tools and techniques

How to use cross impact analysis

by

Sometimes a blunt-force tool is best for grinding through the analysis and exploration of ideas.

Cross impact analysis* is just that. It forces you to test out the interactions among a set of forces, trends, or decisions.

The image at the right shows the basic concept, but let’s look a little closer at how to make this tool simple and useful.

In the basic grid you would relate, e.g. Item A to Item B, and Item B to Item A. But working the crosses two ways is hard. To do it more simply, just assume each pair interacts. Also, you don’t cross a thing with itself.

Thus in the stair-step cross impact diagram at the right, we work only in the unshaded cells. With this tool, you can explore emerging change to discover possible future outcomes.

Below is a filled-out example about the future consumer marketplace:

Where to use cross impacts

Cross impact is a back-shop or group-process tool. It is for exploration. Most of the time, nobody will want to see the gory details of your cross impact effort, though it is possible to tidy up and streamline the results for sharing with others.

What can you cross impact?

  • Trends/change forces
  • Proposed actions, strategies, or decisions
  • Different stakeholders, vis-a-vis an issue

Cross impact analysis resource page

For more on cross impact analysis, see: LINK. 

Conclusion

No matter the format used, the cross impact tool insists we acknowledge that nothing happens in a vacuum. That’s its real payoff. And the process of doing the analysis is its strongest benefit. Give it a try. Below is a link for a PDF of a template and instructions. 

Cross impact template and instructions

_____________

*This post gives a view of one of multiple approaches to cross impact analysis. The original form, invented by Ted Gordon and Olaf Helmer [LINK] is a quantitative method for assessing probabilities and/or the magnitude of impacts between different factors or decisions. My use is qualitative and is focused on discovery of potential future outcomes. 

What keeps organizations stuck in the present?

by

What keeps an organization stuck in the present (or struggling to get out of the past)?:

  • Holding on to sunk investment — Organizations hold tight to the big systems and assets they have invested in, often limiting their ability to move elsewhere, but also framing their thinking about what they can and should do.
  • Tradition — For example, social organizations such as the Boy Scouts or Freemasons have deep-set traditions that factor in their ability to even conceive of change. 
  • Inability to change the business model — Corporations and nonprofits face limits on their ability to evolve or jump to a new revenue or business model, for example to scale up or down their revenues, sales or donor volume, etc.
  • Defined by others — For example, the United States Air Force struggles to take up roles in cybersecurity. It is defined historically and in the public eye by its role for 70 years operating military aircraft. Similarly, organizations are often defined by Wall Street. A blue chip firm isn’t supposed to suddenly act like a start up, plunging into a new marketplace, or taking its operations and investment in a new direction.
  • Market drifting away — For example, cable outlets such as ESPN may have a steady-state view of their markets and an interest in continuing to push for market share and viewership, even as entertainment viewing has moved to mobile devices, non-real-time viewing
  • Fear of change/inability to imagine positive change — Not having a positive vision of what’s ahead, or at least a sense of taking intentional action to try for a positive future leaves organizations locked in current, often defensive behavior.
  • Pollyannism — Excessive optimism — the habit of thinking things will come around or that there are no threats that really matter. A simple human tendency or temperament, this can also be an affliction of whole organizations.

What to do about it — How to get un-stuck

1. Inventory how your organization is stuck. Pull together a few colleagues who you think are ready to think differently. Together, inventory the way your organization is “stuck”. Consider each of the items above. Which applies to your organization. How?

2. Identify critical forces of change. Make the case for change. Decide what those critical forces mean. Do they compel you to make changes? What is stopping you?

3. Pose sobering, critical “what ifs” for the organization. These should be powerful changes that would require the organization to change. What do they imply you need to do differently?

4. Get beyond key biases. Tell each other what they are. List them. What are they rooted in? See more here.

5.http://Setting aside biases Armed with these self-assessments, open up the conversation about needed change. Go at it. Don’t backslide!

