Rethinking Strategic Planning A Futures Perspective 1195972053658615 4

STRATEGIC PLANNING REVISITED: A FUTURES PERSPECTIVE
Maree Conway Association of University Administrators Conference April 2007

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A BIT ABOUT ME
25+ years as a manager in higher education and TAFE, in a range of institutions in Brisbane and Melbourne, and in a range of jobs (student admin, faculty admin, secretariat, policy, planning, quality and statistics). Almost 15 of those years at Swinburne University - in six jobs.
Five internal re-structures at Swinburne led me to foresight in 1999, when I established a Foresight and Planning unit that lasted until 2004. After the demise of foresight at Swinburne, I moved to Victoria University in March 2005 to pursue futures work (as well as quality, planning, statistics and surveys).
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A BIT ABOUT ME
Enrolled in Masters in Strategic Foresight at Swinburne.

Planning a PhD on the conflicting and converging images of the future held by academics and administrators in universities. Consulting work (scenario planning) internally at Swinburne and VU, for government (eg DEST, Centrelink) and business organisations (eg Gold Coast Water). Practitioner focus - how to use futures approaches in strategy development processes in universities and organisations.
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A BIT ABOUT ME
My other life is working with ATEM:
to build ATEMs profile in the sector; to develop the emerging profession of tertiary education administration and management; and to build understanding of administrators and managers about what it means to be professional.
What Ive learned:
people find it very hard to let go of deeply held assumptions and ways of thinking and operating (ATEM has spent 30 years struggling with its identity); and passion and commitment dont matter if there isnt a shared view about what the Associations core business is, and where the Association is going in the future.
TODAY
Learning Outcomes
To appreciate the essential differences between strategic thinking, strategic decision making and strategic planning.
To use an integral model to design strategy and planning frameworks. To explore how futures approaches may be appropriate in your institution (lessons from practice).
TODAY
Will be working fast today and covering a lot of material to provide an introduction to a futures perspective on strategic planning.
I work in a university and use them as my reference point, but applies to all types of educational institutions. Please interrupt and ask questions as we go along.
Participate as much or little as you want.
TODAY
1. Strategic Planning? Or Strategy Development and Implementation? 2. Futures
What is Futures? Why futures? Integral Futures
3. Futures in Strategy Development & Implementation 4. Building a Strategic Foresight Capacity 5. But this wouldnt work in my institution! Or would it? Lessons from Practice
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STRATEGIC PLANNING? OR STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION?
WHAT IS STRATEGIC PLANNING?
What are we talking about?
Your definitions?
STRATEGIC PLANNING
Strategic planning is not about planning strategically.

Strategic planning is the process of documenting an plan to implement and monitor an agreed strategy. Just semantics? Perhaps, but
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STRATEGIC PLANNING
Planning lacks a clear definition of its own place in organizations
(Mintzberg, 1994:5).
It may well be that the typical strategic planning exercise now conducted on a regular and formal basis and infused with quantitative data misses the essence of the concept of strategy and what is involved in thinking strategically (Sidorowicz, 2000:2).
While the need for planning has never been greater, the relevance of most of todays planning systems and tools is increasingly marginal (Fuller, 2003:2).
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So, is what we commonly understand to be strategic planning the whole game?
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STRATEGIC PLANNING?
No its the last step
Strategic Planning Taking Action How will we do it?
Actions
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STRATEGIC PLANNING?
The Vice-Chancellor usually ends up making the ultimate strategy decision.
Strategic Decision Making Making choices What will we do?
Decisions
But what informs that decision?
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STRATEGIC PLANNING?
Strategic Thinking Generating Options What might happen? Options
Strategic thinking is probably the least defined and least well understood part of the strategy process.
What informs strategy at your institution?
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STRATEGIC PLANNING?
Strategic planning is but one of three interdependent and overlapping steps in the development and implementation of strategy.
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STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION

Decisions
Actions
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Differentiating among the three steps is important.
It is simpler to use strategic planning but, it blurs the boundaries between the three steps. Each step has a distinct focus. Each step needs different methods and approaches.
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Strategic thinking: synthetic, intuitive, inductive, deals with incomplete information
Strategic decision making: options, choices, decisions, destinations

Strategic planning: analytical, logical, deductive, staying on track
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REFLECTION: STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION
Can you describe your institutions strategic thinking processes?
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So, while it is more words and harder to say quickly ...
strategy development and implementation is a more accurate term for what we are talking about (SDI?) But, where does a futures perspective come into it?
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FUTURES AND STRATEGY

Futures Approaches and Methods Strategic Thinking Generating Options What might happen?
Options
Decisions
Action
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FUTURES: WHAT IS FUTURES?
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UP FRONT, SOME TERMINOLOGY

Foresight: an often unconscious individual capacity to think about the future. Strategic Foresight: an organisational foresight capacity. Futures: the broad academic field now developing globally; interdisciplinary and inclusive in its approach. Futurists: those who work in futures, either as academics, consultants (outside organisations) and as practitioners within organisations. Scenario planning: a futures methodology.
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FORESIGHT?? FUTURES??
Foresight is the capacity to think systematically about the future to inform today's decision making. It is a capacity that we need to develop as individuals, as organisations, and as a society.
'Futures' refers both to the research, methods and tools that are available for us to use to develop a foresight capacity, and to the field in which futurists work.
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FUTURES STUDIES
Futures Studies is an emerging academic discipline focused around the development of alternative futures:
to assist people in choosing and creating the most desirable future, using any combination of the past, present knowledge, imagination, desires and needs, to highlight that individuals, groups, cultures etc., are not set on a deterministic path to a single unitary future but, by using their powers of foresight and decision-making, can select from a wide range of future trajectories and outcomes, and to explore the unanticipated, unintended and unrecognised consequences of social action.
Source: http://www.cambridgeuniversityfutures.co.uk/home.asp
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FUTURES PRINCIPLES
There is always more than one future.
The future is not pre-determined we have alternatives. The future is not predictable we have choices. The future can be influenced there are consequences of our choices and action today for future generations.
Hence, we have a responsibility to act wisely in the present.
Adapted from Amara, and Voros
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A MESSAGE FROM FUTURE GENERATIONS

You are alive at a pivotal moment in humanitys development. You are making some of the most important choices in human history. Your era is marked by positive and negative potentials of such newness and magnitude that you can hardly understand them. Through your public policies and daily lives, the people of your era have tremendous power to influence the future course of humanitys story. We strongly care about your choices, of course, since we benefit or suffer from them quite directly. We live downstream from you in time; whatever you put into the stream flows on to our era.
Allen Tough, A Message from Future Generations, http://www.wfs.org/fgtough2.htm
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FUTURES PRINCIPLES
We cannot know the future in the same way that we know the present. There are no future facts.
Futures work explores ideas about the future, not the future itself.
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FUTURES TIME
Near Term Future - Up to one year from now
Short Term Future 1-5 years from now

Mid-Term Future - 5 - 20 years from now
Long Range Future - 20 - 50 years from now

Far Future - 50 plus years from now
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FUTURES TIME
From our vantage point of the present, we interpret the past, and we anticipate the future. But, we have blind spots.
We can deny past acts, and we can avoid/negate future acts, depending on our perspective in the present.
We need to understand our worldview and how we see and make sense of the past, present and future.
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FUTURES PUSH AND PULL
PRESENT
Ideas, Images, Hopes, Fears
Technology, Demographics, Economics, Science etc
FUTURE
CONSTRAINTS
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THE FUTURE AS A STRATEGIC LANDSCAPE

