Hi Folks,
I think Arthur Battram is absolutely right about distinguishing between
the people who fundamentally understand what they are doing (and can often
use whatever process appears to be right at the time), and people who just
borrow the method. I have been struggling with the whole "strategy",
"planning" and "futuring" issues for some time, and have developed my own,
most imperfect, ways around the problems (essentially getting people to
explore the assumptions they are making).
Having used Future Search methods, and a passing awareness of Open Space,
I still don't think either necessarily gets around the problem that most
people think about the future in a linear fashion. I often illustrate this
by asking people how much the expansion of email has affected their
business practices. I then take them back three years or so, to a
previous planning exercise and get them to see if they were anywhere near
anticipating this kind of development. I then get them to think, in
hindsight and with accepting that degree of ignorance, they could have
better prepared themselves for this development.
In my experience people have a terrible time even thinking about the
assumptions they make in this linear thinking, leave alone embracing the
world of complexity. I often have problems from time to time with people
(including myself I have to say) confusing the concepts of "simple" and
"simplistic"; "complex" and "complicated".
I would welcome more discussion here.
Bob
BOB WILLIAMS
bobwill@actrix.gen.nz
"Only Connect" - E.M. Forster
--Bob Williams <bobwill@actrix.gen.nz>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>