Other prior posts with some good insights on this:

Image: Han Solo in Carbonite, William Warby, via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution license

Foresight tip: Scan the scanners

by

Environmental scanning (also known as horizon scanning) is part of anticipating the future. It's done by systematically gathering information about current and changing conditions. Good foresight requires environmental scanning for understanding emerging change.

Scanning is a lot of work, but other people already do it for you. Being efficient means scanning the scanners.

How do you scan the scanners?
Find the bloggers, news sites, podcasts, etc. that cover the range of news and information you need to monitor. Online sources, including tons of free ones, do this work well. You can fine-tune what you look at to tap well-curated sources.

My interests flop all over the place, and I find value in a rich mix of places. It's an ever-changing landscape of sources, but some I find valuable these days are: Reddit Futurology, PSFK, Slinking Toward Retirement, Boing Boing, and various of my savvy friends' twitter feeds. 

My colleagues are scanners who curate insights with a focus on the Future of Packaging on Twitter at @packfutur, and on the future of work at @50PlusatWork on Twitter and the Future of Work on Facebook.

Your best strategy is to find a manageable set of sources. "Automate" your monitoring by subscribing to email newsletters, using social media, or RSS feeds. That means information will flow to you. You won't have to remember to check multiple sources.

Keep fine-tuning your set of sources. Ditch anything that wastes your time. Add sources when you have a particular focus or project. 

One caution. You can be too tailored in your strategy. Allow in some variety, alternative views, and serendipity. You will make discoveries that way, instead of allowing confirmation bias to get ahold of you.

The ridiculous scenario

by

"Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous"
— Dator's Law, Futurist Jim Dator, University of Hawaii Manoa, [Source] 

Jim Dator says that to be useful, a statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous. But we fight the ridiculous trying to be responsbile thinkers about the future. 

"Don't waste time, that's crazy."

"Let's not get off track here."

"Oh, here we go, this is where the rubber hits the sky!" 

Of course, the ridiculous future is not often what we end up with. So why bother with it? To provoke better insights and action, we have to stretch our thinking. Rather than steer clear of an at-first-ridiculous idea, you should embrace it and play with it.

Until you’ve explored things that at first blush are “impossible” or “can’t ever happen” you haven’t explored the full landscape of meaningful, impactful change. The Wright Brothers told a incredulous world, after all, that humans were going to fly.

An example of a ridiculous scenario

“What if there was zero packaging?” We surely can’t manage unpackaged orange juice. But the concept lets you wonder about a future with far less packaging. Or a system for the containers we use with food and other products to be permanent and reusable. Or a marketplace in which packaging is no longer thought of as a nuisance and waste, but as an investment. So the ridiculous idea bears fruit. And it does so by leaping past thoughts of small-scale changes to show the potential for more transformational ones.

So take this as a cautionary to be sure we don’t too readily only see continuity, that we don’t miss significant threats and opportunities, that we don’t fail to explore the full landscape of possibility. 

NOTE: For more on scenarios, see: Why We Need Scenarios to Be Ready for the Future.

A previous post is similar: “the Unspoken Scenario”. Another is, “Come over to the dark side.” In those analyses, the missing scenarios are “unspoken”–perhaps unspeakable or “dark”. But the missing scenario can also be a wildly positive view of the future. 

Confirmation bias in foresight: Scanning to find what you already believe

by

Confirmation bias is getting attention in American politics. It is the tendency we have to pre-filter what we see and read according to our established views. Confirmation bias closes our minds to new ideas and other viewpoints. We end up in a protective bubble of our own making.

This is also a trap in foresight. The act of exploring for information and ideas about change is called environmental scanning. (Also called horizon scanning.) It is the work of collecting information, links, observations, etc. to better understand change and explore future possiblities. Confirmation bias afflicts scanning. It leads us to see only things that confirm our beliefs about the future. In fact, even your set of digital or paper filing categories can trick you into missing other changes. 

Confirmation bias file folders

This is a inevitable risk, and you have do two things to overcome it:

1). develop an approach that ensures you encounter new ideas in new categories. Don't just collect things that confirm what you have already decided is true. Read opposing views on purpose. Move towards divergent thoughts instead of away from them.

