Lesson 7 - Scenario Planning

Develop ideas of where you could incorporate the use of Scenario Planning in your organization.

(posted by Leo)

In my school, scenario planning seems an important part in developing our organization plan. The function of scenario planning is to ensure long-term sustainable survival of an organization (Sevaguru and Safa, 2009).It is a way of understanding the forces at work in recent times, such as technological change and environmental sustainability that will shape the future. The first thing we need to do is to identify the focal issue. For my school, the most important thing is to ensure it can provide a place for all students to learn. However, if there is the disease outbreak, it will probably affect students' study. It is just like what the SARS happen in 2003. All the school need to stop its operation and the students can't go to school. Since the online learning is not so popular among the school at that time, the school can do nothing for motivating students to learn at home. So if this kind of scenario happened again, what can we do and what is our action plan? It is suggested our school should provide an online multi-learning platform for students to use. Although our school already have the exiting online platform "SOUL", it seem that it is just a place for teacher to upload the course materials and for students to download and see the notices posted by the school. There is no interaction between them and student can learn nothing from this platform. So a multi-learning platform hopes to provide a place for student to have online learning. They can attend the online lesson, have group discussion and do class exercise. Hence, if the disease outbreak happened again, students can still have self-learning at home with their computer.

Reference:

Sevaguru, N., and Safa, M.S. (2009). Scenario Planning Approach to Strategic Management of Small Travel Business in Malaysia. International Journal of Business and Management Sciences, 2(1), 61-77.

(posted by Steffani)

Scenario planning is a disciplined method for imagination possible futures that companies have applied to a great range of issues (Schoemaker, 1995). Nowadays, almost everyone can get a mobile phone, so do the students. Many parents will ask their children to bring their mobile phones with them for security reason. This is the driving force for the school to plan how to deal with the cases if the students use mobile phones during the lessons.  In fact, students may not be able to control themselves in using mobile phones. Some of the students may try to use mobile phone to chat with their friends, play games, etc. during the lessons. This will greatly obstruct their learning progress and reduce the effectiveness of the lessons. Nevertheless, teachers cannot confiscate students' mobile phones when they discover the students are playing the mobile phones as mobile phone is personal property. Therefore, the school has the following plan:

• Issue parent notice to talk about the use of mobile phones in school area - mobile phones should be used only with the teachers' permission and when emergency cases happen. Students who fail to comply with this rule, their mobile phones will be confiscated for 3 days in school  (SIM card will be given back to the students.) Parent letters should be submitted in order to get back the mobile phones.
• Plan the procedures- Once the teachers discover the students use the mobile phones, the teachers should warn the students first. If the teachers discover the students use the mobile phones again, the phones will be confiscated. After the lessons, the teachers should  immediately report to the Discipline teachers and contact students' parents about the issue.
• School will buy a safe to lock the mobile phones which are confiscated and place the safe in the Discipline Mistress's Room where will be locked when Discipline Mistress is not in the room.

With the above system, the school hope that the new rule will warn the students against using mobile phones in school. This can also help to deal with the future potential cases.

Reference:

Schoemaker, Paul J H. Scenario Planning: A Tool for Strategic Thinking. Sloan Management Review; Winter 1995; 36, 2; ABI/INFORM Global, pg. 25-40

(Posted by Angus)
Schoemaker (1995) provide a 10 steps guideline for developing the scenario planning and suggest the planning starts by dividing knowledge into two areas: 
(1) things we believe we know something about and 
(2) elements we consider uncertain or unknowable.

The ultimate goal of my organization is to delivery goods to client at the right time, right place and right quantity with minimized cost. However, the number of order is very fluctuate that we hardly arrange number of truck to delivery all the order accurately. The number of order fluctuate by many reason, like seasonal trend, global shift and the external economical environment. The overestimation of order will lead to truck resource wastage and underestimation of order will lead to failure of delivery on-time. Therefore, we identify the basic trend and identify the uncertainties. 

As suggested by Schoemaker (1995), it is not necessary to account for all possible uncertainty, thus, we simplifying the uncertainty of order number into three level (High, Medium and low) and decide some possible way to handle operation in these case. For example, we will use sub-contractor to help us to deliver some of the order when the number of order is in high level. And we will keep on evaluating different scenario as the environment is keep changing to make long -term plan like what if the government change policy. 

Reference:
Schoemaker, Paul J H. Scenario Planning: A Tool for Strategic Thinking. Sloan Management Review; Winter 1995; 36, 2; ABI/INFORM Global, pg. 25-40

(Posted by Marisa)
In the past, strategic plans have often considered only the "official future," which was usually a straight-line graph of current trends carried into the future.(wikipedia) After gaining the knowledge about the scenario planning, it is essential for an organization to develop in one direction or rehabilitate from a hardship.

