User:MSB/IMB-EU-2013

= Problem Solving by 2.0 – Systemic Solution Methods= This wiki page supports the "Specialization elective" seminar in the summer term 2013 for the MBA in European Management, the MBA in European-Asian Management and the MBA in Transatlantic Management at the Institute for Management Berlin.

Motivation and goals
This course will enable you address difficult managerial situations based on complex problems. — Management is particularly concerned with making decisions. Simple decisions are increasingly taken over by machines, tough decisions require great skill and experience to be made. The toughest decisions are rooted in complex problems. Since decision-making is the manager's key activity (not attending meetings, in case you were wondering), identifying, analyzing and solving complex problems is a very important skill set for any manager in any company anywhere in the world. This skill set is the core issue for our course. To address it, you will encounter and practice a number of problem solving tools used in some of the most successful companies and by some of the most successful managers out there. All of these tools can loosely be categorized as "systemic" methods because they utilize the systemic properties of organisations (such as having an inner/outer part, exhibit emergence etc.).

Sample problems
Even before the class begins, I'd like for you to prepare the ground by introducing your own expectations and experiences with solving problems.

The purpose of this section is to gather examples for solving problems from your own experience or knowledge. We will use this list for discussion and to identify the projects you work on during the term. Please enter (at least) one typical problem you have encountered (or that you are aware of) in the table below. Identify the problem area or situation, one or more complications that make the problem complex, the solution or solution attempt so far, and a status including an estimate how highly you rate your solution (on a scale from 0 = not suited to problem, to 10 = perfect solution). Don't worry about your wording or choice too much at this stage; also, you cannot destroy anything in a Wiki. You do not have to register with Wikiversity to edit this page. Also, make sure you stay anonymous: this Wiki is completely public!

By way of example I have entered three problem/solution sets of my own, from different fields of management practice. --msb (discuss • contribs) 22:15, 26 March 2013 (UTC)

Topics
In this section I am briefly introducing each of our major (planned) course topics together with a few ideas about using (or not using) this topic for a term project.--msb (discuss • contribs) 07:21, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Agile development and Scrum

 * Agile methods stand for a bunch of Zen-like methods to improve project management and development done in a team. The methods originate in software development though some of them ("Kanban") were also used in the automobile industry since the 1940s. Example for values of agile methods and project management include: Individuals and interactions over processes and tools; Working software over comprehensive documentation; Customer collaboration over contract negotiation; Responding to change over following a plan (from the 'Manifesto for Agile Software Development'). Agile methods are systemic because, e.g. these values take the specifics of development in teams into account treating the team like a system to be optimized. Scrum is the currently most popular agile development methods for teams which we will adapt to our term project work.
 * Term project: some of you have already discussed the possibility of focusing on this method for a project (see chart 1.05/1.06 below). It would be very interesting to investigate if and how agile methods depend on company culture for their effectiveness. Another interesting topic would be the transferability of these methods to other businesses than software development; a useful deliverable could be a checklist that helps businesses decide if they should take a closer look at agile methods.

Business Process Modeling

 * Process as a concept has been in the center of management attention and management theory for almost 50 years. Business process modeling (BPM) stands for a set of methods whose goal it is to provide abstract representations of real business processes for the purpose of documentation, discussion and optimization among any group of process participants. One example for such a method or "grammar" as I like to call it, are "event-driven process chains" (EPC), which you said you have encountered in your business information systems course. We will use the BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) grammar instead which is more flexible and relevant for business. BPM is systemic because any modeling uses the system character of reality by isolating, for example, objects, activities, events etc.


 * Term project: you can use process models in almost every other project to you visualize and illustrate activities or processes. As the focus of a term project, it would be interesting to develop a process model for a real business process. This requires an agile set up including interviews, analysis etc. It is something I regularly do with my students and it can be done within the term. Modeling It is an important business skill that requires a lot of practice and additional skills (such as project management, social skills, communication etc.).