2). watch yourself and learn to catch yourself at this. Call out your biases when they happen. Carry your awareness of them into situations like when you will meet people with different world views.

Breaking through your own biases is a win. You should delight in discoveries as you read and observe that don't fit your understanding or or your categories. Get excited about finding out you're wrong. If you can't file it, leave it on the desk top. It's got an important insight for you. Pop that bubble. 

Foresight helps you see the forest for the trees

by

LeavesTreesForestWorldYou sit at your computer, productive, focused, dedicated to your work. You engage the detailed specifics of your job, the numbers, the facts, the personnel, the movement of things. You are an expert. You can tell when things are right and wrong. The organization rewards you for your knowledge and skill. You get things right. You are proud of your knowledge, skill, and focus. But you may be missing the future.

    Expert knowledge can put blinders on you 

It's hard to see the forest for the trees or you may have fallen out of the habit. I see this with people I meet in organizations. They can be savvy outside work and un-thoughtful or un-critical inside.

The job does it to them. The overburden of work and sometimes the corporate culture, squeezes them into a narrow place. So can a sense of the special role of their profession. Sometimes I hear people say they had read about an interesting trend or technology in the news or saw it in their travels, but it didn't occur ot them to think about how it might relate to their work. Too often their workplace doesn't encourage them to bring such observations into their what they do. 

A specialist's tight focus can blind you to the bigger picture. It can dim your view of new demands and opportunities from outside the system. And yet it may be, officially, your job to have that tight focus. It's also true that ideas about "how our business works" and "this is our mission" may be nearsighted for the evolving global reality that is shaping your destiny.

We all should be scouts, out in the world encountering change and clues to the future. If we can build and reinforce the habit of bringing those insights into our work our organizations will be better off. And with that, we should keep our focus broad, see the whole forest, not just the trees. 

Foresight tools bring a payoff by widening the view (as well as deepening it into the future). Most change is from the outside. Foresight tools are for making the whole forest visible to people whose eyes are on the trees, or even only the leaves. 

Those tools include:
+Environmental scanning 
+Scenario development
+Systems mapping

Each is a big(ger) picture mechanism. Each has been a powerful tool I've used with my clients over the years. They end up sharper, clearer-minded, aware, and more foresightful.

Please let me know if I can help you and your team to explore a wider world of change that will be a part of your destiny: jbmahaffie@leadingfuturists.biz and 202-272-0444.

Images: Aidan Grey, Joshua Mayer, Beatrice Murch, via Flickr, Creative Commons ShareAlike license. NASA.

Why we need scenarios to be ready for the future

by

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be…This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking 

–Isaac Asimov, Asimov on Science Fiction 1981

Organizations have to consider outside forces and trends as they build their strategies. But in most, too few people spend time thinking about how the future will shape the organization. Not enough of the knowledge and ideas of the organization finds its place in strategy. Leading firms use scenarios to solve these problems.

A science fictional way of thinking

Scenarios answer Asimov’s call for a “science fictional way of thinking”. They ask, “What if?” They are stories we build about future possibilities. The stories let us test and explore future risks and opportunities. 

The scenario building process draws out the insight of a team and helps make future challenges and opportunities clearer and more compelling. It gives participants a shared view of future possibilities. That view enriches their day-to-day work and strategic thinking.

We can use scenarios to think through potential decisions about strategy. The scenarios also become a tool for sharing strategic thinking with others. 

Most organizations have a good idea what they intend to do in the next few years. But that view can weaken their sense of more transformational change and bigger opportunities further out. Taking a look ten or even more years out lets us imagine bigger change. Then we can step back to today to understand what to do about it. 

The further into the future we look, the less certain we are about what will happen. But also, the further out we look the more our decisions today have the power to shape change and opportunity. 

This diagram shows how using scenarios can help us avoid just pursuing an “official” future. Official futures usually assume continuity. They tend to ignore both new threats and opportunities. Good foresight, exploring alternate scenarios, builds and maintains a broader view of what’s possible. 

Cone of uncertainty

Scenario building is a shared, immersive activity

The power of scenario building is in how it gets people to immerse themselves in the future. Working on scenarios leaves them no choice but to think both broadly and concretely about the future.