My workplace--a media group as a platform which the communication and new concept should be generated. My intern company is a media group based in Hongkong. However,It's far behind to develop the business in one place. So the group decide to expand the business to U.S,Europe,and south east asia. 
As result, our group members generated the motivation, budget, incentive forces to develop the business.
And the researches are done in the area where the business should be formed.

As Schoemaker mentioned, a simple approach is to identify extreme worlds by putting all positive elements in one and all negatives in another.Therefore,Our group has drawn all the possibilities to expand the business:
the political problem can be the most difficult problem to set up a media branch is other regions. We have discussed internal and external aspect and got the support from government. We have responsibilities to take the communication task with foreign regions and we are a path to improve the relationship between Hongkong and other areas.
In terms of social problem, we TV group are representatives of common thought in people‘s mind. Hence,society  supported us to make the international development.
We have found such motivation to reach the accomplishment. The company formed groups distributed abroad to be the ambassadors,as well as develop double-loop benefit in different areas.In terms of in-depth analysis, we have set up coodinator groups to solute the conflicts happen by different culture background.
We have encountered difficulties in the process of dealing with the relationship with other countries, but we rely on our scenario planning with skillful communication to survive in the world.

Reference:paul.H.Schoemaker. Scenario planning:a tool for strategic thinkinghttp://zh.scribd.com/doc/4489850/Schoemaker-Scenario-planning

(Posted by Cyrus)
The most important event in my organization is the annual convention held in the AsiaWorld-Expo I have mentioned before. This annual convention consists of various activities, including health seminars, economic seminars, awards ceremony, logo merchandise store, product store and so on. Take a review for the product store in the previous year. The store occupied around over 20,000 ft. sq. in area, consisting 3 parts, namely 80 cashiers, 30 huge product shelves, and a stage for product seminar. In the purpose of marketing, products are displayed beautifully in the product shelves and attendees can understand more about the products by listening to the products seminar just next to the shelves. Attendees can shop around the shelves and pick up the products they want, then line up and pay at the cashiers. However, some of the attendees brought some unpaid items passing by the stage to the exit directly, resulting in approximately 0.5% of dishonest or false transaction from the total sales in the previous convention. Some of the cases were stopped by securities at the exit, but there were still some leakages out of attention.

The part of strategic planning that relates to the tools and technologies for managing the uncertainties and discontinuities of change in the future (Ringland, 2006) In this case, I wish to develop a scenario planning to reduce uncertainty about dishonest or false transaction. As suggested by here I have identified 4 scenarios below:
(Positive scenario 1) Keep the beautiful shelves; Hire more securities to patrol around the store; Misbehavior decreases.
(Positive scenario 2) Remove the beautiful shelves; Change to form-filling order; Misbehavior decreases.
(Negative scenario 1) Keep the beautiful shelves; Hire more securities means higher cost; If this cost is higher than the loss form misbehavior; Overall profits drops.
(Negative scenario 2)  Remove the beautiful shelves; Cost of the shelves move to the set up of a counter for collecting products after filling order form and paying at the cashier; If this cost is higher; Overall profits drops.

As driven by our company vision, our strategy is to make the need and experience of the attendees our top priority. Positive scenario 1 and Negative scenario 1 are then chosen to cater this focal issue, because beautiful shelves can bring enjoyable shopping experience to our attendees whilst filling order forms and collecting products separately create more procedures for our attendees. So, the key point of the scenario planning lies in the cost calculation. It is optimal if we can manage our cost of hiring more securities within a certain budget less than the loss in misbehavior. To further shape the future, we can put our focus on more innovative marketing ideas in products display and carry on-going evaluation.

Reference:
Ringland, G. (1998). Scenario planning: managing for the future. Chichester, New York: John Wiley.

Lesson 6 - Storytelling

Identify a story in your organization that helps explain issues that need to be addressed.

（posted by Steffani）

For my organization, teachers used name-lists to take attendance of the students. After a term, the principal found that teachers had taken two attendances wrongly among thousands of attendances. He was not satisfied and asked the IT teachers to think of some methods to digitize the roll call system. After a month, 'e-class system' was introduced. Other than roll call system, there were also some functions such as online exercise, online quiz, etc. Therefore, the principal asked all the teachers to fully utilize the system. The teachers were trained for only one hour and they needed to use the system in the next week. As required, teachers needed to upload online exercises, manage the online resources and make online quizzes frequently as well. The pace of 'reform' was quick and some teachers were unhappy with this. This increases their workload. The students disliked the system as well since they have extra homework and quizzes. Therefore, I believe that the principal should slow down the pace of reform. I think the school should digitize the roll call system first. After that, online exercises should be uploaded once a month. After being more familiar with the system, teachers can then create online quizzes. This can comfort the staff and they can adapt to the change step by step.

