88
Strategic Thinking: Strategy’s Orphan Maree Conway Thinking Futures

Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

  • View
    10.208

  • Download
    0

Embed Size (px)

DESCRIPTION

An overview of strategic thinking, with a particular focus on how to do environmental scanning to provide information and data to inform that thinking.

Citation preview

Page 1: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Strategic Thinking: Strategy’s Orphan

Maree ConwayThinking Futures

Page 2: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 3: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• A bit of theory around strategic thinking

• Process

• Environmental Scanning

• Take-aways

This Presentation

Page 4: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan
Page 5: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan
Page 6: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 7: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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.

Page 8: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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

Page 9: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Strategy without people is strategy without a future...

Page 10: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

You want me to think about what!!

Page 11: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

You develop strategy for the FUTURE to inform decision making and action today

Page 12: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Too many decisions to make, not enough time or information to make them properly?

Page 13: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• Positioning• Fit• Distinctiveness• Impact

• Long term context for decision making today

Page 14: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 15: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Strategic Thinking

• Long Term Thinking• Foresight• Futures Thinking• Out of the box

• Taking a big picture AND long picture view of your context

Page 16: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Strategic Decision Making

Page 17: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Strategic Planning

DocumentImplementTrack MonitorReport

Page 18: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them (Albert Einstein).

Page 19: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Challenge your assumptions

Page 20: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Old thinking…

Page 21: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

New thinking…

Page 22: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

New thinking…

Page 23: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

New thinking…

Page 24: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

The Broad Process

Page 25: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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.

Page 26: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 27: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan
Page 28: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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…

Page 29: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Types of Futures

Time

Today

Possible

Plausible

Probable

Preferable

Scenario

“Wildcard”

Futures Cone developed by Clem Bezold

Page 30: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Where to Focus ES

Time

Today

Plausible

Probable(Trends)

(Deep Drivers)

Page 31: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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?

Page 32: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Doing ES

Page 33: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Open Minds

Page 34: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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

Page 35: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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

Page 36: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Worldviews

What might you miss because of your worldview and internal filters?

Page 37: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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

Page 38: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Blind Spots

What might we miss because of our blind spots?

Page 39: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Then decide who scans

• Staff• Executive Team• Board

• Someone has to coordinate, manage and communicate findings

Page 40: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• But…they have to be trained.

Page 41: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Focus

Page 42: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• Lots of information out there, so how to focus effort?

Focusing your Scanning

Page 43: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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

Page 44: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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

Page 45: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

What do you look for?

Page 46: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

OrganisationOrganisation

Industry

Learning

EducationalGaming

Funding

Engagement

Online

Sustainability

VocationalImperative

The External Environment

Page 47: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

OrganisationOrganisation

Global

Industry

Technology

Lifestyle

Values

Politics

Economy

Environment

Demographics &generational change

Learning

EducationalGaming

Funding

Engagement

Online

Sustainability

VocationalImperative

The External Environment

Globalisation

Page 48: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 49: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 50: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 51: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 52: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 53: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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!

Page 54: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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

Page 55: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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

Page 56: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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

Page 57: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• Particularly useful for challenging long held assumptions about how things will be.

• Good for ‘what if’ questions.

Emerging Issues

Page 58: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• How will I separate weak signals of real change from the noise?

Emerging Issues

Page 59: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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

Page 60: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Where to Look

Page 61: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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…

Page 62: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• Trendwatching• Future Scanner• Brain Reserve• Shaping Tomorrow• Now and Next• The Tomorrow Project• SRIC-BI• Arlington Institute (wildcards)

Some Scanning Sites

Page 63: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• Identify opinion leaders, the voice in the wilderness on the fringe:– Expert– Professional– Pundit– Amateur– Fringe

Looking for…

Page 64: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• New• First• Idea• Change• Surprise• Opportunity• Threat

Looking for…

Page 65: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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…

Page 66: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• 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

Page 67: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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.

Page 68: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Analysis

Page 69: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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?

Page 70: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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.

Page 71: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 72: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Make the decision

Page 73: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Write the plan

Page 74: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan
Page 75: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Convincing your people

• Knowing how to do it is one thing, but…how do you convince your people that this is worth doing?

Page 76: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 77: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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

Page 78: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

How?

• Be brave…

Page 79: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Take-Aways

Page 80: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

• Take the time to make this work…and it will take time.

Page 81: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Involve your people from the beginning

Page 82: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

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.

Page 83: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Question and challenge all those assumptions that underpin how you see the world - and what you don’t see.

Page 84: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

...because what works today will probably not work for those who follow you in the future...

Page 85: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan
Page 86: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan
Page 87: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Most importantly, it’s about being ready for the future rather than waiting for it to bite you...

Page 88: Strategic Thinking: Strategy's Orphan

Questions?