Once people have had the scenario-building experience, they have new ideas and places to go in their heads. They’ve got a much richer view of the future. They have a new mental habit–to think about alternative futures, not accepting that there’s some inevitable future out there. They should, and usually do, have a sense of empowerment. They discover there are parts of their future they can shape, starting now.

By the way, part of my practice is helping teams use scenarios. So, to be clear, I not only want you to do this, I’d love to help. We build scenario programs for all sorts of organizations. Here’s a page describing our support for workforce futures explorations.

Let me know if I can help you: jbmahaffie@leadingfuturists.biz and 202-271-0444.

Some of my other posts on scenarios:

The clean slate scenario

by

chalkdboard eraser alkruse24 via flickr cc licenseWhat would you build today if you started from scratch?

This is a question people in organizations, business sectors, government agencies, communities, non-profits, and philanthropies can ask to get new insights on their futures. We can't expect to throw over the old system and get just what we want, but we can free our thinking to understand our potential more and envision something better by doing this thought experiment.

The system you have is a product of history, not current and future needs. It heads into the future a relic which may not be right for new realities and capabilities. And some systems are particularly retro–the hug traditions and resist change all they can.

In my consulting work we explore this "clean slate" question for sectors which are under pressures for substantial, even transformational change. That has included primary and higher education, health care, and manufacturing, among others. Each is a set of systems and processes with deep history and strong disincentives for making big systems change.

How easy can you see 100 or even more years of continuity in the systems you are part of? The players in a system are usually happy to explore simple, evolutionary change. But they resist any comprehensive re-thinking of what exists. Their reasons are understandable, but the resistance is 

What slows change are vested interests and sunk costs of the system that already exists. People are comfortable with small changes but have a hard time imagining any kind of comprehensive change. And yet it might it may be that comprehensive change which is needed.

Where the limits on change are strong, it makes a difference to do thought experiements that help people focus on how far the current system may be from what would serve its stakeholders best.

Clayton Christensen's ideas about disruptive innovations are aligned with this notion [LINK]. Disruptive innovations step away from the existing system and offer a different model distinct from the old system. In its separateness comes freedom from those very constraints.

Clean slate scenarios take what seem like permanent parameters of a system and remove them as barriers. This can include the economics/cost structure of the system, the way it's organized, who participates, the technology and facilities involved, laws and regulations, shareholder concerns, the geographic distribution, and so on. Posing a clean slate scenario is a moment for dropping all of those seemingly fixed parameters. It requires suspending concern for what is true today and what exists.

What does a "clean slate" scenario look like?

A breakout group in a workshop I led gave me the perfect example of a "clean slate" scenario. I assigned their group the scenario theme: "Clean slate – replacing the traditional K-12 classroom – what we would build if we started over?" And they brought back the answer: "A forest". This was an idea both metaphorical and literal. They saw education as a holistic, integrated ecosystem in which a learner explores, learns, interacts, and grows, like a forest. And they saw nature itself, like a forest, as the best classroom. 

Another example put a twist on the idea. We gave a breakout group at a trade association meeting the following: "A New Generation Takes Charge–What would Millennials build if they decide to construct a new version of this industry?" Here the clean slate was an offering to a generation, the milennials, which is bringing new values, sensibilities, and business ideas, but which faces the fixed notions and established practices of a long-time industry. The resulting scenario, built by a team mainly of Baby Boomers, worked to understand and channel what milennials might create and want, and it was a sector driven by innovation, collaboration, and social connections. 

What can we really do?

Exploring the "clean slate" scenario is not about supposing we can or will overturn the existing system, that is often impossible. But it is about stretching our thinking further from the hard core of the systems that exist. And it's just possible you will discover a whole new way by this process, that you'll find the next disruptive innovation, and that you'll be a part of remaking a system for the better. 

Image: alkruse24 via Flickr, Creative Commons attribution license

7 first steps for building an organization’s foresight

by

handcrankAre you in a place where you want to kick-start foresight, but you are not sure how to start? You can start simple and you can succeed. But you probably can’t just leap in with a big splash, even if you’re the chief. You need to lay some groundwork.