(posted by Leo)

In my organization, student need to change the classroom all the time and have different timetable during their study, so we have provided the locker for them to store their personal belongings. If they want to use the locker, they need to go to the student counter for registration at the beginning of each semester. Our college will mark down the information on the name list sheet and give the locker key to student. Each time when starting the registration, there is a long queue waiting outside the counter.  The process is very slow and students need to wait for a long time.  Sometime it may assign the locker wrongly and they will blame on the staff. Also our colleagues blame on this ineffective process.

In order to enhance the process and make sure all students can have the collect locker, an e-locker system is developed and launched for few years. Students can register online, so they don't need to wait outside the counter and the lockers will be assigned by the system. Once student receive the successful notice of locker registration, they can come to the counter at office hour to collect the key. Our colleagues can follow the list to give corresponding key to them. The process is now more effective and avoids the artificial mistake. However, as there are a large amount of students  log in to the system for registration at the beginning, some students claim that they can't log in at first and need to try several times. So there are still rooms for improvements.

(posted by Marisa)

When i took my intern in the Media group last summer, it really reminds me of the important training is needed. There is a specific machine room in the office, the machines includes image pickup device， computing machines , title machines and so on .We new intern didn't know how to use it correctly, if we failed to work on it,it would make a crash or disposal of important files. So the professional training course or online teaching system is essential for media group to set up. Student may access to it and follow the online teaching steps and instructions to use it virtually or it may set up a training test for new intern and tell them how important to know the notice to use the devices.

(Posted by Angus)
My organization used traditional time clock to take the attendance in the past, however, management found that many staffs helping each other to take the attendance. They want to avoid this situation and reduce time for HR to input attendance record from paper to system, they introduce a finger print time clock.

The organization avoid the problem and improve HR's efficiency after the installation. However, after few year of installation, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Personal Data issue a guideline for collecting personal information, collecting finger print for taking attendance is not appropriated and some staffs complain about this finger print system. Finally, the organization need to stop the finger print system to avoid breaking the law and introduce a e-card system instead.

(Posted by Cyrus)
There's an annual convention for my organization. It is such a big event that held in a total of 7 halls in AsiaWorld-Expo with over 8,000 participants from all over the world. To organize such a large-scaled event, we have to prepare a lots of materials like website content, event guide book (over 45pages) for listing program timetable & content and directional signage (over 300 documents) for showing directions to different program venues. The most difficult part of materials preparation is that we need to include 5 languages - English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai. We have to start the preparation work 6 months earlier before the event. First, we have to confirm the English and Chinese versions by gathering the information from the previous events and make amendments. Second, it comes to coordinate English-Japanese, English-Korean and English-Thai translation from overseas offices respectively. Problems pop up during the coordination work. Since several colleagues were responsible for different languages last year, the files for reference were kept individually and even lost. This year, I was the only colleague to coordinate all languages and find it difficult to retrive the previous files which saved separatedly. At last, the translation speed of other languages was very slow because the colleagues from overseas offices need to start from the begining with no reference work from the past. And that it's talking about over 500 documents transfer, with 5 different languages. Back and Forth communication led to further messy transfer like different file names with different updated versions. This made the further production totally lag behind schedule.

From the story above, I have come up with two sources of problems. 1. There's a lack of a well developed intra-and inter-department file retrieval system. 2. There's a lack of matrix to record or organize the huge coordination work. My suggestion for next convention would be holding an overview meeting before starting the preparation. Instead of treating all these works as ad hoc tasks, we can develop the file retrieval system and matrix system beforehand.

Differences between OL and LO

(Posted by Leo)
On differences between organizational learning and learning organization

The two most common ways to distinguish between organizational learning and learning organization in existing literature are that learning organization is a form of organization while organizational learning is activity or processes (of learning) in organizations, and that learning organization needs efforts while organizational learning exists without any efforts. These two distinctions often appear together.

All organizations would have organizational learning, but only some would be learning organizations. For instance, Dodgson (1993, p. 380) uses the term ``natural state'' for organizational learning, while learning organization is seen to move beyond natural learning:

Organizational learning is as natural as learning in individuals... the ``learning organization'' can be distinguished as one that moves beyond this ``natural'' learning, and whose goals are to thrive by systematically using its learning to progress beyond mere adaptation (Dodgson, 1993, p. 380).

