strategic thinking: what it is and how to do it

110
Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it Maree Conway VISTA Conference May 2009

Post on 12-Sep-2014

51 views

Category:

Business


1 download

DESCRIPTION

An overview of strategic thinking - what it is and how to get started building strategic thinking processes in your organisation.

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Maree Conway

VISTA Conference

May 2009

Page 2: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

A bit about me

Long and good career in CAEs, TAFE, universities

2007….integrating long term thinking into strategy development, using futures approaches

Managed their planning/quality units

1999-2005

2005-2007

Page 3: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it
Page 4: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Capture your thoughts

• As we work through the session, write down changes you can make in how you think and do when you return to work.

Page 5: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it
Page 6: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Reflective Practice

Leadership

Good Ancestory

Interior Exterior

Individual

Collective

Strategic Thinking

Integral Framework

Based on the work of Ken Wilber

Page 7: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Strategic ThinkingGenerating Options

What might happen?

Strategic Decision MakingMaking choices

What will we do?

Strategic PlanningTaking Action

How will we do it?

Options

Decisions

Actions

Page 8: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Long term

Uncertain

Divergent

Incomplete

Beyond linear

Disrupting alignment

Page 9: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Short term

Logical

Convergent

Pragmatic

Deductive

Creating Alignment

Page 10: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Strategic thinking is about developing strategy.

• Strategy is about the future.

ergo…

• Strategic Thinking is thinking about the future.

Strategic Thinking

Page 11: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Integrating the future into your decision making processes today by thinking big, deep and long.

Strategic Thinking

Page 12: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Big – do we understand how we connect and interact with other organisations and the external environment?

Page 13: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Deep – how deeply are we questioning our ways of operating?

• Do we operate from our interpretation of the past, or our anticipation of the future?

• Are our assumptions today valid into the future?

Page 14: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Long – how far into the future are we looking? Do we understand the shape of alternative futures for our organisation?

Page 15: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Strategic thinking is identifying, imagining and understanding possible and plausible future operating environments for your organisation…

Page 16: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

…and using that knowledge to expand your thinking about your potential future options…

Page 17: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

…about how to position your organisation effectively in the external environment,

Page 18: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

…in order to make better informed decisions about action to take today.

Page 19: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Thinking Big: Thinking in Systems

Page 20: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Leaders need to learn to see the larger systems of which they are a part.

• Shifts focus from optimising their piece of the puzzle to building shared understanding and larger vision.

Thinking Big: Systems Thinking

Peter Senge, The Necessary Revolution, 2008

Page 21: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Forces your attention:– out to the external environment to understand

the impact of change,– on connections and interdependencies,– on aligning internal capacity with reality of a

constantly changing external environment,– on identifying strategy that will ensure viability

of your organisations into the future, and– on the big picture.

Thinking Big: Systems Thinking

Page 22: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Thinking Deep

Page 23: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• What might seem real to you probably won’t seem as real to the next person.– not right, not wrong, just is.

• How you filter information (your lens) to create meaning is critical to understand.

Worldview

Page 24: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Our assumptions encase us in the past.

Page 25: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Assumption 1: It’s impossible.

Page 26: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Assumption 2: I’m too busy.

Page 27: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Assumption 3: It’s irrelevant.

Page 28: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it
Page 29: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

You will know when to test assumptions when the pain of continuing with ‘business-as-usual’ is greater than the fear of challenging yourself and others.

Page 30: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Thinking Long: Environmental Scanning

Page 31: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Creating graduates for jobs that don’t exist, using technology that hasn’t been invented, to solve problems that haven’t happened.

• Must understand the shape of this world to be able to lead towards it.

In education…

Page 32: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

OrganisationOrganisation

Global

Industry

Technology

Lifestyle

Values

Politics

Economy

Environment

Demographics &generational change

Learning

Educational Gaming

Funding

Engagement

Online

Sustainability

VocationalImperative

The External Environment

GlobalisationWildcard

Wildcard

Wildcard

Wildcard

Page 33: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Today FutureTIME

UNCERTAINTY

Linear Future

Low

High

The linear future is the one we believe to be true, usually based on untested assumptions

Usual Planning Timeframe(3-5 years)

Trend

Page 34: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Today FutureTIME

UNCERTAINTY

Linear Future

Low

High

Possible Futures

Usual Planning Timeframe(3-5 years)

Trend

Page 35: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Today FutureTIME

UNCERTAINTY

Linear Future

Low

High

Possible Futures

Usual Planning Timeframe(3-5 years)

Trend

And…don’t forget the wildcard…

Page 36: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Whatever takes you away from conventional thinking…

Trends

Emerging Issues

The weird and unimaginable

Page 37: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Scan actively

• Scan in strange places

• Scan for diversity of perspectives (not right, not wrong, just is)

• Look for connections, collisions and intersections.