Below are seven ways to get started that will help you:

  • Test the waters for foresight in the organization
  • Get the organization used to the idea of exploring the future
  • Learn how to explore your future effectively, and learn what works best in your situation
  • Build a name for yourself in your organization for foresight

What you can do:

  1. Have an actual conversation about your organization’s future, an open, thoughtful, creative one, with colleagues. Then talk about how it went, what it meant to everyone, and how you can have more—far more such conversations. This is a show-them-what-it-would-be-like moment, and may be essential to building your case for more foresight. You could establish a pattern of having lunch discussions on critical futures topics, such as “first Friday” of the month. If you can get interesting future-focused guests to share insights, so much the better
  2. Find kindred spirits in your organization that will join you in exploring the future, and encourage you, remind you, challenge you in doing so. You might do this by sharing an article or blog post on the future, and seeing who seems interested. Or schedule a brown bag lunch discussion, e.g. as described in no. 1 here. Keep in touch with these folks, involve them, seek their counsel. Build a foresight community.
  3. Do environmental scanning–Start learning about the wider world of forces, trends, issues, challenges, and opportunities that you face. That means carving out some time to do what is called environmental scanning–exploring for new trends, ideas, issues across all sorts of media. Join listserv and other online discussions on the future, and become a channel of new insights from those into your organization. It won’t seem like you are doing your work at first, maybe, but as soon as you discover fresh insights and see how they fit, you’ll feel justified in the time spent. You probably do these things anyway. Bring a focus to it, and pay out results.
  4. Pay it forward—Pay it forward means sharing your new insights on change as widely as you can, as noted. Pick up the role of scout for things important to your organization. Share discoveries, and build yourself a reputation for valued insights.
  5. Find outside encouragement, e.g. joining with others in professional associations who explore the future and strategy. Examples include the Association for Professional Futurists, the World Future Society, the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals. Some of those organizations have local chapters and each has a vigorous online presence. They are not expensive to join.
  6. Get visible about it–Commandeer a wall, whiteboard, or similar, and put some questions up: “What are the top trends shaping our future?” “What are we not talking about that we should?” Get a conversation going, share and nurture the comments.
  7. Play the role of futurist–Make a habit of saying, in every reasonable place at a meeting or in a discussion, “can we take a moment and look at how this plays out, longer term?” Playing this gentle but persistent futurist role will keep the future a part of the conversation. Be the futurist in the room.

Good luck!

Image: www.sodahead.com

The weaknesses and threats of SWOT analysis

by

Used in the typical way, SWOT analysis can do more harm than good. Why? Because the tool too easily forces thinking that ignores the future.

Using the four SWOT categories; strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a recipe, if you don’t take care, for a firm focus on the present. It gives you an organizational assessment, at best.

Typically, a group sits down with flip charts or white boards and inventories the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

And typically, the group has the immediate concerns of the organization foremost in its mind.

  • The strengths are those that have, for the past while, made or kept the organization strong, or should have.
  • The weaknesses are those things that are keeping the organization from prevailing or growing as it would like to in the past and today.
  • The opportunities are things about the current marketplace that suggest there could be more growth and other successes, if only the organization took advantage of them.
  • The threats are things that are freaking people in the organization out right now: who, or what is going to get them, to eat their lunch.
That present day focus is limiting, it fails to account enough for a changing world.

What to do about this

Modify SWOTs to be sure it pushes the view into your future, at least ten years out. Define the elements like this:

Strengths — What attributes of the organization will help us face the changes shaping our business over the next ten years?

Weaknesses — What are gaps and insufficiencies in our skills, organization, financial position, technology, etc. that could dampen our success over the next ten years?

Opportunities — What new areas of growth, development, alliance, expansion, etc. could we take advantage of in the coming decade and beyond?

Threats — What and who could challenge us over the next decade, putting our business, our current market share, etc. at risk?

Reworking SWOT analysis this way will make it a powerful tool for exploring your future, and get you beyond presentist thinking.

Follow by Email
Instagram