VOLUME 7, NUMBER 1

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change

FEATURE ARTICLES

Hastily Formed Networks:
Collaboration in the
Absence of Authority
Peter J. Denning

Enabling Adaptability andInnovation Through Hastily
Formed Networks
Tracy Huston

EMERGING KNOWLEDGE

Mental Models That
Block Strategic Plan
Implementation
Jon Kohl

BOOK EXCERPT

Learning for SustainabilityPeter Senge, Joe Laur, 		Sara Schley, Bryan Smith

courtesy of AFSC

Published by The Society for Organizational Learningreflections.solonline.org
ISSN 1524-1734

PUBLISHER’S NOTE 7.1

In this first issue of Volume 7 of Reflections, we’re delighted tofocus on a new subject of inquiry among many of SoL’s organizational members:hastily formed networks. Networks can spring up under a variety of conditions.
Sometimes they are desperately needed when a crisis has knocked out both physical systems and social connections. In other cases, they are a more organic
response to an unpredictable combination of opportunity, coincidence and timing.
There are a few things that we take as givens: complexity and uncertainty call forthe capacity to collaborate in the absence of authority, and we will be most effecC. Sherry Immediato
tive if we build the competence for this type of interaction before the need arises.
SoL’s organizational member representatives plan to share their ongoing work in this area – two examplesof which are included here – with the larger community at a SoL meeting to be held this fall.
What are hastily formed networks, and what can we learn from them? In our first feature, “Hastily
Formed Networks: Collaboration in the Absence of Authority,” Peter Denning, a faculty member of the
U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) leads off with a simple observation: disasters, such as the 2004
tsunami or Hurricane Katrina, give rise to hastily formed networks. He focuses on the results of research,some of it action learning by NPS, at the scene of these disasters, and notes that the quality of response
was not related to disaster planning or equipment, but on the quality of the network that came together
to provide relief. He highlights a set of research-based guidelines for effective emergency response networks that have broader applications for all of us.
One capacity that Denning emphasizes can be critical in these situations is the ability to improvise.
Tracy Huston, Nissan’s representative to SoL, describes using her theater background to build capacity at
Nissan in “Enabling Adaptability and Innovation Through Hastily Formed Networks.” Huston develops
the U theory framework and connects it to the process of forming, operating and ultimately disbanding
emergent networks. She uses theatre improvisation as a metaphor for effective networks, and cites a number of examples where organizations are engaged in improvisational practices to improve their flexibility,
creativity, and results. Otto Scharmer, developer of the U theory, offers his commentary and encourages
us to learn from the creative practices of true artists so that we can respond more generatively to our mostpressing challenges.
Although many challenges call for spontaneity, we also recognize the value of effective planning andimplementation. Jon Kohl has documented in detail the “Mental Models That Block Strategic Plan
Implementation.” While we have all had the experience of creating plans that are filed and forgotten, Kohl
has focused his research on the strategic management of parks, and the specific barriers he observed in his
work in this domain. The generic issues are ones we’ll all recognize. In this Emerging Knowledge Forumsubmission, Kohl has made an especially nice contribution by creating a systems map that explains all too
well the tyranny of the urgent, fueled by local realities.
This issue’s book excerpt is from our newly published Learning for Sustainabilty – the first of what wehope will be many small, but important books! In this selection, “Engaging the Future,” SoL consultant

ii Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

continued

member Bryan Smith provides a practical recap on using scenario planning, providing a case study that
explores how different potential energy futures will affect a business. Participants at a recent SoL meeting suggested that addressing matters of sustainability, which requires the collaboration of all of us, may
provide a very practical application of hastily formed networks on a wholly different scale.
Finally, as a comment on last issue’s focus on learning cultures around the world, we include a reader
comment from Peter Senge about the possibility of creating learning cities, particularly in China.
We have a wealth of material to investigate and share, and look forward to providing you with atleast three more issues of Reflections this year. We may also publish short bonus issues as we continue
to experiment with packaging and timing to best report on the work of the SoL community. We invite
you into the conversation, and hope to hear from you on many topics!

C. Sherry Immediato
Managing Director, SoL

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READERS WRITE 7.1

Dimensions of a Learning City
China’s industrial development in the past 20 years has stunned the world. The extraordinary release of ingenuity and imagination that is unfolding in the country holds great promise.
Today, many cities are seeking to become “learning cities” in China. What might this mean? How
might it lead to a new vision of urban and regional development? How might it lead to a higher qualityof living for people?
Specifically, realizing the vision of learning cities requires confronting basic questions:• Can China realize the benefits of economic development while avoiding the destructive dimensionsof development in the West: destruction of family and community structures, destruction of nature,and loss of common will and concern for the common good?
• Can China find its own path into the future that harmonizes with its great traditions and uniqueculture?
• Will China be an innovator or a follower in industrialization?