• RSS feeds

• Meta scanning sites

Scan: know earlier

Page 38: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Collective wisdom is best when interpreting scanning results.

• Need systems to record and share scanning ‘hits’.

• Need regular gatherings at all levels to interpret and explore what it all means for your organisation.

• Get your whole organisation thinking.

Scan: know together

Page 39: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Putting it all together:What might be… and what can

we do about it today?

Page 40: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

There are no future facts

Page 41: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Types of Futures

Time

Today

Possible

Plausible

Probable

Preferable

Scenario

“Wildcard”

Futures Cone developed by Clem Bezold

Page 42: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• What will be the shape of the future?

• What will be important?

• What will be peripheral?

• What does it mean for us?

Page 43: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• The future might be unknowable, but you can understand a lot about what will influence the future.

Page 44: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it
Page 45: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

The impact of global trends...

Page 46: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

…and of government policy

Page 47: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Competing for talent

Skilling, re-skilling, up-skilling

Flexibility

Relationships

Page 48: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Increasing competition ormore collaboration?

Page 49: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Global 2.0 is here…understanding and engaging with an array of cultures…

Page 50: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Diversity of workforce and student population increasing

Page 51: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

...student choice and time, place and pace of learning

Page 52: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

…how will we learn?

Page 53: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

SNACK CULTURE

Deconstructing products - smaller, faster, cheaper

Page 54: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Photo: http://www.cyberpunkreview.com

Is the singularity real?

Page 55: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

How will automation affect our work?

Page 56: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

The way we do business is changing.

Page 57: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

…and we need to demonstrate our ‘green’ credentials

Page 58: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Implications

• Students – how will they learn, what will their experience look like?

• Staff – how will you work, what will a day look like for you?

• The organisation – how will it have changed? How will it have stayed the same?

• Learning – what will it mean (structure, delivery, assessment, recognition)?

• Industry – what will it look like? How will people work? What skills might be needed?

Page 59: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it
Page 60: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Beyond the short-term

• Beyond busy

• “We want to be proactive…”

• But, you can’t be proactive unless you have spent time thinking about how you might react to events that have not yet happened.

Why do it this way?

Page 61: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Reactive Futures

Page 62: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Proactive Futures

Page 63: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Reactive Futures – seek certainty

Page 64: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Proactive futures – embrace complexity

Page 65: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

REACTIVE FUTURES

• Let’s get someone to tell us about the future of…

PROACTIVE FUTURES

• Let’s think about how to focus our organisations on the future.

Page 66: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Reactive Futures Proactive Futures

What has happened? What is happening?

What caused it to happen? What is driving the trends that will influence our future?

What are our alternative futures?

How do we respond? What ought we do today?

What would be the long term consequences of our actions today?

What will we do? What will we do?

After the event Anticipating the event

Page 67: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Mental filters (patterned responses)

• Overconfidence (far too certain)

• Penchant for confirming rather than disconfirming evidence

• Dislike for ambiguity (want certainty)

• Group think (Abilene effect)

Recognise the blinders

PJH Schoemaker and GS Day Driving through the Fog, Long Range Planning 37 (2003): 127-142

Page 68: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Moving beyond pattern response and habitual thinking that no longer works well when uncertainty is dominant.

• Re-training our brains to make new connections (ie be creative).

• Moving our brains from automatic pilot to manual steering.

It’s about changing the way you think…

Page 69: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

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

Page 70: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• What assumptions that underpin how you think about your work now will need to change?

Page 71: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

A Challenge: Beyond Busy

Page 72: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• The pressures of his job drive the manager to be superficial in his actions - to overload himself with work, encourage interruption, respond quickly to every stimulus, seek the tangible and avoid the abstract, makes decisions in small increments, and do everything abruptly.

Henry Mintzberg The Manager’s Job: Folklore or Fact, HBR, 1975

Page 73: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• “Managers who get caught in the trap of overwhelming demands become prisoners of routine. They do not have time to notice opportunities. Their habituated work prevents them from taking the first necessary step toward harnessing willpower: developing the capacity to dream an idea into existence and transforming it into a concrete existence.”

Heike Bruch & Sumantra Ghoshal, A Bias for Action: How Effective Managers Harness Their Willpower, Achieve Results, and Stop Wasting Time, HBSP, 2004

Page 74: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

The Result?

Our organisations will tend to be purposeless wastelands, populated by the perpetually busy and the inherently unhappy.