The Star
Our enduring and guiding social role The purpose of the organization
A future-focused role image Not completed or used up
The strategic objective:
The Mountain
What we hope to achieve
A compelling, relevant future BHAGBig Hairy Audacious Goal A concrete, specific goal A challenge, but achievable
The Chessboard
Issues and challenges we are likely to face
The strategic environment:

Strategic implementation and tactics Threats and opportunities Actions of other strategic actors Driving forces Mapped and understood using scenarios
The self journeys across the chessboard to the mountain, which lies in the medium term future
The Self
Our values and attributes as a strategic player
Strategic identity:
Current reality Self-knowledge Strengths and weaknesses Values Preferences and experience
Star, mountain, chessboard, self image 1999
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TYPES OF FUTURES
Potential all futures, imagined or not yet imagined Possible - might happen (future knowledge) Plausible could happen (current knowledge)
Probable - likely to happen (current trends)

Preferable - want to happen (value judgements)
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TYPES OF FUTURES
Wildcard Scenario
Possible
Plausible Probable Preferable
Today
Time
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GENERIC FORESIGHT MODEL

Inputs
things happening
Analysis
Interpretation
what seems to be happening? whats really happening?
Foresight
Prospection
Outputs
Copyright 2000 Joseph Voros
what might happen?

what might we need to do?
Strategy
what will we do? how will we do it?

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FUTURES: WHY FUTURES?
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WHY THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE?

All our knowledge is about the past, but all our decisions are about the future.
What we dont know we dont know
What we know we dont know
What we know Most of what we need to know to make good decisions today is outside our comprehension: we dont even know its there.
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BECAUSE THINGS CHANGE!

Inventions have long since reached
for future development: Roman engineer Sextus Julius Frontinus, 1st Century
AD Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872 President of the Royal Society, 1895
their limit, and I see no hope
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.: Pierre Pachet, Heavier than air flying machines are not possible: Lord Kelvin, "There is no likehood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923
Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau: Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929 Space flight is hokum: Astronomer Royal, 1956
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We dont like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out:
Decca Recording Co. rejecting The Beatles, 1962.
I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers: Thomas

Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home: Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment, 1977 640K [of RAM] ought to be enough for anybody: Bill Gates, 1981 The fact that conflicts with other countries [producing civilian casualties] have been conducted away from the U.S. homeland can be considered one of the more fortunate aspects of the American experience: Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) for the US Dept
of Defence, 2001
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We live in a time of clashing conflict and massive institutional failures, a time of endings and of beginnings. A time that feels as if something profound is shifting and dying while something else wants to be born The crisis of our time is about the dying of an old social structure, an old way of institutionalizing and enacting collective social forms.
C Otto Scharmer, 2005 www.ottoscharmer.com
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At a time when human societies are altering the fundamental conditions of life on planet earth, the dominant outlook remains a focus on short term thinking. Short term thinking is a major systemic defect within the industrial worldview.
The world we are creating leads to Dystopian futures.
Richard Slaughter, 2003 www.foresightinternational.com.au
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Because:
it is largely unknown, unpredictable, unpredictable and nondetermined, so we need to:
try and understand that uncertainty to make sense of what is going on today, and find ways of understanding possible futures that are only just emerging,
it helps to assess the potential future risk of action we are considering today
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And because:
we create the future through our actions and decisions today, individually and collectively, so we need to pay attention to it
we are responsible for future generations as well as ourselves and you want to avoid saying something that sounds really smart at the time but which ends up as a quote in a presentation like this 20 years later
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WORLDVIEWS
Humans do not make rational, logical decisions based on information input, instead they pattern match with either their own experience, or collective experience expressed as stories. It isnt even a best fit pattern match, but a first fit pattern match The human brain is also subject to habituation, things that we do frequently create habitual patterns which both enable rapid decision making, but also entrain behaviour in such a manner that we literally do not see things that fail to match the patterns of our expectations.
Dave Snowden 2003: 1

