute generated innovative research while performing practical projects. It was necessary to allow a very high degree of autonomy to sub-systems and to tolerate wide differences of viewpoint. This created the need for a democratic system of governance that lays the basis for future developments. According to Trist, the experience of buuilding the Tavistock Institute seemed to be revelant to a number of organizations in different parts of the world that were engaged in pathfinding endeavors. The Institute, in fact, had become a member of a new class of organizations whose importance was increasing as the turbulent environment became more salient. Distinct both from university centers and from consulting groups engaged in applied research, this third type of research organization combined problem-oriented research with advanced research, training, and publications.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Business Planning for Turbulent Times: New Methods for Applying Scenarios (Science in Society Series)
The world is an increasingly turbulent and complex environment, awash with tipping points and knock-on effects ranging from the impact of warfare in the Middle East on energy futures, investment and global currencies to the vast and unpredictable impacts of climate change.This book is for business and organizational leaders who feel the ever increasing turbulence of the environment and are interested in thinking through how to deal with related complexity and uncertainty. The authors explain in clear language how future orientation, and specifically modern scenario techniques, help to address increasing risk and lead to more confident and robust decisions. They draw on examples from a wide variety of settings and circumstances including the large corporations, inter-governmental organizations like the World Bank, small firms, municipalities and other communities. Readers will be inspired to try out scenario approaches themselves to address the turbulence that affects them and others with whom they work, live and do business. A key feature of the book is the exchange of insights across the academic-practitioner divide. What has previously remained jargon only accessible to the highest level of corporate and government futures planners here becomes comprehensible to a wider business and practitioner community.
0 comments:
Post a Comment