Minto Pyramid Principle

 * The Minto principle, much used by strategy consultants, is a method for logical thinking, writing and presenting. It is systemic because it highlights the logical relationships between any parts of any argument. The method in short consists of recipes to build logical argument chains. Example for such recipes, which you may already know, are SCQA ('Situation, Complication, Question, Answer'), or MECE ('Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive').


 * Term project: you can use this method (actually, you should!) for any project, essay or presentation. If you focused on it in a term project, it may be interesting to explore its limitations using specific examples, or apply this method to presentations or documents that have not been constructed in a logical way before, either your own documents on documents of others. You could for example take a famous philosophical text or a novel or short story or a notorious downfall (like Enron's) and retell it using the Minto principle...

Assertiveness and Negative Types

 * Assertiveness at work refers to a set of techniques that are useful to let your coworkers know where your boundaries are. These techniques can be very useful when trying to defend yourself against over-work, or when you need to show your limits, e.g. with your boss who is continously stepping over your line. When basic assertiveness is not sufficient, you need additional techniques on how to handle so-called "negative types", like bullies, slackers, charmers etc. Negative types are not as common as you might think but when you encounter them it can be very destructive.


 * Term project? Every other term project could, as in the case of other methods, refer to assertiveness examples as useful techniques in business. There's any amount of psychological science related to assertive communication and a small body of work related to negative types. Both sets of techniques are also really important when it comes to negotiating deals in business transactions. So you could use "negotiation" as a field of application and examples.

Corporate Storytelling

 * The purpose of corporate storytelling methods is to support change in organizations by identifying, crafting and telling appropriate stories. In this way, very effective interventions can be (literally) staged. Don't think of novels or fairy tales, think e.g. of a booklet of best practices generated not from research among competitors, but from stories picked up from people in the organization instead (this is a real example from Shell). Storytelling is a systemic intervention because to create a story you need to use the system view to generate an abstract representation (which then is made entertaining by adding story elements).


 * Term project: while storytelling is often applied, there is still a lot of research to be done. This could be quite a fun project especially if you like stories as such. Using examples, you could look at the effectiveness of the method and for example develop your own checklist that would help businesses decide if they should take a closer look at the method and how they could get started. Even a collection of good up to date examples would be useful— through blogs you have a lot more material than previous generations of students!

Scenario Planning

 * The purpose of scenario planning (originally developed by corporate planning at Shell) is to get a better handle on not one, but different possible futures of an organization. This is usually a lengthy, data driven process of forecasting.


 * Term project. Scenario planning is well established and well documented. It would be useful however to have to gather relevant building blocks in one place and also create a detailed example how this method could be used on the fly, in a lighter version, rather than in the context of a multiyear project with many participants and workshops. Such high quality stone version of the scenario technique could be a true asset to small businesses and startups.

Executive Coaching

 * The purpose of executive coaching is to support personal or organizational change processes by psychological means. In business, coaching is distinct from consulting (advice giving) and therapy (cause oriented). Coaching focuses on solutions and symptoms. The coach is interested in improving performance not understanding on identifying problems. Coaching can be done in many different ways: systemic coaching emphasizes the fact that the coachee (or the team, if not a single person but the group is being coached) is part of a larger system; as a coach, you use this fact for example, when you realize that the problem of an individual is not so much a personal issue but the problem of the surrounding organization. If this is the case (it often is) the coaching interventions need to take it into account: for example by coaching the boss, too!


 * Term project: a catalog of methods with examples would be useful in such a project. Another area of public interest is the cultural dependency of coaching methods: which methods, out of the hundreds available, do or do not work within, for example, an Asian or a Latin American business culture? In our first session, one group already began to explore this topic.

Change Management

 * Change management is an operational methodology but also a process. In this course we will proceed very pragmatically: I have identified a few cases and models that I have found to be superbly useful and that we will explore together. Change management is not systemic as such, but effectively supporting change almost always means that you need to take system parameters (e.g. people's roles) and relationships within the system into account.


 * Term project: the entire topic is much too big for a term project and not specific enough. But you could identify a few models that you find interesting, gather examples or even primary data (interviews etc.) and create a guidebook for these models so that businesses may use them.