What is and is not learning?
On one level we all think that we know what learning is because it is a familiar word. But, over the pastten years, with the rising popularity of learning organizations around the world, I have come to realizethat there is actually much confusion around this concept.
For many people, “learning” immediately evokes images of school. This leads people to think ofclassrooms, school curriculum, teachers teaching subjects, tests, and grades. But teachers teaching does
not produce learning. Students come to know about subjects often without being able to do anythingthat they could not do before. Academic knowledge often never gets implemented or put into practice.
Schoolroom education is fragmented from the context of people’s lives, resulting in dead knowledge thatis never integrated personally or socially.
“All knowing is doing. All doing is knowing.” These are the words of the famous Chilean biologist
Humberto Maturana. He points to another model of learning: learning as living. From this perspective,
learning is inseparable from the day to day realities of facing challenges and meeting them. It is inseparable from the context in which we live. It is inseparable from our aspirations and traumas. From thisperspective, learning only occurs in action. It is never passive. It arises as we make mistakes, tell ourselves the truth about our shortfalls, forgive ourselves, and discover the sources of our errors so that we
can more reliably achieve our aims. This is the process whereby we learned to walk, to talk, to ridebicycles, to be friends, to maintain loving relationships, to be parents, and to be successful in our work.
It is never-ending. “Only while we sleep do we make no mistakes,” said the founder of IKEA, the world
renowned furniture retailer.
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally written in 2004, and was adapted here to complement thearticle in Reflections 6.8-10 entitled “Organizational Learning in China: Inroads and Implications for
the Awakening Dragon.”■ Volume 7, Number 1
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The definition of learning that we have used for many years in the SoL community worldwide is:“learning is a process whereby we enhance our capacity, individually and collectively, to create theresults we truly want to create.” Alternatively, we often say that “learning is a process that increases
knowledge, and knowledge is the capacity for effective action.”
Famous accounting theorist, and co-inventor of activity-based costing, H. Thomas Johnson says
more eloquently, “learning is discovering and embodying nature’s patterns.” Effective action is actionthat works in the world. You cannot walk without being in harmony with gravity and the design ofthe human musculature. You cannot talk without being in harmony with the physics of vibrations andthe design of the human vocal chords. You cannot ride a bicycle without being in harmony with theprinciples of gyroscopic motion and the intricate balancing mechanisms of the inner ear and neuroanatomy. Learning enables our coming into greater and greater harmony with nature, our own natureand the nature of the larger world in which we live, and realizing our intentions in the context of that
harmony.
So, based on these very simple ideas, we can say a few things about what a learning city might beand not be.

A learning city is more than schoolrooms and training programs
People often translate their desires to become learning organizations into creating training programs.
They might even train people in the five disciplines, tools and principles that I and many colleagues
have written about. But this strategy often is guided subconsciously by the schoolroom model of learning. In companies that follow this strategy, there have been predictable consequences. People become
excited about the ideas and tools. Many appreciate the time to study. But eventually, people get more
and more concerned about how to “transfer what they are learning” in the training session into real
work settings. If not corrected, this will eventually lead to disillusionment, and people conclude thatthe organizational tools are not practical.
This is a sad development because it fosters enthusiasm that is not sustained. There is nothing
wrong with training and schools if they can be part of a broader strategy. Often, training programsare very useful as ways to introduce managers or teachers or other professionals to new methods. They
can be extremely effective to stimulate new thinking. They can bring people together who otherwise
never get to meet, to talk, and establish relationships. If well designed, they can give people the opportunity to begin to practice with new tools. Like a meditation retreat, they can be an important start toreal learning. But, they are never a substitute for daily practice. They are never a substitute for developing new capabilities in realistic settings. They are never a substitute for developing collective skills
among people who must actually produce results with one another.
This is why our experience suggests that the classroom must be complemented by the “practicefield.” Just as a sports team or a theatre troop practices to develop their collective capabilities, so too
must we create meaningful ways for people to practice new learning skills regularly. A basketball teamdoes not practice on a soccer field, nor does the soccer team practice on a basketball court. Practicefields are realistic settings where people face challenges like they must face in actual situations, andreflections.solonline.org

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where they learn to deal with those challenges along with the others with whom they must perform in
those real settings. BUT, a practice field reduces the costs of making mistakes. Learning occurs throughproductive mistake making; so, learning is all but impossible in real settings where the costs of making
mistakes is that people can be seriously hurt, companies can lose large amounts of money, or cities cansuffer lost opportunities that could have benefited their citizens. The fear of making mistakes destroys
learning. Yet, it is irrational to not fear making mistakes in most realistic organizational settings.
That is why learning is so difficult for schools, businesses, or cities – until they discover ways to create
methods for people to practice.