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WORLDVIEWS
The majority is not always right, the conventional wisdom is not always wise, and the accepted doctrine could well be flawed. The more fashionable an idea, the more it is likely to be exempt from critical evaluation. Breakthrough thinking sometimes calls for contradicting the most widely held assumptions and beliefs.
Karl Albrecht Corporate Radar, Tracking the Forces That Are Shaping Your Business, 1999.
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WORLDVIEWS (THE INNER PERSPECTIVE)

Being aware of our particular worldviews, our expectations, and how we see the world. Understanding what our blind spots are what is it that we dont see because of who we are. Being open to accepting different worldviews not better or worse, just different. And, its okay (or it should be) to say No, I dont see the world in the way that you do.
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REFLECTION: WORLDVIEWS (THE INNER PERSPECTIVE)
Can you identify assumptions underpinning your worldview?
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FUTURES: INTEGRAL FUTURES
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INTEGRAL FUTURES
Integral Futures Ken Wilbers four quadrants (www.kenwilber.com)

SDI using the four quadrants Understanding your role in the process
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INTEGRAL FUTURES
A holistic view of all phenomenon, not just the empirically observable or quantitative. Integrating Eastern and Western traditions, philosophies, sciences and approaches.
Recognises that there are many ways of knowing, and that no one way is dominant.
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WILBERS FOUR QUADRANTS

Interior Exterior
Intentional I Upper Left
Behavioural It
Upper Right Individual
Collective
Cultural We Lower Left Social Its Lower Right
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THE SCARY VERSION OF WILBER
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FOUR QUADRANTS: INDIVIDUAL

Interior Exterior
Individual values, beliefs attitudes and meaning

Intentional I
Observed Behaviour
Behavioural It Social Its Individual Collective
Cultural We
Cultural context of the individual, creates shared context
The collective external world
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FOUR QUADRANTS: ORGANISATION

Interior Exterior
Staff
Organisational Behaviour
Individual Collective
Organisational Culture
External Positioning and Relationships
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FOUR QUADRANTS: SDI

Interior
Views of Staff: Focus Groups, Interviews
Exterior
Inclusive Planning and Decision Making Processes: Strategic Planning Workshops, Strategic Plans Individual Collective Understanding the External Environment: Scanning, Delphi, SWOT, Scenario Planning etc.
Understanding the Internal Environment: Casual Layered Analysis, Slaughters Transformative Cycle, Anthropological approaches
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FOUR QUADRANTS: SDI

Interior
Staff Exterior
Visible and measurable
Business as Usual
We dont get rewarded for how well we think or understand culture, so we dont spend much time here
We get rewarded for our performance here, so we spend most time here
Individual Collective
Organisational Culture
Strategy and Fit
Invisible & not measurable
Ken Wilbers Four Quadrant Model http://www.kenwilber.com
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UNDERSTANDING YOUR ROLE

Interior Exterior
Individual values, beliefs attitudes your perspective and worldview, your meaning
Observed Behaviour
Individual
Collective
Cultural
External
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All our knowledge is about the past, but all our decisions are about the future.
What we know we dont know
What we know Most of what we need to know to make good decisions today is outside our comprehension: we dont even know its there.
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Interior
What we know we dont know What we know
Exterior
Individual
Collective

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INTEGRAL FUTURES
The future is not just out there, but in here as well.
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REFLECTION: INTEGRAL FUTURES
How is information about staff views of the future collected at your institution?
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FUTURES IN STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT & IMPLEMENTATION
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THE HOME OF FUTURES IN SDI

Futures Approaches and Methods Strategic Thinking Generating Options What might happen?
Options
Decisions
Action
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GENERIC FORESIGHT MODEL

Inputs
things happening
Analysis
Interpretation
what seems to be happening? whats really happening?
Foresight
Prospection
Outputs
what might happen?

what might we need to do?
Strategy
what will we do? how will we do it?