Systemic Thinking

 * All the methods covered in this course can be cast in such a way as to be called systemic. Since I like to work systemically myself, I will make an effort to present all methods in a systemic light. Specifically this means highlighting aspects like: who are the actors? What are the objects of change? What are their relationships? Etc.


 * Term project: anything with the word "thinking" in the title is too vague for a term project. However, systems theory is an important sociological theory with many applications in many areas of business and management. You could focus on complexity theory, on decision-making or other areas and identify (as I have tried to do it on this page) what exactly the systemic character of a method is an under which conditions it might be useful to look for it or to emphasize it.

Projects

 * You are free to choose among the eight different methods (see topics above) that we are discussing and exploring in class week after week or come up with your own project topic  e.g. "Problem solving in international negotiations", or "solving complex project management problems", or "problems during a transatlantic MBA" (and apply these or other methods). The different methods we will cover represent a good spread of harder and softer interventions (e.g. BPMN, Pyramids are ‚hard‘, Executive Coaching, Change Management are ‚soft‘). You will complete the work as a group and work in a team of 2-4 people. You have to use this wiki for the preparation of your essays and to document your weekly progress (product backlogs; sprint backlog; tasklists: to be posted on the "discussion" page of your project page). In addition I will meet with each team at the end of our session for some brief team coaching. In this section, you find a FAQ for the preparation of your projects.

Frequently Asked Questions

 * These are questions that other students who worked with these methods and tools have asked before. You can also ask your question here and I will respond to it!

then you add the following tag at the end of your paper to automatically include the references: 6.Question: are there alternatives to communicating via E-mail, especially synchronously (at the same time)? — Answer: try Titanpad or Google Docs.
 * 1) Question: what kind of results you expect? What if we don't have enough results? —Answer: like everyone who does their own research, you will be the expert on your topic by the end of the project and you will have to be your own judge with regards to the "volume" of your results. Besides regular results (for example the evaluation of the survey or the interpretation of facts etc.), reflection about your process is actually as interesting as the process and the results themselves. For example, if you have spent time exploring a certain avenue of thought and you find out that you didn't get anywhere, you should reflect why you were not successful and what could be done differently next time. For me this type of scientific, systematic reflection is an important part of your results.
 * 2) Question: how can I learn to format the wiki? — Answer: see the wiki markup help. If you can't find your answer there, ask in the Moodle forum first (perhaps another student knows the answer) and then ask here. The fastest method to learn formatting is always by imitation: simply edit this page and copy the format that you need to your homepage. Fortunately you cannot "break" the wiki!
 * 3) Question: how can I upload pictures, graphs or photos to the wiki? — Answer: you can only insert pictures after uploading them to Wikimedia (you'll have to register there—read here why that's a good thing). Inserting them here is then very easy (use the picture symbol in the editor).
 * 4) Question: what should we write in the weekly Sprint review (on the discussion page of our project page)? – Answer: the review is for you more than for me. You decide the format yourself. The purpose is to record what you did since the last review, what you're going to do until the next review, and what (if anything) you need to change to improve your performance. You can do this using a table, you can break it down by team member, or you can make up your own format. I will comment your review as "Sprint master"— not to control, but to support and guide your efforts.
 * 5) Question: how do I get a list of references? – Answer: you enclose your reference in ref–tags:

Your projects
You can put descriptions of your projects here and you can use the link for your own project page.

Agile Performance Management

 * Project 2: Agile Project Management

Executive Coaching

 * Project 3: Executive Coaching

Books

 * Argyris, C. (1999) On Organisational Learning, Blackwell.
 * Chris Argyris is a Harvard scholar who made some classic contributions to organizational development. Some of his work relates to the issue of "learning from one's mistakes". Remarkable research and scientific writing. He stands in the tradition of social psychologist Kurt Lewin.


 * Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind, University of Chicago Press.
 * Gregory Bateson is a kind of enfant terrible of systems theory, a anthropologist who contributed to several differing fields. For example he came up with the idea of "double-blind", the binding strength provided by paradoxical messages.


