Yue Zhang's Reflection

Personal Reflection

Learning Log March 16th

Today is first lecture of ICT Scenario Planning. When I was cycling to Liacs, there is only one sound in my head: Oh, my God, a lecture for the whole day, there cannot be any more boring thing in the world than this.

To my surprise, the lecture and the lecturer are really more interesting than I expected. :-)Before the lecture, I really have no idea about what "Scenario Planning" is. Kind of imagination, maybe. You just sit down (standing, perhaps, if you like), and brainstorming. Simply like a fortune teller, or put it a better way, futurist. However, after a few minutes of story telling, I should say, I really get very interested in this way of lecturing. Learning from stories.

From the elaboration of the story, you understand the situation in the real world, and therefore, a better understanding of how theory can be applied in the real world. It is just like the case analysis, however, normally, we need to read articles full of terminologies and analyze the complicated theories before we come to the real case study, and only after the case study, we can understand the situation better. However, with story telling, after the story, you can already realize some problem/theory underlying, and you may think, humm, maybe the it should be like this or this way should be better, or ever: wow, the logic is blabla, you don’t realize that in that way of thinking, actually you are coming out with the simple form of theory by yourself. Hence, you get better understanding of the theory because of the vivid exploration you got and you can apply it as free as you can like wave your hand or rise up you leg.

Most important of all, the story way of teaching makes me more interested in the lecture, and it made the whole day lecture more interesting and attractive than a half day lecture, and I know, next time, when I cycle to LIACS, on the way, I will expect the story and lecture instead of thinking “oh, another boring day, boring lecture”.

Learning Log April 7th

A simple example of scenario planning is elephant killing which was elaborated by Daniel today. I have no ideas that you even need to considerate a scenario planning in such a simple thing, from the surface. Actually, it isn’t as easy as we have imagined. OK, you just kill the number you don’t need, DONE. Elephants have their own system to evolve from generation to generation; it is a huge family, though they aren’t complicated as the society of human being.

I cannot help thinking some events happened to me since I came to Netherlands, or even when I was in China. Yes, sometimes, I really do some crappy things. I have never realized that the consequence of a small thing can magnify that much. Now I understand why, scenario thinking is a nice way of thinking, not only for the enterprises, government, etc. Scenario thinking is in our daily life, and it is ubiquitous. With scenario planning, you can better plan your schedule.

For example, when you are wondering whether accompany your girlfriend for shopping or stay home watch football game. First, you may think, I will stay at home and watch football. And you stay. However, the real situation is: you girlfriend keeps bothering you when you watch football and complain you don’t accompany her. Consequently, you didn’t enjoy the game and your girlfriend angry at you and won’t talk to you in these days. A simple thing evolves to be a small “world war” between you and your girlfriend. But if you can make a small scenario planning to get a snapshot of you won’t go and accompany your girlfriend, you will find you’d better accompany her or negotiate with her for another earlier or later time than the time she expected to achieve a better result for both you and your girlfriend.

After the lecture, we make system map for our scenario planning: Future of Intellectual Property. At first, we only have some simple ideas about technical, societal, environmental, economic driving forces. However, with the help of wiki and the driving forces done by previous year students, we got a much better understanding of driving forces. Ideas and driving forces booming up, we pasted a lot on the paper. Afterwards, we successfully categorize them in the group they belong to, and also some similar driving forces are merged together to form a better-unified one.

After we finished the system map, we came back the classroom to ask Daniel whether our system map is ok. Surprisingly, Daniel is closing his eyes and take a tiny rest in front of the computer. We are really touched by this, because during the lecture, we can still heard he coughed sometimes and his voice is really weak. We sneaked to the platform, you know, it is not so easy for five girls sneaked from the door to the platform of the classroom, and Daniel “woke up” from our “noisy sneaking”, ah, honestly speaking, we felt really guilty at that time. Daniel went through our system map and said, it seems good. We left and talked a little bit about his hard-working, so diligent, we think.

Learning Log May 5th

The deadline for scenario presentation will be due next week, so our group gather together for a discussion of the final scenarios we may get from the our driving forces with consideration of economy, regulation and standards. The best side of group work is that people have different angles and can think differently. We have five teammates in our group, coming from four different culture, this enable us to think diversely and come out with surprising and plausible scenarios.