Stephen Johnson, What do you do for a living?, 2007

Page 75: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• I’m too busy dealing with today to think about the future…

actually means…

• I can only think short term, not long term. I don’t have time to think strategically.

Page 76: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

If you succumb to the busyness syndrome, this is how you approach the future.

Page 77: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• A futures thinking approach may mitigate against falling into the trap of being caught reacting to the day to day, where the urgent drives out the important, where the futures goes unexplored and the capacity to act, rather than the capacity to think and imagine, becomes the sole measure for leadership.

Brent Davies

Leading the Strategically Focused School: Success and Sustainability (2006)

Page 78: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

To think strategically, you have to move beyond busy.

Page 79: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Characteristics of Strategic Thinkers

Page 80: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Open mind…

Page 81: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Systems thinker…

Page 82: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Accept diversity…

Page 83: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Think outside the box…

Page 84: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Think outrageously at times…

Page 85: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Curious…

Explore, learn, reflect

Page 86: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Optimistic about creating the future…

Page 87: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Challenge assumptions…

Page 88: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Aware of own worldview…

Page 89: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Are compassionate…

Page 90: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

…and generous

Page 91: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

…and, seek and foster collective wisdom

Page 92: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Focus: critical issue/decision today• Scan: two trends likely to affect your decision into

the future (think uncertainty not predictability)• Interpret: think about how these trends might play

out over the next 10 years• Imagine: how your organisation look like in 10

years – image/metaphor/book or movie title• Decision: – implications/options for your decision

today. What will be the same, what might you do differently?

Your turn…

Page 93: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Back to Work

Page 94: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Strategic thinking is thinking about the future.

• As leaders in organisations, your responsibility is to influence others to understand the imperative of the future.

Page 95: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• That a sustainable way of life for us as individuals, for our organisations, our societies and our planet is possible only if we integrate the future into our decision making today.

The imperative of the future

Page 96: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

The imperative of the future

Peter SengeCreating Desired Futures in a Global Community, SOL, 2003

We focus on immediate needs and problems and are trapped by this illusion that what is most tangible is most real. We've been conditioned for thousands of years to identify with our family, our tribe, and our local social structures. A future that asks us to overcome this condition and identify with all of humankind looks alien indeed...we've never before lived in a world in which one's actions, through global business, can have their primary consequence of the other side of the world.

Page 97: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

And, just how do I do this in real life?

Page 98: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

It’s a challenge!

Page 99: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

The gap between reactive and proactive futures is bridged by making time for

strategic thinking..

Page 100: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Individual

Foresight

unconscious

implicit

solitary

Strategic

Foresight

conscious

explicit

collective

Individuals recognise and build their foresight capacity

Individuals begin to talk about and use futures approaches in their work

Collective individual capacities generate organisational capacity (structures & processes)

Page 101: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Leadership

Make a change in your routine when you go back to work.

Good Ancestory

Recognise the impact of decisions today for future

generations

Strategic Thinking

Whenever you have to make a decision, ask: “Am I

thinking, big, deep and long?”

Interior Exterior

Individual

Collective

Based on the work of Ken Wilber

Reflective Practice

Commit to building time to do this daily – stop doing

something else if you have to

YOU

Page 102: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Leadership

Build a scanning system to inform decision making – and

pay attention to it

Good Ancestory

Create a futures focused decision making culture

Strategic Thinking

Have thinking workshops as well as planning workshops

Interior Exterior

Individual

Collective

Based on the work of Ken Wilber

Reflective Practice

Encourage and support an outward looking staff

YOUR ORGANISATION

Page 103: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Strategy framework defined by tomorrow’s strategic issues rather than today’s operations.

• Strategic thinking capabilities are widespread in the organisation (not just senior executives).

• Process for negotiating trade-offs is in place.• Performance review system focuses managers

on key strategic issues• Reward system and values promote and support

the exercise of strategic thinking.

How do you know when?

Adapted from Thinking Strategically, McKinsey Quarterly, June 2000

Page 104: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• Strategic Thinking = integrating the future into your decision makingtoday.

• Futures focused decision making = “am I thinking big, deep and long?”

Page 105: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

• The aim is to understand - as best we can - the long term context of our decisions today, so that we make those decisions as wise and as robust as is possible.

Page 106: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it
Page 107: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it
Page 108: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it
Page 109: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it
Page 110: Strategic Thinking: what it is and how to do it

Maree ConwayThinking Futures

http://www.thinkingfutures.nethttp://futuresthink.blogspot.com

[email protected]

Photos from fotolia.com and istockphoto.com