 * Dörner, D. (2005) The Logic of Failure – recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations, Basic Books.
 * Dietrich Dörner is a theoretical psychologist from the University of Bamberg. This book is a classic of problem in decision-making research. Many of the basics of this field (for example the classification of complex problems) come from Dörner. The book is also beautifully written and full of valuable examples. See also summary by Will Sargent (2011).


 * De Geus, A. (2002) The Living Company: Habits for Survival in a Turbulent Business Environment, HBR Press.
 * Arie De Geus is a former head of corporate planning at Royal Dutch Shell with whom I worked myself, and a proponent of the scenario planning method. In his book, he pioneered looking at companies and organizations as living organisms.


 * Minto, B. (2008) The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking, FT Series.
 * I know Barbara Minto from my time at Shell. Method of logical thinking and communication is the standard at the world's most successful strategy consulting firms. Paradoxically, the book is a tough nut to crack but the method is fantastic. She's also a permanent installment of the London chic scene as this video proves.


 * Watzlawick, P et al (2011) Change: Principles of Problem Formulatino and Problem Resolution, W W Norton.
 * This is a classic text of the application of systems theory to change in human life and society. Watzlawick is also known through his popular science writing and as the author of five essential axioms of communication (including "one cannot not communicate"). Used in many modern methods of intervention, such as NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).


 * Weske M. (2007) Business Process Management: Concepts Language Architecture, Springer.
 * A rather technical book about the very important area of business process management and Business Process Model/ing and Notation. Weske is a professor at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute Potsdam and one of the founders of Signavio (the BPMN editor we're going to use). See also his online lectures at the HPI.

Articles

 * Davenport T (2005) The Coming Commoditization of Process, in: Harvard Business Review, Vol 83 No 6 (pp. 100-108).
 * Denning S (2004) Telling Tales, in: Harvard Business Review (May 2004)
 * Drucker P (2004) What makes Makes an Effective Executive?, in: Harvard Business Review, Vol 82 No 3 (pp. 58-63).
 * Leadership is a conversation -- HBR June 2012.
 * Watzlawick P (1976) 5 Axioms of Communication.

Videos

 * Wikis in plain English (2007) — also a good example for videoprototyping.
 * Agile Project Development (2011) — detailed (35 min) account of agile project methodology for IT folks. Pedestrian.
 * Explaining Scrum in less than 120 seconds (2011) — Pyxis
 * Waterfall vs. Agile Development (2010) — Good talk, 10 min. Aussie accent. GuerillaMBA
 * Live demonstration with Milton Erickson: how to put someone in a trance (1977)

Other Internet Sources
"Delicious" is an excellent way to share links without having to duplicate them on this platform or on the wiki or elsewhere. The link points to (a growing list of) web sources specifically marked by me for this course.

=Session Protocols=


 * Session photo protocols with comments. Please feel free to add your own comment, links etc.
 * Preferably after registering (so that you can sign your contribution—using the pen symbol in the wiki editor). A signature looks like this: --84.175.88.107 (discuss) 06:29, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Only if you're registered you can watch/follow the changes of your wiki pages (or other pages).
 * To upload pictures like I have done, you must register at commons.wikimedia.org — see my upload list there.