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Whats happening? Foresight

What seems to be happening? Whats really happening? What might happen?
FUTURES AND SDI

What might we need to do?
What will we do?
Decisions
How will we do it?
Action
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FUTURES AND SDI

Input
Whats happening?
Right hand quadrants

Gathering
Analysis
What seems to be happening?
Categorising
Interpretation
Contextualising Sense Making Innovation Left hand quadrants
Whats really happening? Prospection What might happen?

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FUTURES AND SDI: INPUT

Input
Information Focus on past, present and future. Collect qualitative and quantitative information.
Delphi
Genius based sampling of expert opinions, reducing divergence over a series of surveys (Japans futures program does this well)
Gathering
Environmental Scanning
Voros - 4Q/11L scanning taking into account both the worldview of the scanner and the worldviews of the users of the information. Integrating spiral dynamics into the equation. Aims to merge upper left and lower right quadrant activity. Choo (1998) different levels: competitor intelligence, competitive intelligence, business intelligence, environmental scanning, social scanning (at level of country)
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FUTURES AND SDI: ANALYSIS

Current approaches at this level are largely quantitative in nature.
Analysis
What seems to be happening?
Forecasting extrapolates trends out, useful for short-term work.
Categorising
Cross Impact Analysis how trends interact and impact on each other.
Trend Analysis data over time, underpinned by assumptions about how data is behaving those assumptions condition what we see in the data. Emerging Issues Analysis looks earlier in the trend cycle to identify issues before they emerge in the mainstream. Moving beyond quantitative data focus.
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FUTURES AND SDI: ANALYSIS

Global, multiple dispersed cases, trends and megatrends
Number of cases; degree of public awareness
Look on the fringe (weird and whacky!)

Newspapers, magazines, websites, journals Government Institutions
Late Majority Laggards
Scientists, artists, radicals, mystics
Mainstream Trends
Late Adopters
Emerging Issues
Few cases, local focus
Today
Innovators
Time
Early adopters
Worldview issues will affect uptake at this stage I dont believe that!
Future
Adapted from the work of Graham Molitor, Wendy Schultz and Everett Rogers
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FUTURES AND SDI: INTERPRETATION

Interpreting the analysis for the organisations context. Making sense of the data for the organisation.
Contextualising Sense Making
Interpretation Whats really happening?
Most strategy work stops at this step. Decisions are made once interpretation has occurred.
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Levels of Structure
News Items
Recurring Themes Underlying Drivers
Events
Patterns, Trends System Structure Mental Models Thinking Systems
Mindsets, Worldviews, Metaphors, Myths

Core Human Intelligences
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Whats really happening?????

Aim to challenge categories of analysis in the previous step what does it mean? There are layers of reality, and layers of depth how deeply do we want to go in interpretation? What is appropriate for my organisation?
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Macrohistory cycles of large scale change over time; how social systems change; grand unifying principles are sought.
Causal Layered Analysis (Sohail Inayatullah):
Litany Social causes Worldview Myth/metaphor
Particularly good for digging deep to find those valued assumptions
How do you challenge the prevailing worldview and assumptions underpinning it? What will your organisation be comfortable with?
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FUTURES AND SDI: PROSPECTION

Focus on the future. Deriving a broader range of strategy options from the analysis: what options are available to us in the longterm? What might be the impact of those options in the longterm? What will influence those options? What are potential obstacles? Scenarios, visioning, futures workshops.
Prospection
Innovation What might happen?
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FUTURES AND SDI: PROSPECTION

Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 Scenario 1 Scenario 2
Scenario 3
Inductive
Scenario 4
Deductive Vision
Alternative scenario Official Future
Incremental
Normative
Adapted from Ged Davis, Scenarios as aTool for the 21st Century, Shell International, 2002
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GENERIC FORESIGHT MODEL @ VU

Inputs
ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING
Analysis
Interpretation
TREND/EMERGING ISSUES ANALYSIS

