Learning Log Marnix Eedens

Personal reflection paper ICT scenario planning

In this paper I will write about my experiences during the Scenario Thinking course. First, I evaluate the group process and second I evaluate how this course changed the way I look at the world.

In the first introduction session to Scenario Thinking we did a little assignment in which all the students drew a picture about how they think the future, past and present are interrelated. The most drawings were totally different. The figure illustrates the way I look at this:

My idea about the past, present and future

The group process
At the first workshop session we formed a group of six people to work on topic The Future of Console Based Games. We started to work out the uncertainties and used the post-its to build our first generation scenarios on white paper. After this, every group member worked out one of the uncertainties. So every group member formulated research question for their own uncertainties and from there everyone tried to find out their driving forces. This way of working worked out well. My research area was based on the question: How does the Interactive Entertainment Market look like in the future?

The week after our group decided on the driving forces we where introduced to systems thinking. I can still remember the Panda and the message that WWF don’t want to safe the panda but his environment “the system”. Another example about the bunny and the fox made it even more clearly to me, what system thinking is. I have learned that the number of bunnies is not that relevant but you have to inter-relate them with the environment. Another good example of a system was the drug baron from Colombia and the policy failure of Ronald Reagan’s War on drugs. This taught me how systems work. If you look at drugdealing like a systems then you are able to understand what will happen if the government increases the border patrol. Within a 15 to 20 minute class discussion and by voting we were able to see and to find out how to solve this drugs problem. Our conclusion was that you have to tackle the problem from the supply and demand site at the same time. For example free drugs and bomb the Colombian drugs baron. Another assignment was about the Mexico City traffic. The question was: What to do about it? The government had three possible solutions: build a subway station, a high way or a train station. I also had heard about another solution, colored number plates. But all this solutions only focused on the demand site: how to keep traffic moving. But the real solution to the problem was to move the most important offices out of the city.

After all these examples we started to work out our own system map. In the beginning, I think we focused too much on the drug baron example. And our first system map end up being very simple. When we talked about the map during the coaching session in Amsterdam our main problem was that our vision was not wide enough. We thought too much about what we knew from our hobby on gaming. Our advice was to do more than 20 hours research during the next three days. Although we enjoyed our day in Amsterdam, we knew that we had a lot of work to do.

During another group meeting, all group members prepared system maps about their own research area. We threw away the first simple map we made, because our new map was growing and growing. Talking about the gaming industy with our new messy map became so much easier and clearer then with the first one. As a group we where all satisfied with the final map and the work we have done.

The next step was to read the map and to find out the issues on the map with high leverage. All group members voted on two issues on the map and explained why they chose it. Different issues were marked on the map. We decided on two key uncertainties (government and changing business model), which we used to write our scenarios. We wrote three scenarios in groups of two persons. By talking in couples and a final meeting in The Hague we worked out our final scenarios. During the whole process we used msn for quick meetings and to keep everyone in group involved.

How did this course change the way I look at the world?
Not every political statement on which you on first sight agree with, results in what you want to achieve. For example Reagan’s War on drugs, it is a really good idea to stop drugs, but with system thinking I realized that you Reagan’s decision was wrong. So it is not all about good ideas. More important is to understand what can happen in the system if you decide on your ideas. This course taught me to be more critical about new ideas and to take into account what can happen in the system.

In addition, I have learned that the way you communicate your ideas is very important. For example it is not very useful to discus only the pros and cons of ideas or strategies. Scenarios and story telling are much more effective methods to explain your ideas.

Overall, in a short period of time I have learned the following:

• Never believe percentage after the dot like 6.7% if it is an expectation;
• “Counting the bounces is ok”, but look out for the “gourilla”, something which is out there but nobody though about before (I didn’t notice the gourilla in the movie!);
• Messy diagrams are good diagrams and helps you to understand the industry;
• Have fun while discussing the diagrams;
• Use story telling as a method of changing the organizational language;
• Walk and talk to develop your scenarios;
• Scenario thinking is a creative process, you need to think wide;
• Working with six people can improve your work, but can slow down decision making and planning.
• Making prediction about the future is not impossible!

In addition, I think that scenario planning really contributes to the skills of a CIO (Chief Information Officer).