Session photos & comments

 * 1.01: Start. We kicked off by looking at a standard problem "getting to know each other" (in a business setting). We realized that solutions to this problem are not as straightforward as one might think because they are with necessity highly context dependent.
 * 1.01: Check in/out. Check in (warming up) and check out (warming down) are very important parts of any meeting process: they permit participants to arrive and achieve closure, respectively. Unfortunately, in real business life, these methods are largely neglected or left to chance. The excuse is: lack of time, but my suspicion is that most managers simply don't have any idea themselves how to start or end a meeting effectively. In particular if the meeting didn't go well or if it is very important. In this course, you will learn a number of check in/out methods and perhaps you can even creatively design your own!
 * 1.01: Trance state: inducing a slight trance state is good when you don't have to perform. You can induce this mode (this is called 'hypnotizing') or support it (mellow light, sound of your voice, body language) or you can block it. Storytelling also leads to a trance state, actually: the story is like a dream you're supposed to enter (think of your own reading experience...not when reading business texts though, but fiction).
 * 1.02:
 * 1.03: Term projects. In addition to our main course topics I suggested a few other subjects that are not tied to any particular method. These really are just suggestions and you're invited to come up with your own project topic. For any topic, you should be able to answer these questions: (1) Outcome: what could be deliverables from this project (apart from text) that would be useful in business? (2) Team: do we already have experts in the group (either for the method or for the practice), or at least people were really interested in it? (3) Do we feel confident that we can do this project as a team (take a look at sources, beginning of course with the Internet, or ask yourself if you can think of examples). Or you may generate primary data (e.g. by interviewing people or by building your own models).


 * 1.04: Brainstorming: this his set of framing questions to make brainstorming more effective. Of course you don't have to ask yourself all these questions before doing a brainstorm. But when you realize that you do not get the results you want, maybe worse approaching this creative method more systematically. It is a frequent and understandable misunderstanding that creative methods should always be wild, unstructured and open. This is not strictly speaking true: even the creative mind works with imitation (remember our short discussion of "mirror neurons") and thrives on routine. True creativity is rather a process of interaction between highly structured and highly unstructured modes of thinking.
 * 1.05:
 * 1.06: Wiki: The wiki follows a very simple principle: it is an asynchronously editable webpage, a document on the web whose layout you can change. Therefore you only need to know three basic things: edit (there's a button for that), link (to create a new page), and save (there is a button for that too). Your project page will be a link on this course wiki page. Meta-discussions (discussions about the page) always take place on the "discussion" page that accompanies every wiki page.
 * 1.07: BBC Series "Yes, [Prime minister]": ran in the 1980s. Recommended for anyone who wishes to understand the British. Very funny.
 * 1.08: Essay formats: the chart illustrates the dominant structure of a modern scientific paper, IMRAD. Depending on the field & the type of paper and publication, the substructure and balance of its parts will still vary— e.g. a scientific paper about a well-established field, or a paper without (self generated) primary data, will have to have a detailed literature review. This format is also suitable for your MBA thesis.
 * 1.09: ...We discussed a couple of different essay formats: these have rather been established by practice. The "thesis" format doesn't read particularly well but it is most common for dissertations (below PhD level). Here you have to be careful only to introduce the theory that is actually needed for answering your research questions and hypotheses. For the "story" format, which is designed to be readable, you interlace or alternate conceptual and exemplary parts and you pay special attention to the transitions between the parts of your paper. The treatment of transitions in long written papers is where experience pays off: the experienced scientific writer will pay special attention to the way in which the different parts of the paper fit together to make sense to the reader.

Agile Development and Scrum — April 10, 2013
See description.

Plan and Sources
(I always make a quick plan before a session. This is a sub-method perhaps a trivial one...I generally over-prepare, for this topic I did not, I under-prepared. The interesting thing for me was that the more I left the playing field open, the more own creative ideas I had, which increased my pleasure and reduced my stage fright.--msb (discuss • contribs) 20:18, 9 April 2013 (UTC))
 * Check-in: dice questions
 * Projects ... again. Shape your project using the pyramid principle. Individual then group. Task lists.
 * Waterfall vs. Agile (video)
 * Kanban vs. To Do vs. Scrum
 * Glossary of Scrum Terms
 * Scrum Cheat Sheet (terms, concepts, tools)
 * Scrum Process visualized
 * Agile Manifesto (transfer to your business) — especially: YAGNI (You Aren't Going to Need It); difference to the creative process; subjective-objective-meta triangle.
 * Detailed description of the process: what it is and what it isn't — discussion and identification of key items. Again: transfer?
 * Downside of the principles and methods?
 * Case studies: UMO and scientific production
 * Exercise: take a real well known business process and turn it agile.
 * Exercise: split in two groups, consultants and customers. Sell an agile process (consultants) and argue against it (customers). I learned this exercise in a coaching assessment centre.
 * Projects...again: as agile development?
 * Check-out: self - how would an agile checkout ritual look like?