CAUSAL LAYERED ANALYSIS
Foresight
Prospection
Outputs
SCENARIO PLANNING
BROADER STRATEGIC OPTIONS
Strategy
DECISIONS IMPLEMENTATION
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REFLECTION: FUTURES AND SDI
What methods would you use to establish strategy processes underpinned by futures input at your institution?
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FUTURES: BUILDING A STRATEGIC FORESIGHT CAPACITY
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BUILDING A STRATEGIC FORESIGHT CAPACITY

Foresight: an often unconscious individual capacity to think about the future. Strategic Foresight: an organisational foresight capacity.
Foresight is the capacity to think systematically about the future to inform today's decision making. It is a capacity that we need to develop as individuals, as organisations, and as a society.
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Planning happens only after a decision has been made you plan how you will implement the decision and keep track of achieving your goal. A decision is made only after some strategic thinking has taken place.
How do you think strategically? How does an organisation think strategically?
Can only the executive of an organisation think strategically?
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Strategic thinking is about systematically and routinely:
using a wide range of information and data from the past and the present, including that held by individuals, using that information and data to consider a range of alternative and plausible scenarios about what might happen in the future, thinking about how the organisation might respond in terms of risks and opportunities if those scenarios came true Van der Heijdens strategic conversations, and making decisions based on the enhanced understanding that results.
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Without explorations of what the future might hold, strategic planning as we know it today creates a default scenario:
A future that validates the plan, and this view of the future dominates decision making (Hodgson, 2004).
This is sometimes called the official future - the one thats written in our vision and mission statements.
Not thinking about the future risks depending on a business-as-usual approach, or the official future (also known as lets bet the farm cos I know best sometimes espoused by some Vice-Chancellors).
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Strategic thinking involves exploring:
Lower Left and Lower Right Quadrant factors in the internal and external environment that are critical uncertainties for the organisation, and recognises their interconnections and interdependencies, and
Upper Left Quadrant hopes, dreams and images of the future held by individuals in the organisation.
Successful strategy development deals with both - because, ultimately, people implement or undermine strategy.
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There will be many, many competing images of the future. Only when those images are articulated can the possibility of a shared view of the future and a shared strategy - begin to emerge. You need overt organisational processes to be able to articulate images of the future.
Because images reside in the Upper Left Quadrant, you need processes that engage people as individuals.
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All individuals have the capacity for foresight we use that capacity every day. The aim is to move that individual capacity to a shared, organisational capacity.
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Individual foresight is:
unconscious implicit solitary
Individuals recognise and build their foresight capacity
Strategic Foresight is:

conscious explicit collective
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Individuals begin to talk about and use futures approaches in their work
Individual capacities generate organisational capacity (through structures & processes)
Adapted from the work of Joseph Voros and Richard Slaughter

Generates a challenge: strategic foresight takes time to develop because:
we are dealing with how people think, we are asking people to question their thinking and to surface the assumptions upon which their thinking is based this is often scary and uncomfortable.
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And, in todays business environment, it is easy to dismiss the need to think about the future.
I am too busy dealing with the here and now to think about the future (University Council member). I think about the future every day, and its an insult that you are here to teach me how to think (Deputy Vice-Chancellor). I dont get paid to think about the future, I get paid to produce results (Corporate Director).
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In our jobs, we are rewarded not for thinking about the future, but for results in the present.
We are rewarded for certainty in the present, not uncertainty about the future. We can speak confidently about the past and the present (or seem like we are), but it is difficult to speak confidently about the future.
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But, strategy is about the future.
Thinking about the future is thinking about uncertainty. How do we incorporate thinking about uncertainty, and hence, thinking about the future, into our decision making processes? How do we demonstrate the value of taking time out in the present to consider long term issues to inform decision making today?
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1927 2007 2027
Past
Present
Future
Strategy Decisions
We start in the present, wanting to make strategy for the future.
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1927 2007 2027
Past
Present
Future
Strategy Decisions
Strategic Hindsight
With the power of strategic hindsight, we add in the past, and focus on trends over time, maybe taking those trends a few years into the future.
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1927 2007 2027
Past
Present
Future
Strategy Decisions
Strategic Hindsight
Strategic Foresight
To enhance your future strategy and make wiser decisions, you need to use the power of strategic foresight to explore the future just as you explore the past and the present.
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REFLECTION: BUILDING A STRATEGIC FORESIGHT CAPACITY
How will you convince whoever needs to be convinced of the value of strategic thinking using a futures approach?
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BUT, THIS WOULDNT WORK IN MY INSTITUTION OR WOULD IT? LESSONS FROM PRACTICE
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LESSONS FROM PRACTICE

