Navigating the Maze
- Are you looking for the skills and time to explore longer term strategic issues for your organisation?
- Is your organisation so busy with today’s issues that there is little time to look at what will define success in the future?
- Are you wanting to build an innovative and adaptive organisation that can maximise the opportunities that are emerging?
Our experience is that executives care deeply about these issues. However, the frenetic pace of organisational life means that time, energy and resources can become overly focused on the short term. In addition, the longer term is fraught with uncertainty and complexity, making analysis more challenging and so requiring a different approach and set of skills. Acknowledging this, researchers at Curtin University of Technology have developed a unique programme to provide executives with the skills that will enable them to ‘look up for awhile’ to help shape the future direction of their organisation. In particular, it will assist participants to gather deep intelligence about the strategic issue, their organisation, its environment, and to formulate innovative ways forward.
Rationale
Format
Content
Leaders
Course Dates
Cost
Enrolment
More information
Programme rationale
The speed and complexity of change now facing organisations means that they “… must become as efficient at renewal as they are at producing today’s product and services.”1 In fact, the Australian CSIRO suggests that for every $10 spent by a firm, $6 should be on conducting today’s business, $3 on building new businesses, and $1 on exploring and seeding options for the longer term2. Yet increasingly leaders are finding they have less time, resources and the necessary skills to deeply reflect upon and plan for the longer term future of their organisations in an increasingly complex world.
Globalisation and technology, among other things, are driving much of this complexity. The result is managers now face strategic issues that are ‘messy’, that is, there is no immediately recognisable outcome. In addition, every issue comes with strongly held views from a range of stakeholders, and as the pace of change increases, pressures mount to deal with the urgent/immediate challenges while avoiding unseen/future obstacles. What is needed in this situation are approaches that embrace complexity rather than ignore it, that incorporate multiple perspectives, encourage holistic thinking, and facilitate the surfacing of emerging opportunities. By sensing what is trying to emerge within a framework where accommodation is more important than consensus, all parties can invent solutions together. The process of arriving at shared meaning is as important as achieving agreed results.
Programme format
The programme will be conducted over twelve weeks and consist of seven one day seminars. Participants are encouraged to focus on a real issue facing the future of their organisation. They will work on this issue both in the seminars and back in the workplace. By the end of the programme they will have considered likely actions to resolve or advance the particular issue. The focus on a real life issue and the twelve weeks duration of the programme are aimed at meeting the need that has been expressed to us that organisations are finding it increasingly hard to find the time to explore bigger strategic issues. By scheduling the seminars over a few months, we are aiming to deepen the learning opportunity as well as provide a structured process for participants to consider a project important to the future of their organisation.
The size of the cohort will be kept to approximately 20 to maximise interaction and learning. The group will ideally be a mix of people from industry, government, and the community sectors. This mix is a reflection of the idea that the future is an intertwined space and as such, each sector has much to share with the others in terms of perspective, understandings, and experience. Participants are asked to bring along a current issue from their workplace to use it in the application of the concepts and methods taught on the course. They are also encouraged to speak with people from their own organisation about the issue and the concepts and methods throughout the programme.
This could include the establishment of a workplace project team led by the participant. This will assist with the transfer of skills beyond the participant. Participants will receive a range of relevant materials such as a workbook, a reading list, a concept book, and other comprehensive handouts.
Programme content
The programme will be delivered through six modules based on the integrated framework, ariadne: applying research and innovation to advance the development of networked enterprises developed by the Emergent Futures Group. The framework is a holistic futures methodology that incorporates a range of concepts (from the fields of futures; soft systems thinking; creativity; organisational learning; strategy; and narrative). This enables participants to proceed from the clarification of an issue to the creation of future options as part of the strategy development process.
