Stories & Strategies

1. Stories & Strategies Iisalmi 14.11.2003 Mika Aaltonen Ph.D., Development Director

2. ”Kaikkien ihmisten sääntönä on oltava, että valitaan hyvä ja vältetään paha. Sen takia moraalifilosofit ovat antaneet viisaudelle kolminkertaisen silmän: muistin, jolla se tarkastelee menneisyyttä, ymmärryksen, jolla se tarkastelee nykyhetkeä ja huolenpidon, jolla se tarkastelee tulevaa." • Michael Wexonius, De Prudentia, 1642

3. Introduction • 1) Megatrends • 2) The Dialogue between Everyday Leadership and Visionary Leadership • 3) Stories and Strategies

4. Finland Futures Research Centre • An international futuristic think tank of 40 people • Member of the Roman Club, Millennium Project, World Futures Federation, World Futures Society, European Foresight Academy... • The main partner of the Finnish Academy in future studies • Focal activities • Foresight and innovation research and development • Development of futures learning environments • Building of portals of multifaceted and well structured futures knowledge • Developing indicator systems as tools for the analysis of the relationships between environmental and social development • Visionary leadership, complexity management, emergence, sensemaking, storytelling…

5. Three Kinds of People: People who wonder what happened People who watch things happen People who make things happen Five Possible Attitudes: Passivity Reactivity Proactivity Preactivity Foresight From Determinism to Determination

6. Presumptions in Strategy • Presumption of order: there are underlying relationships between cause and effect in human interactions and markets which are capable of discovery and empirical verification. It is possible to design models and design interventions to achieve goals. • Presumption of rational choice: faced with a choice between one or more alternatives, human actors will make a ”rational” decision based on either minimising pain or maximising pleasure, consequently people can be managed. • Presumption of intentional capability: the acquisition of a capacity indicates an intention to use that capability, we assume every ”blink” we see is in effect a ”wink” and act accordingly.

7. Emergence! • Complex adaptive systems consists of a large number of agents, each of which behaves according to its own principles of local interaction. • No individual agent, or group of agents, determines the patterns of behavior that the system as a whole displays, or how those patterns evolve, and neither does anything outside of the system. • Emergence is therefor not the consequence of non-average behavior, emergence is the consequence of local interaction between agents. • Novelty, instead, means coherent pattern that has never existed before. Diversity and conflicting constraints are essential to the emergence of true novelty.

8. Intended, selected, planned Goal, target, vision Detecting, correcting Forming Known Predictable, stable Order, consensus Clarity Conscious Evoked, emerging Exploring, searching Amplifying Being formed Unknown Unpredictable, uncertain Disorder, irregular pattern Confusion Unconscious In Control or Not In Control?

9. COMPLEX Pattern management Probe – Sense - Respond KNOWABLE Analytical/Reductionist Sense – Analyse - Respond KNOWN Legitimate best practice Sense - Categorise - Respond CHAOTIC Enactment tools Act – Sense - Respond The New Dynamics of Strategy? Snowden 2002

10. Chaotic Transition Stable A Lesson for Innovation Strategies

11. 1970 2020 “More and better out of less” “More and different in different ways” “More out of more” The present information society is a short transition period between two longer periods Postindutrial transition phase POSTINDUSTRIAL RATIONALITY Industrial society Information society Global network society 1) Megatrends INDUSTRIAL RATIONALITY

12. Vital Abilities • Speed – ability to react and foresee • Conceptualization – ability to conceptualize things • Links – networks & partnerships • Images – to interpret abstract development paths • Technology – ability to apply new technology • Uncertainty – ability to create tensions and lead processes

14. Population Over 65 Years % World Development Indicators 2001

15. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Traditional Modern Self realisation Recognition Social needs Security Physical needs

16. Yesterday Tomorrow • Work is part of life • Integrate hard fun and family • Selling results • Retire? No, rewire! Reasons for Working • Work is bad, thus shorter hours • Selling life - part of it • Finance family life • Early retirement

17. My Company and Me My company gives an idea of what I am like The industrial society 2001

18. Control Management Metaphor - machine Control Time studies Taylorism/Fordism Shareholder value Efficiency and control Value Management Metaphor: tribe Motivation + measuring results Team Work Stakeholder value Storytelling From Control Management to Value Management