Language Maintaining Support at the Top Organisational Positioning Organisational Context and Politics Thinking is Work Too People Implementation Worldviews and Assumptions the glazed eye syndrome Knowledge
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Language
Get used to crystal ball jokes Choose terms that will be understood Develop clear and unequivocal messages about what you are doing, and why you are doing it Stay strong!
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Maintaining Support at the Top

Obvious, but critical Need to ensure futures work is not dependent on an individual Need a CEO who will support you and follow through
Not only CEO, but executive group
in my experience, it is this group that has the real influence on the degree to which futures work is accepted
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Organisational Positioning
Setting up an organisational futures program is different to using futures approaches in your work. At organisational level, needs clear mandate and support. The Viable Systems Model (VSM) is useful here.
In your work, will depend on your job and your boss!
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Organisational Context and Politics

This is the one I misread badly. Who needs to be involved? Who can derail your work? Futures work competes with the power of peoples egos and personal positionings, animosities and ambitions. You need to understand these.
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Thinking is Work Too
Convincing people to take time out to participate in futures work will be difficult. How many of you have commented along the lines of if only I had time to think? And, how many think planning workshops and retreats are usually a waste of time?
We need to schedule in time to think.

We need to start viewing thinking as work too.
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People
People doing futures work need established credibility and goodwill, because this work will strain working relationships:
you were well respected when you worked in the teaching divisions, but once you started this foresight work, things went downhill (said a DVC to me)
While you need to maintain support at the top, you will probably find that people at the grass roots are more open to futures.
Feedback to my work suggests they like and see value in the prospective stage in particular (scenarios and creating futures)
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Implementation
Conceptual framework Strong methodology Clear project plan purpose and structure, roles and responsibilities Communication strategy explain why there is value Differentiate between content and process
If we are to find out what staff think about the future, we need to let them tell us, not present them with pre-packaged views of where the university should be going.
Long term this will take time.
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Worldviews
Watch out for the glazed eye syndrome (you are hitting a strong worldview when this happens). Challenging deeply held assumptions is critical but very, very difficult. Watch out for your own worldview develop a strong, reflective understanding of how you see the world what you look for, and what you miss altogether.
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Knowledge
Need to have a firm grounding in the futures field and concepts. Reading a book is not enough (and deluded!) If you are serious about this work, get a qualification in it, or use a futures consultant who specialises in knowledge transfer as part of the deal.
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Doing futures work is both challenging and very hard work, but it will also be some of the most rewarding and exciting work you have ever done. It will change the way you think, and it will change the way you see the world.
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CLOSE
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STRATEGIC PLANNING REVISITED: SOME KEY MESSAGES

Terminology: SDI Three steps (thinking, deciding, doing) Responsibility for future generations Past, present and future Integral approach consider both inner and outer worlds/perspectives Understand your worldview and accept the worldviews of others Generic foresight model (input, analysis, interpretation, prospection) Strategic thinking and strategic foresight
Any others?
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REFLECTION: BACK TO WORK
Consider what messages will you take back to your institution about this session?
Nothing? Thats okay
How will you describe this session to colleagues who did not attend?
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BACK TO WORK
You are but one person in your institution.

