The Future is the Rear View Mirror of the Present - Learning Log Claudio Papone

==Understanding the New Global Business Environment==

Rotterdam School of Management
EMBA 2005
December 14, 2005

# Introduction

This my learning log of the Scenario Thinking class or better the Understanding of the New Global Business Environment class taught by Daniel Erasmus at the RSM Erasmus University. This log will touch upon the learning moments of these incredible 7 sessions and reflect on the academic, professional and personal learning moments and experiences.

# Academic Reflection

Back in June-July time frame, when I had to decide which elective courses to take I thought about this elective as one of the most appealing driven by my drive to look forward. Though, as the course outline stated that there was one class on scenario thinking and the other six about some abstract things to look at from a global perspective, I also thought the value would be significant in the first and I could not see what the rest would bring me. Fortunately the reality was totally different.

The preconceptions I had about scenarios is probably the same as most of the global population has, it is just a forecasting method that eventually will be disregarded by top management since they believe they have the key to the future based on their assumptions and they are not the ones who are willing to deliver a negative outlook. This because most of the people think they know what scenarios are but that is a “far cry” – as Pierre Wack refers to – from what Royal Dutch shell has developed in the early ‘70s.

From an academic reflection point of view looking back at the course I have to say that it has been a challenging course due to the fact that the readings from the reader and even more so those of Marshal McLuhan stimulates you to look outside of your preconceptions and generalizations that you have built from your past experiences. Every time after a class was finished I reflected on it and reviewed if I understood the message of the day, and in many occasion I had even more question than when I entered the class. Probably this is also driven from the large amount of work that needed to be done for each session so to condense all the relevant theory and group work in the time frame given.

When Daniel Erasmus told us that it was going to be painful and that we would hate each other in the group, he was right. Nevertheless, looking back at this experience I can relate to what Daniel has tried to teach us that we have to step outside of the chaos and look at it from a distance to recognise the patterns. Marshal McLuhan also refers at this by arguing that more information is better, actually that too much information is the best, because only then our mind gets overloaded and we will take a distance a see the patterns.

I will go deeper into the theoretical frameworks when describing my professional and personal reflections.

# Professional Reflection

Most probably in my own work environment I could not yet implement what I learned directly, but I could try to make indirect influences with the knowledge acquired. In Imation (NYSE: IMN) all strategic planning is done a year ahead and starts around March-April to peek in October-November. The strategic planning in the early phase is to identify the growth projections in a 5-year spectrum considering the environment we operate in (ICT). The more the time passes and the sooner the talks are evolving in tough battles about budgets for the upcoming year, whereby at the end of the day the global product managers dictate the growth that need to be achieved (mainly driven by growth in relation to stockholder wealth). Within the European organisation we can only influence local costs, local sales and local marketing efforts. When making the projections for the future everyone looks at the same reports developed by the market analysts that work in this field.

Well, well…. I may sound too negative, but I have never been fond of this approach, since at the end of the day all the strategic thinking done to develop the 5-year projection looks like it is thrown in the bin (or at least not reviewed anymore) and everything focuses on the expectations for the next year to please the board with the growth they want to see. And everybody think they have seen the light of the future and know that what the analysts are predicting and what the shareholders want is the future the company will reach no matter what. Though previously I did not have any clue if my senses where right. Now after this course I can understand why my senses told me that that was not the appropriate way.

The planning process utilised within Imation is just one that does not inspire collective learning (or what Arie de Gues refers to as institutional learning). The managers doing the planning work often work in closed teams without sharing their knowledge and use the same mental models of planning via the key certainties instead of analysing and recognising the impact of the key uncertainties. They may be able to increase the learning for their own, but fail to stimulate institutional learning.

In my work life I will certainly try – as shell as done – to develop “games” to think about the future, I am sure that this basic system could be of positive influence on the stimulation of a broader and more diversified group of people to think about the uncertainties of the future and what impacts those uncertainties have in their working/private lives. Eventually this could lead to a shift in the mental models so to achieve a faster institutional learning.

# Personal Reflection

To be quite frankly, I believe that these are the courses that an MBA should be based on. Courses that try to get you out of your boundaries, explore new grounds and instigate a strong use of the individual and collective brain power. As said earlier my preconception of scenarios was not too positive, but after having had the opportunity to feel first hand what it is, I feel much more confident about the system process and approach to any type of environment that need to be analysed for future projections. I am sure we have touched just on the surface of our capabilities, but I also know what I have learned:

 The uncertainty matters, not what you or others around you think is certain to happen!
 Challenge the official future!
 Look for the underdogs, the people that go against the current. They may have seen something the other people fail to see.
 The world is not a category but is a system of interrelated causes and effects that are not easy to define, but together they create a movement.
 “Chaos is gooood!” Only from the chaos of the systems and the related tonnes of information, you can lift yourselves out of the two dimensional world of too much letters, words, sentences and see from a distance the patters that shape the environment.
 Do not fixate too much on the aspects you want to see, since you may loose sight of the surroundings >> Bouncing & Gorilla video.
 Building scenarios is difficult and very time consuming. You start hating the people you work with because of different views and approaches to the problems, but eventually things get connected.
 The process is built out of a series of steps that are related to the analysis of the environment and makes you see after every steps a bit more of the interrelationships, driving forces and enablers/inhibitors of the systems to be able to formulate a coherent, possible and plausible story.
 It is not about the report, but about the presentation >>> bullets do not tell a story.
 Everything is a draft since the world is in constant move. So even after the deadline of our assignment, the scenarios of the individual Mobility may change the day later due to a change in circumstances around you.
 Planners need to have power over top management in order to be convincing with their finding. This is very difficult if the organisation is not geared to look at the future with the (today) appropriate scenario thinking approach.
 The behaviour of a system can be changed by: 1. a change in the rules of the system, 2. overloading the system until it collapses, 3. define the high leverage point and modify them, and 4 simultaneous change everywhere.
 Do not fall into the traps of: 1. show a new mental model that is not recognisable by the audience, 2. take too many steps at a time, and 3. do not communicate by teaching, use stories.
 Everything that we have built around us is basically extensions of our senses, now we gradually are building – with the electrical age – extensions of our brains. The internet has already started this process of intensification of the collective knowledge which is easily transferable between individuals.
 Our methods of learning are passé, since they are built on the notions of the past whereby thinking in a fragmented and space and time pattern is preferred versus the mythically and integral way of the “electric age”.
 Everyone is capable of picturing the future. Use this capability!
 Think global or even universe.
 “The present is the rear view mirror of the past and the future is the rear mirror of the presents”

As a final note I also learned the process of the making of scenarios, which in itself is not to exciting, but the result is.