Plan and Sources
See description.


 * What is Process Management — Tutorial from Processpedia.
 * Comparison of EPC and BPMN (ARIS community)
 * BPMN Tutorial, PDF (Object Modeling Group, Sam Mancarella, 2011)
 * Commented BPMN example: "pizza store" diagram tutorial.
 * Demo 1: brief tutorial video showing how to model a simple BPMN workflow for a job application process.
 * Demo 2: brief tutorial video showing how to extend a previously modelled process workflow to incorporate the collaborations between two participants.
 * Project collaboration tool: Titanpad.

Assertiveness At Work — May 2, 2013
Since we were doing so well on the "hard methods", I decided to throw in assertiveness methods as a bonus topic, partly because a number of your sample problems seem to relate to assertiveness issues. Not overly popular in Germany (I don't know why), these issues, and the related techniques, are, in my experience, superbly useful and important in business (as in private relationships, actually). We'll deal with the extension of assertiveness for bullies and other 'negative types' in our next session using a classification by H. Kjellin.--msb (discuss • contribs) 09:01, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Session photos & comments

 * 4.01: Often misunderstood, the key issue of assertiveness is not to defend yourself, to leave a strong impression, or in fact, take any responsibility for what your home might or might not do. The key to assertiveness is to communicate, as efficiently and powerfully as possible, where your personal boundary lies (and, by implication, if your opponent has crossed it). Next to the direct information (always to be considered the first option) "fielding" can be a very effective method. It's also very simple: it consists of identifying the shortest message that you want to send regarding your boundary and then sending it repeatedly, as long as necessary, without defending yourself, without giving extra information etc. Of course, a necessary prerequisite of this technique (or of any assertiveness) is that you know yourself, know your boundaries and are willing to defend them.
 * 4.02: it can be difficult at first to distinguish the different areas and applications of assertive behavior. This is in part because these areas overlap; assertiveness for example is very important when negotiating. At the same time, assertiveness is typically less needed here, because negotiations tend to be better structured and are built on the silent assumption that the opponents respect each others' boundaries. The two models by Berne we discussed (Drama triangle and PAC model) contain positions (e.g. "child" or "rescue") from which it is not possible to be assertive (or desired). There's a transition to dealing with "negative types" like bullies or charmers and exerting more pressure, wanting to get your way, not only communicate your boundaries. Milton Erickson is a hypnotherapist who also used and refined paradoxical interventions in his practice.

Session photos & comments

 * 5.01: There were some excellent examples of (what could have been) assertive behavior (often this works way better in one's head than in reality, which is why you need to practice, practice, practice, then you will quickly notice a difference). Remember that assertiveness behavior is not meant so that you get your way-that may be best achieved in an unethical way by being aggressive or manipulative (only defensive behavior seems to be singularly ineffective); its primary purpose really is to communicate boundaries clearly, let you know (via the response) who you're dealing with and will always help you preserve your self respect. All assertiveness situations esp at work have the potential to lose you some of that and you need to develop techniques to re-establish it. Reframing is another technique in this context: its secret is to put a different spin on the same set of facts. Re- interpret them e.g. to let yourself know that you learnt something, both for self respect and to remain operational, keep the initiative and stay actively in the game.
 * 5.02: Asking yourself who your least preferred negative type is and which negative type(s) you yourself tend to be for others. Negative behavior is relative, it is not good or bad, its usefulness depends on the context. Also when in a situation where you are the one with less actual (not just perceived) power, you should, or can, turn into negative types to save yourself. One possible outcome of both assertiveness and interventions against negative types is that you signal to the perpetrator that you are not an easy target and s/he is then more likely to let go off you and find another, better target.