You are very busy. You often feel overwhelmed (the heat of an ever increasing workload and pressure to do even more, Scharmer 2005). Where can you make a difference? Because you can. But you will be at the cutting edge in strategy developmentand sometimes that hurts!
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BACK TO WORK
PITCH MESSAGE HERE
Have good organisational diagnostics: can smell the cheese, but will jump ship. Get it, and can use the system very rare.
Dont bother they are waiting for you to fail!
They will follow you blindly just like lemmings!

Andy Hines, An Audit for Organizational Futurists: 10 Questions Every Organizational Futurist Should be Able to Answer, 2003
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LAST WORD ALMOST
using futures thinking and tools improves our decisionmaking and our lives, on a personal, organizational, community/social and global level, but changing an entire organisation requires an enlightened CEO and upper management that sees the need for this thinking. This unfortunately remains the small minority of situations.
(Hines, 2002)
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LAST WORD REALLY

The near term future can be clearly understood by developing the right capacities, asking the right questions and nurturing the right people. The careful use of such resources provides organisational access to an evolving structural overview of the next couple of decades Organisations that participate effectively in this process will find a range of valuable outcomes: they will seldom be overtaken by change, they will not succumb to crisis management, they will find it easy to avoid problems and seize opportunities, they will develop long term vision and a kind of forward looking prescience strategic foresight can supply a coherent forward view that will be a cornerstone of organisational success in the 21st century.
(Slaughter, 2004)
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More information: http://www.thinkingfutures.net maree.conway@thinkingfutures.net Tel: 03 90169506 Skype: mkconway1
Questions?
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STRATEGIC PLANNING REVISITED: A FUTURES PERSPECTIVE

Maree Conway Association of University Administrators Conference April 2007

Enrolled in Masters in Strategic Foresight at Swinburne.

What Ive learned:

Participate as much or little as you want.

STRATEGIC PLANNING? OR STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION?

WHAT IS STRATEGIC PLANNING?

What are we talking about?

Strategic planning is not about planning strategically.

So, is what we commonly understand to be strategic planning the whole game?

No its the last step

Strategic Planning Taking Action How will we do it?

Strategic Decision Making Making choices What will we do?

But what informs that decision?

What informs strategy at your institution?

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION

Strategic Decision Making Making choices What will we do?

Strategic Planning Taking Action How will we do it?

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION

Strategic thinking: synthetic, intuitive, inductive, deals with incomplete information

Strategic decision making: options, choices, decisions, destinations

REFLECTION: STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION

Can you describe your institutions strategic thinking processes?

STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION

FUTURES AND STRATEGY

Strategic Decision Making Making choices What will we do?

Strategic Planning Taking Action How will we do it?

FUTURES: WHAT IS FUTURES?

UP FRONT, SOME TERMINOLOGY

Adapted from Amara, and Voros

A MESSAGE FROM FUTURE GENERATIONS

Short Term Future 1-5 years from now

Long Range Future - 20 - 50 years from now

FUTURES PUSH AND PULL

Ideas, Images, Hopes, Fears

Technology, Demographics, Economics, Science etc

THE FUTURE AS A STRATEGIC LANDSCAPE

The strategic objective:

The strategic environment:

Star, mountain, chessboard, self image 1999

Probable - likely to happen (current trends)

Plausible Probable Preferable

GENERIC FORESIGHT MODEL

what seems to be happening? whats really happening?

what might happen?

what will we do? how will we do it?

FUTURES: WHY FUTURES?

WHY THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE?

What we dont know we dont know

What we know we dont know

BECAUSE THINGS CHANGE!

their limit, and I see no hope

BECAUSE THINGS CHANGE!

I think there is a world market for maybe 5 computers: Thomas

BECAUSE THINGS CHANGE!

C Otto Scharmer, 2005 www.ottoscharmer.com

BECAUSE THINGS CHANGE!

WHY THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE?

WHY THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE?

Dave Snowden 2003: 1

WORLDVIEWS (THE INNER PERSPECTIVE)