1.3) Uncertainty management and organizational learning: the role of foresight and scenarios in strategy Flashcards
How do decision-makers decide?
- base their decisions on perceptions as well as facts
- people interpret facts and put them in context
- interpretations and context are based on the decision-makers’ belief systems, psychological attitudes and world-views
Close link between anticipation, appropriation and action
Thinking, debating and shaping the future
Exploratory foresight vs. strategic foresight
Exploratory foresight
The goal is to clarify the possible futures of a system and its framework; it is frequently applied to the analysis of macro questions.
- it is the equivalent to an organisation radar
Strategic foresight
It is an element of the organisation’s learning processes that allows them to anticipate the evolution of their context and, based on these simulations, to test the existing strategies, to inform / “illuminate” decision making and/or to define a new Strategic Vision.
- it is the equivalent to an organisation flight simulator
Foresight, strategic foresight and strategy
Strategic foresight =
“Foresight exercises with strategic ambitions and goals for the actor responsible for the exercise”
Building strategic agility
Agility = Senstivity x Unity x Fluiditiy
Not only the ability to be fast, but also to make strategic changes and reorientations in an appropriate timing.
Strategic agility loop
- Making sense - anticipating emerging opportunities in a fluid situation
- Make priorities - ‘No, we’re going to stop doing these things to pursue others’
- Making it happen - executing
- Making revisions - consider all the actions you take in the marketplace as experiments -> all knowledge is provisional
- to seize opportunities, you need strategic agility, and that consists of going through this loop consistently faster and better than your opponents
- if you can do that -> the cumulative benefit of many small advantages can prove decisive