Plan and Sources

 * Applying Storytelling — Interview with Steve Denning (2010)
 * HBR Mgmt. Comm. on Storytelling — C. M. Phoel (2006)
 * Video: Leadership Storytelling — TEDx talk by Steve Denning (2011)
 * Video: Nancy Duarte : Engage through storytelling
 * Sparknow Corporate Storytelling

Session photos & comments

 * 6.01: Your challenge was to let us know if you had made any experiences with negative types in the past week and tell it as a story to the class. Your ability to do this impressed me! In hindsight I think it may have to do something with the fact that Kjellin's list of negative types is already a list of archetypes (mythological, ancient categorization of types of people) and lends itself (more easily to storytelling (than for example a list of arbitrary people). It is also encouraging to see, after looking at different models of communication, how you are already able to meaningfully mix different approaches to explain a situation or design an intervention.
 * 6.02: We extract these elements of storytelling from my story of the Murshid. We distinguish between content, form and context of the story. Crucial to the success of any story is the creation of an image or a serious of linked images in the reader's mind. Novelist and critic John Gardner called this inducing a dream and created a theory of writing around it: according to this theory, the writer should eliminate all elements from his story that interrupt or disturbed the reader's "dream". In executive coaching a similar lesson is that any change is supported by the creation of a clear image of the future. We will pick up on this truth in our next session on scenario planning.
 * 6.03: The last of Denning's suggestions (see video and material above) for good organizational stories to accompany change, contrasting the before and after the situation, does not apply to all changes. Perhaps you would also like to take a look at this short video by Nancy Duarte.

Plan and Sources

 * TEDx talk: "I won't know what I think until I've seen what I said"
 * Introduction to Scenario Planning Video (2011), 4 min.
 * Some examples from a (German) course on enterprise process modeling
 * Fast & Furious scenarios: (1) Open Science; (2) Project outline with milestones
 * What are scenarios? Shell style...: "Shell has been using scenarios since the early 1970s to allow generations of leaders make better business decisions. Over time, the Shell Scenarios have gained a global following among governments, academia and other businesses. They have helped deepen understanding of how the world might appear decades ahead."
 * Shell global scenarios for 2050: "To help think about the future of energy, we have developed two scenarios that describe alternative ways it may develop. In the first scenario – called Scramble – policymakers pay little attention to more efficient energy use until supplies are tight. Likewise, greenhouse gas emissions are not seriously addressed until there are major climate shocks. In the second scenario – Blueprints – growing local actions begin to address the challenges of economic development, energy security and environmental pollution." — including video with Jeremy Bentham (Head of Corporate Planning, Shell)
 * Trend maps for the future from NowAndNext.com

Session photos & comments
7.01: Check-in: this session was special because there was such a large group of newcomers from Kingston University in the UK. Our usual check-in was turned into a mass on-boarding exercise. Among the tools covered in this course, scenario planning counts as "hard" because it combines data and perception analysis to create detailed pictures of different futures that can be operationalized in the context of the enterprise. This is a method that has been pioneered by Royal Dutch Shell the oil and gas company.

7.02: The feedback from our visitors after veteran students of the course shared their impression contained many of the key aspects of the course. It also included the "magic ball" (a useful prop for check in and check out) and gave rise to a philosophical speculation about the fact that "off-topic" remarks can, by way of revealing interesting, potentially confrontational issues, be "off topic". That is, what is on or off topic is context dependent: when engaged in solving complex problems, your topical search and reflection should be as wide-ranging as humanly possible.

7.03: Scenario Planning: traditional instruments of prediction or forecasting (like trend analysis) usually assume a particular future. Scenario planning on the other hand should yield several (usually 2 to 3) futures. "Companies are better at preparing then at predicting the future". For companies like Shell the scenario time horizon is about 25 years or longer. The reasons are fourfold and have to do with shells business. Finally, scenario planning can be seen as a powerful combination of thorough data mining and analysis, and guided creativity, combined in the course of a lengthy, dialogue oriented process, resulting in 2 to 3 scenarios.