Module one - Introduction and scoping projects
In this module, we will explore the current environment in which we make decisions. This includes increasing complexity due to: cause and effect being distant in space and time; diverse stakeholders with different agendas and worldviews; and emergent realities where solutions from the past no longer fit.3 We will then go through the ariadne framework which has been developed to address this complex environment, focusing on the first two tasks of scoping the project and finding out about the social and political context in which decisions will be made. Techniques for doing these will be shown. This session will finish with an exercise for participants to apply to their workplace issue.
Module two – Exploring the subject domain
In this module, participants will explore the subject area under investigation. This includes understanding major themes, future trends, emerging issues, and leading innovations in the 3 Adam Kahane, cited in Senge, P (2003) Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy in Reflections environmental scanning, emerging issues analysis, and scenario building. This session will finish with a discussion of participants’ workplace issues and a task to be undertaken for exploring the subject domain.
Module three - Creating models of ideal futures
In this module, participants will learn how to identify ideas from the exploration of the subject domain to take forward to model. The ideas will be distilled from the scenarios and other information gathered. Participants will then learn how to develop multiple conceptual models of potential futures. Techniques for undertaking these stages are drawn from the creativity field and the Soft Systems Methodology. The session will finish by ensuring participants are able to undertake a modelling exercise on their workplace issue prior to the next session.
Module four – Checking for innovation and taking the models forward
In this module, participants will be shown how to check the models for innovation to ensure there is a sufficient gap between what currently exists and what is being proposed. The models will then be checked in the light of information generated earlier regarding the social and political context in which decisions are made, the subject domain and the aims and scope of this particular project. Finally, participants will be shown how to take the final choice of models forward to a wider audience for discussion. A range of techniques for undertaking these tasks will be demonstrated including: windtunnelling, storytelling, and developing creative and interactive presentations. This module will conclude with ensuring participants are able to undertake an exercise to check their model/s for innovation and to develop appropriate presentation formats prior to the next session.
Module five – Developing agreed ways forward and designing implementation projects
In this module, participants will be shown how to discuss the range of models with a wider audience so that the point is reached on a preferred way forward. Techniques for undertaking this will be demonstrated such as active listening leading to accommodation rather than consensus. Once this preferred way forward is reached, participants will then be taken through the steps of designing its implementation. Many techniques of traditional project management are essential here. This module will conclude with participants having the opportunity to produce a blueprint for consultation and negotiation in relation to their workplace issue.
Module six – Reflecting on the participants’ projects and the framework
In this final module, we will reflect on participants’ projects and their experience of using the framework with a view to updating it for future use. The philosophy of the programme leaders is that because ariadne is a framework or metamethodology, participants should be aware they are making decisions step by step about its use. This session will also enable participants to discuss how they might go about using the framework within their own organisations, modifying it so it becomes their own way of working.
Programme leaders
This program is an initiative of Curtin Business School, Curtin University of Technology. It will be led by Professor Lynn Allen who developed the ariadne framework with Ms Trudi Lang who is currently studying at Oxford University. Professor Allen’s extensive executive experience combined with Ms Lang’s wide consultancy experience means participants theoretical learning is firmly grounded in the real world.
Lynn Allen is an experienced practitioner, consultant and teacher of the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). As an executive in both the private and public sectors she has used and extended SSM in areas as diverse as information services development, structural change and strategy. Trudi Lang has many years experience and qualifications in the field of futures, foresight and scenario thinking. Both her consultancy work and postgraduate research have led her to develop additional ideas on strategic management, innovation and creativity to incorporate these into the course methodology. Professor Allen will be joined by other presenters with experience in various methods.
Course dates
The dates for the programme are:
Module 1 13 & 16 June 2008
Module 2 30 June 2008
Module 3, part one 21 July 2008
Module 3, part two, 14 Aug 2008
Module 5 1 October 2008
Module 6 30 October 2008
Cost
$2500 incl GST. Coaching sessions with Professor Allen by arrangement
Enrolment Form
Download brochure and registration form
More information
Please contact:
Professor Lynn Allen, Curtin University of Technology
Tel: 9266 4859
Email: Lynn.Allen@curtin.edu.au