Honestly speaking, we five girls are good friends. Hence, there is also a drawback of this kind of group. Sometimes, we will stray away from scenario planning, fortunately, we can get ourselves back in a short period of time, thus, not a very big problem. However, if not well managed, this kind of group maybe not efficient and effective as other groups. If well managed, friend-group may outperform other groups due to better understanding and good coordination in the group.

Learning Log May 10th

Today is final presentation for the scenario planning. It is really great to see what others have done during this two months. How then plan the future. Our group is part of "Future of Web2.0", it is fascination that you combine the other group who are also doing something about it, and to form a panorama of Web2.0 in five years.

Our presentation goes well, but there are also some problems. We have clear scenarios, however, we are not so convicing to put it logically/clearly. Later, we reorganized/rewrote the scenarios. Now, they looked better.

Now, when I look back on the first lecture, I found it is a really fascinating journey to discover the magic of scenario planning!

Academic Reflection

Scenario Planning--A strategic way of thinking

During the first lecture, I was wonder from the beginning: humm, the scenario planning sounds so nice. However, I really want some facts to convince myself. Later, I found the reader as well as the following lectures are very good convincing tools.

When first come to scenario planning, people will very easily consider scenario planner as “futurist” who plan a blueprint of future for an enterprise or a certain aspect of a country. The similarity is that they are all like telling story, very interesting coherent, plausible and relevant story. However, they are different. And actually, in my opinion, the main difference between the futurist and scenario planner mainly lies in that scenario planning will do the blueprint from the viewpoint of the company, and gives suggestion more on a strategic view, While futurist only focuses on the pure story telling and neglects the strategic part.

Scenario thinking, then, it is a way of strategic thinking. Not only locally, but globally. The whole world is one country now. Nowadays, globalization and ICT are driving forces for the change of organization. For the managerial people in the organization, it is difficult for them to understand what ICT people are talking about. Most of times, they will only consider ICT as an automation tool for the company instead of a strategic way of organizing[1].

Scenario planning is a way of looking at the world as a panorama. It includes all the aspects related to the object. Take an organization for example; scenario will try to include culture, legal, political, social, technological, economical and physical issues into the network model of the scenario planning[2]. This is the environment need to be taken into account while design scenario. Broadly speaking, not only scenario planning, but also daily operation of an organization. Therefore, the organization can view itself as an helicopter: firstly, from a higher level, to see what kind of large environment it operates in. Afterwards, go to each environment in details. Last but not least, to the strategy of the organization.

Scenario Planning and Crisis Management

What is the relationship between scenario planning and crisis management? What kind of role does scenario planning play in crisis management?

Scenairo planning is an important tool for crisis management, and it plays a critical role in crisis management. Crisis management, with the help of its well developed tools and techniques, is an invaluable planning approach to anticipate, manage and recover from a crisis. Most important of all, crisis management requires an awareness of the business an enterprise is operating as well as organisation mechanisim and its ability to plan for a crisis, and also its respond to a crisis. Actually, nobody knows how they will respond to a crisis: yet planning will ensure that if the unbelievabe events happen, we may at least be able to survive the event and continue to operate as businesses and organisations[3].

First come to my mind when it comes to Crisis Management is the SARS in the year of 2003. I can still remember the nervousness and anxiety of people around me as well as myself during that event. As the city I live also have four cases of SARS, and two of them died of it. Honestly speaking, there wasn't a very well-developed crisis management in China before that time. Hence, it is really kind of mess for a short period of time after SARS happened. Fortunately, the government responsed quickly after they realized the problem and a SARS management/report plan was formed on time, though not very perfect.

Afer SARS, researcher/professors realize the importance of crisis management as well as the essential tool to manage it--Scenario Planning. Why not think ahead and make some plans for it? To save the avoidable losses, losses in money, losses in life, at a cost of relatively small (It doesn't cost you a lot for a scenario planning). To learn the bloody lesson from the SARS crisis, we paid a lot. Crisis management and scenario planning is emerging and evolving in China and world widely. Just as the old saying goes: the only certainty of future is uncertainty.

References:

[1]Daniel Erasmus, A Common Language for Strategy, The Financial Times, Mastering Information Management, Part 10 Learning and Organisation, 4 May 1999

[2]Mary Jo Hatch, Organization Theory, Reader of ICT Strategy and Planning.

[3]http://www.scotexchange.net/research_and_statistics/scenarios/scenario_planning_viewpoint_2.htm