Dodgson certainly sees organizational learning as something that exists without efforts, while learning organization demands activity.

Table 1 Differences between organizational learning and learning organization

Reference:

Anders Ortenblad (2001), "On differences between organizational learning and learning organization",Vol.8,No.3,pp.125-133.

(Posted by Cyrus)
On Similarities between organizational learning and learning organization

As suggested by Tseng. C.C., Mclean G.N. (2008), both the organization learning processes 

and the learning organizations themselves promote continuous organizational renewal and improved performance 

capacity. 

Regardless of the differences listed above, practising organization learning and being a learning organization both serve the same purpose on improving effectiveness in an organization. 

Reference:

Tseng. C.C., Mclean. G.N. (2008). The Relationship Between Organizational Learning Practice and Learning Organization. Retrieved March 11, from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED501670.pdf

Lesson 5 - Organisational Learning & Learning Organisations

Activity 5:

Use the Harvard Review Survey results of your institution to help analyse the extent of LO in your workplace

Review group workplace cases:

Compare similarities and differences and develop a table evidencing this.

What can be learnt from this comparison to help complete Assignment Task 1.

(posted by Leo)

Base on the Harvard Review Survey results of my organization, it shows that my workplace can only fulfill some of the criteria to be the well Learning Organization.  In the Supportive Learning environment, my workplace can give time for our colleague to raise problem and reflect on this. We can share information about what does and doesn’t work during the meeting.  It is true that they are interested in finding the better ways of doing things. However, people are too busy to invest time in improvement, and the experiments with new ways of working seldom occurred in our collage.

In case of the new systems or policy is adopted, training will be provided for our colleague to attend, so we will know what’s going on in our collage. But for the periodic training and training updates, it is difficult to find in our workplace. Hence, there are still rooms for improvement in order to make our organization to become skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.

When compare with other cases in our group, it is find that all our scores in “Learning Processes composite” are at the bottom quartile. It is true that many organizations willing to make change and have the well planning. But, when come to the concrete process, they may easily fail to perform well or difficult to keep on making changes due to several reasons, such as people get heavy workload and don’t have extra time to work on improvement, and some veterans refuse to learning new things. 

(posted by Steffani)

With reference to the survey result, the scaled scores for the composite building blocks of my organization are relatively low. Except for the 'Time for Reflection', all other scores are lower than the median. In my organization (school), evaluation meetings are always held. Teachers always reflect their teaching strategies, teaching schedule, activities and programmes organized, etc. Evaluation meetings are held every day in school to reflect upon the events on that day or week so that they can take immediate action to improve/ follow up.  

Concluding the first building block-- supportive learning environment, the scores of the subcomponents show that my organization does not do much to support the staff to learn. In fact, my organization always invites the colleagues to share their thoughts and ideas. However, decisions are often made by the decision-makers without consulting the staff or adopting colleagues’ opinion. Therefore, some staff may not speak out their opinion in the meeting. Therefore, I do believe that the leaders of my organization should change the organization culture that encourages learning in order to improve.

For the second building block—concrete learning processes and practices, my organization does not score high as well. This is also an area that my organization should change. New teaching methods, guidance techniques, etc. should be explored. My organization always stresses on evaluation and improvement. Teachers who learn new things from outside seminar need to share in the meeting. I wonder why the scores are low in this area; maybe it is due to not systematic enough.

For the third building block—Leadership that reinforces learning, as organizational learning is strongly influenced by the behavior of the leaders, leaders who actively question and listen to employees can encourage their employees to learn. In this area, my organization does not score high as well. Actually, the staff seldom have chance to meet and discuss with the leader. Most of the staff can just express their opinion to the department head only. Department heads can help to express the opinion to the senior-graded staff and this senior staff help to pass the message to the leader.

To compare the similarities and differences of my groupmates' workplaces, I have done the following table. By reviewing the table, Cyrus’s workplace is the best learning organization, followed by Marisa’s. Angus’s workplace is the least satisfactory. Besides, all our groupmates’ workplaces are weak in the area ‘learning process composite’.