19. Kunde´s Brand Religion Involvement BRAND HEAVEN BRAND CULTURE CORPORATE CONCEPT CONCEPT BRAND PRODUCT Value

20. Reality Engineering Product placement Themed restaurants Sensory marketing Reality engineering Brand communities

21. One-way or Two-way Street? Consumer Consumer Company Message Channel Consumer

22. Visionary leadership VISION Strategic management T = 0 T = +1 T = +3 T = +5 Tactical management 2) The Dialogue Between Everyday Leadership and Visionary Leadership

23. Competence Foresight

24. Visions, scenarios, strategies, action plans Planning Informing and legitimasing action Sharing visions, exchanging knowledge Foresight Networking Futures Broadening participation, establishing and reinforcing networks Futures reports, trends, scenarios, forecasts Identifying indicators, determining goals Foresight + Implications

26. Pool of Life Methods Process Mental Models Identity Power ORGANIZATION Double-loop by Ansoff: Scope filters are observation filters: -What kinds of targets are given? -What issues are considered? -What kind of information is processed? Process filters are more or less power filters: -What kind of process is chosen? -Participation model? -Methods? §

27. Hierachy of Cognitive Frameworks Industry Frameworks (Recipes) Beliefs Among Firms Within-Firm Level Frameworks (Beliefs shared by a social group) Firm X Within-Firm Level Frameworks (Beliefs shared by a social group) Firm X + 1 Individual Frame Individual Frame Individual Frame Individual Frame

28. Success Mental models Strategy Action Failure Single-loop vs double-loop learning

29. 3. Level: Assumptions & definitions 2. Level: Routines & programs 1. Level: Every-day leadership Leadership at Three Levels

30. FORESIGHT INSIGHT HINDSIGHT Reality State of Art Possible State of Arts Possible Futures

31. Floating Strategy What drives? What attracts? What prevents? What stagnites? What disgusts? Students Experts People Companies Organisations Capital Technology Information Culture COMPETITIVENESS IS ATTRACTIVINESS TOWARDS FAVOURABLE FLOWS!

32. Robustness

33. Contagion in Human Networks Source: Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

34. Remember These Stories! • In the 1960s, Stanley Morgan tried to form a picture of interpersonal connections that link into a community • People in Nebraska and Alaska were asked to forward a letter to a stockbroker in Boston • CONCLUSION: Six degrees of separation = Everybody on this planet is separated by only six other people! • The Oracle of Kevin Bacon • 1472, 110 315, 260 123 • The Degree of Separation 2,896! • Erdös number • If you have written with Erdös you get number 1, if you have written with someone who has written with Erdös you get number 2, and so on • No mathematician had a higher number than 17 • Most (>100 000) have number 5 or 6

35. 3) Stories & Strategies Emotional Rational Narrative

37. Conflicts - in order to create meaning • Man against Man (High Noon) • Man against Nature (Moby Dick) • Man against Society (Papillon) • Man against Machine (Titanic) • Man against himself (Citizen Cane)In order to answer the how’s and why’s of life

38. The Actors • The Protagonist? • The Helper? • The Antagonist? • The Fairy Mother? • The Audience? • The Goal?

39. The Premisses of Storytelling in OD • The existing anecdotes, stories and discussions represent the underlying values or rule sets that provide the self-organising principles for the communities they represent • these simple rules allow the consistent behavior in the face of uncertainty (according to complexity theory) • this material provides a vehicle for corporate learning as well as for corporate identity building in the form of living corporate memory • Purposefully building a vision, a story of the change at hand together with the employees from the beginning will enhance commitment of the employees, the time of implementation of the change, and will also insecure that all the different aspects concerning the change are taken into consideration

40. Corporate story = communication + action Company storybook Templates, documents Sales support Unified process Visual identity + graphic rules Things we do and things we say PR, press, sponsorships, seminars… Recruitment

41. The Springboard Story • “In June 1995, a health worker in Kamana, Zambia, logged on the CDC Web site in Atlanta and got the answer to a question on how to treat malaria”