7.04: Scenarios and disruption. After briefly introducing the process on how to arrive at scenarios, we discussed Kent's question: "how useful can a tool like this be given that the world seems to be getting more disruptive, see recent events — for example the financial crisis of 2008 — and how can scenario planning take this into account?" (He later also mentioned the well-known work by Stacey — see this decision making matrix). My quick reply to this excellent question was that the scenario planning method needs to be well aware of its limitations. In the absence of data, it's hardly more than structured storytelling and an appreciation of the fact that the future is uncertain. In the world living continuously at the edge of chaos, it might still be important as a basis of dialogue and to provide structure. The more interdisciplinary the group of agents is who co-create the scenarios, the broader the applicability.

7.05: instructions for the group exercise: pick a problem (any!), create scenarios, and describe followed by a challenge in the large group. The art of picking the right dimensions is highly contextual: it depends on who the scenario is made for, that is why it is created in the first place. The more specific the cause, the more relevant the scenario for decision-making — at the same time the less general the scenario will be. The Shell scenarios for example are highly relevant for the energy industry, but their value for the rest of mankind can only be estimated after subtracting, as it were, the specific interests of Shell as a company. At the very least, the scenario process itself can give rise to interesting challenges and dialogue across borders as well as unexpected expert input and unusual juxtaposition of data and perception.

7.06: Social Media scenarios in the context of standardization/customization (e.g. platforms, hardware) and high/low regulation. Interesting discussion about the interpretation of the perceived (by some) "pessimism" of the scenarios. This perception could be reframed. "SMWW" stands for social media world war, the worst-case scenario. Challenges focused on data basis (much discussed), interpretation of market movements and interpretation e.g. of "standardization".

7.07: 'The UK leaves EU' scenarios in the context of free/restricted trade and a disintegrating/unified EU. These were (unnamed) politico economical scenarios, both of them rather gloomy. Even the wildcard was gloomy. The discussion focused on the data basis, which seems to exist at least regarding public opinion in the sense that a disintegration of the EU within a decade is not seen as impossible. Even this handwaving, heavily UK-centric scenario could be a useful deliverable for policymakers or for a company trying to decide about investments in the EU. Some reframing (as in the social media scenario) might also be interesting, as would be to look at the interfaces to other (non-EU) trade regions and political bodies that could also be subject to disintegration.

7.08: Car manufacturing scenarios in the context of high/low price of oil and small/large family demographics. A business oriented description using SWOT analysis to get a good first overview of the possibilities of these two (quite realistic) scenarios. The group tried different dimensions before settling on this one.

--msb (discuss • contribs) 20:51, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Final Sprint Review - 19.06.2013
Very impressive final presentations and a glorious check-in round. You'll find my notes from the presentations on your discussion pages within a few days and I will also update the comments on the last two topics this week.

For the feedback on the presentations, see Moodle forum where you posted your presentations.

Last Check-In
Each student gets to ask the others one question that s/he then has to answer him/herself.


 * A: your greatest surprise?
 * A1: Zen getting into tools after decades
 * A: being treated like a pupil; counter measure: questions probing, giving feedback


 * B: is there anything that we can take that you already applied?
 * B1: agility in the company I'm working in, negative types
 * B2: used PAC model to coach my wife


 * C: something you didn't understand
 * C1: organisational constellations
 * C: difficult to be good at storytelling


 * D: confidence index with the course
 * D1: "7" because I can implement some lessons but I've still get holes due to lack of practice
 * D: "8" because almost finished, lots of tools


 * E: who can answer the initial problem?
 * E1: boss doesn't delegate ...because he is like a bully
 * E2: coordinate different stakeholders, by using agile methods
 * E: finding balance between shareholder vs management requirements; systemic thinking


 * F: have you own negative pattern and what to do against it?
 * F1: charmer - turn on the bully and be more tough...comment: rather be assertive. Pareto principle, losing sleep over solving problems, divide up the process energies, write down, break down, talk it over, mentoring, escalate it: what would happen if it does not get solved, Bach flower remedies, just don't sleep, yoga helps.


 * G: 10 years from now what will your memories be.
 * G1: the ball.
 * G2: open discussion. anecdotes
 * G: "Thank You For Your Sperm", the book...