(P.S. yellow-checked boxes indicate that the workplace scores higher than the others)

	Steffani	Leo	Angus	Cyrus	Marisa
Psychological Safety	68.6 2nd Quartile	60 Bottom Quartile	57.1 Bottom Quartile	77.1 3rd Quartile	60 Bottom Quartile
Appreciation of Differences	53.6 Bottom Quartile	57.1 2nd Quartile	35.7 Bottom Quartile	75 3rd Quartile	64.3 Median
Openness to New Ideas	78.6 Bottom Quartile	64.3 Bottom Quartile	35.7 Bottom Quartile	78.6 Bottom Quartile	82.1 2nd Quartile
Time for Reflection	62.9 3rd Quartile	52.9 3rd Quartile	45.7 2nd Quartile	65.7 3rd Quartile	65.7 3rd Quartile
LEARNING ENVIRONMENT COMPOSITE	65.9 2nd Quartile	61.1 Bottom Quartile	43.6 Bottom Quartile	74.1 3rd Quartile	68 2nd Quartile
Experimentation	67.9 2nd Quartile	71.4 Median	42.9 Bottom Quartile	75 3rd Quartile	75 3rd Quartile
Information Collection	64.3 Bottom Quartile	69 Bottom Quartile	31 Bottom Quartile	71.4 2nd Quartile	66.7 Bottom Quartile
Analysis	65.7 2nd Quartile	65.7 2nd Quartile	51.4 Bottom Quartile	65.7 2nd Quartile	65.7 2nd Quartile
Education and Training	73.8 2nd Quartile	65.7 Bottom Quartile	52.4 Bottom Quartile	42.9 Bottom Quartile	95.2 Top Quartile
Information Transfer	58.9 Bottom Quartile	71.4 Median	53.6 Bottom Quartile	57.1 Bottom Quartile	76.8 3rd Quartile
LEARNING PROCESSES COMPOSITE	52.7 Bottom Quartile	48.9 Bottom Quartile	34.9 Bottom Quartile	59.3 Bottom Quartile	54.4 Bottom Quartile
LEADERSHIP THAT REINFORCES LEARNING	47.5 Bottom Quartile	65 Bottom Quartile	52.5 Bottom Quartile	75 2nd Quartile	67.5 2nd Quartile

(posted by Marisa)

According to  the Harvard Review Survey results of my previous internship organization, it indicates that my workplace doesn't reach criteria so well to be the qualified Learning Organization. Scanning my results, the score I've got is quite interesting. The openness of Idea and Information Transfer reach higher score which means my workplace really focus on communication between members and ideas' transmiting is the focal points in media group. A program must be smoothly produced by a series of meeting and suggestion communication and revised improvement.
When it comes to the learning environment composite,the analysis of the cost of program, budget, process edition, and benefit outcome are in our daily working analysis.so the learning workshop is still having space to improvement. The professional training courses and programs should be  up-to-date under such circumstance or some new revolution in media field.And the leadership style should  be changeable  with the policy and situations.

As I mentioned “Learning Processes composite”part same as Leo.We got the low marks on it.It reminds me that a scholar once said:People nowadays focus more on outcome and reward they got,letting the learning go. It is true that ,in most organization, leaders don't have such creation to make organization processing. In the reality, many groups should  make some change in style of leadership and quality of the task's outcome,not only purchasing the high efficiency and money payment. The quality and mental contribution of members plays vital role in the construction of a certain group.

(Posted by Cyrus)
My organization (Marketing department in U.S.Health-care company) performs pretty well in most of the aspects as shown in the 3 building blocks of a learning organization suggested by Harvard Business Review Survey. Among the 3 building blocks, my organization has a sound and supportive environment for learning (3rd quartile); a rather effective and influential leadership that reinforces learning (2nd quartile); but not really satisfactory learning process resulted (bottom quartile).

The least performed areas are (1)Openness to New Ideas, (2)Education and Training and (3)Information Transfer. Conceivable reason for low marks in (1)Openness to New Ideas is the focus has all been put on problem-solving. However, as stated by Garvin, D.A., Edmondson, A.C., & Gino, F. (2008), learning is not simply about correcting mistakes and solving problems. It is also about crafting novel approaches. Employees should be encourages to take risks and explore the untested and unknown. Besides, the lack of (2)Education and Training for both new and existing employees hinders learning process and the lack of a clearly defined (3)Information Transfer system also makes information sharing slowly and inefficiently both internally and externally.

To compare with other organizations in my group, even though my organization has more effective environment and leadership for learning, some of the learning processes still perform as unfavorable as others with less effective environment and leadership for learning. And that although Angus's organization performs less satisfactory in all building blocks, it still performs better than my organization in Education and Training. From these, my organization can actually learn how to refine a balanced strategy with more focus on concrete practice rather than the hardware of  environment and leadership only.

Reference:
Garvin, D.A., Edmondson, A.C., & Gino, F. (2008). Is Yours a Learning Organization?. Harvard Business Review, 86 (3), 109-166