Practice fields in everyday life
Once we begin to understand the nature of practice fields, we discover them all around us. Children on
a playground create a practice field where they can learn to work out conflicts and pursue their individual fun in ways that do not compromise others’ ability to do likewise. Managers often use consultants or advisors to sound out new ideas before trying them out in their organizations. Teachers talkthrough new ideas with colleagues. We all simulate ideas in our heads when we think about “whatmight happen if . . .”But much more can be done with some imagination.
For example, a group responsible for a city’s finances who are interested in developing more skill inrecognizing their “mental models” and transcending old assumptions can set aside an hour after theirformal meeting to reflect together. They might use a tool like the “left-hand column case,” which helps
each person distinguish what they said from what they were thinking and feeling when they said it. Thismight lead, for example, to one person recognizing that he was rigidly adhering to his position in a
debate because he believed tacitly that another member of the team was opposed to his recommendation. But because he never slowed down to recognize this assumption, he never asked the other person
if it was valid. With the coaching of others on the team, he can bring this mental model to the surface,
and inquire into its validity. This might lead to discovering that the other person does not actually disagree, or alternatively to discovering that she agrees with some aspects but has a different view of otheraspects. Either way, the team starts to explore more deeply how each of them is thinking.
Rather than debating what is the right thing to do, a learning team starts to think together about
their different ways of seeing the world. This often leads to realizing that there is crucial data that noone has, or first-hand knowledge that needs to be acquired by bringing in another expert who has notbeen consulted. The important point is that this inquiry into underlying assumptions doesn’t usually
happen because of the pressure to make a decision. Suspending the need to make a decision creates anopportunity to practice thinking together, which can eventually lead to better decisions.
But, practice fields are only as useful as the clarity of those learning regarding their aims. For the
sports team or the theatre troop, the vision of success is clear: to be the champions, to perform together
flawlessly. For a city to be a true learning city will require continual thinking about what people value.
I believe this will lead people to discover common aims for the qualities in living they truly value,
qualities like:■ Volume 7, Number 1
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A place where people discover more and more of their own nature
Genuine learning leads us back to ourselves. Beyond acquiring information and skills, learning opens
a lifelong quest to become a human being. Loss of this quest has created the “great hunger” of themodern world. No amount of material progress can substitute for happiness and the sense of a life
well-lived in service. W. Edwards Deming, pioneer of the quality movement, spoke of “losses unknown
and unknowable.” Paradoxically, as the internet and global telecommunications connect people to anever broader external world, most citizens of modern industrial societies live in smaller and smaller
personal worlds. As our “outer circle” of information expands, our “inner circle” of self-awarenessdiminishes. As fragmented knowledge of the physical external world increases, integrated knowledgeof self and the world as a whole disappears. We know more and more about less and less. The consequence is a growing gap between our technological prowess and our wisdom, a gap that poses thesignal greatest threat to our future.
Learning cities create environments for all people to continually discover what it means to be ahuman being and to continue a lifelong journey of cultivation and realization.

A place where people learn to live more and more in harmony
with larger natural systems
The destructiveness of industrial development to larger natural systems is often taken for granted.
Especially in developing countries, many simply accept pollution, destruction of habitat, and elimination of species as “the price that must be paid” for economic development. But, destruction of thenatural environment is only necessary insofar as we assume that it is necessary. Technologically, there
are immense possibilities for alternative energy clean infrastructures, for cars that get 200 miles per
gallon, for products and services that do not generate waste and toxins. What is missing is the common
will and imagination to put such technologies into practice on a large scale. Countries like China havea unique opportunity to leapfrog industrial-age energy-transport-building infrastructures, just as they
have leapfrogged industrial-age telecommunications infrastructures.
Learning cities demonstrate how the pursuit of social, environmental, and economic well being canbe brought back into harmony.

A place where children are celebrated and allowed to influence us all
Industrial age thinking led to schools that sought to mold children to fit the needs of business and theeconomy. Children, and human beings more broadly, became a cog in the industrial machine, criticalto both supply and demand: on the one hand a factor of production, and on the other, a consumer
who defines their life goals in terms of material acquisitions. This is reflected in the design of the schoolas an assembly line, marching children through grade 1, grade 2, grade 3, and so on. It is reflected inteachers who see their primary job as maintaining control and imparting pre-determined, inert knowledge into the heads of children. It is reflected in the loss of an integrative concept of learning anddevelopment, replaced by an overemphasis on technical knowledge and the schoolroom model of intel-

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ligence in test taking. It is reflected in “me versus you” competition among children to please teachersand climb the educational ladder. Ultimately, it scars children for life, destroying their innate love oflearning and joy in working with others.
It is the mark of every golden age in human history that children are the most important members ofa society. Learning cities create schools that learn and reestablish children and young people as natural
leaders in building societies that learn.
These are just a few of the types of ideas that people will discover as they start to practice thinking
deeply together about their genuine aspirations and working together to bring these into reality.
Learning is ultimately about collective creation, people discovering and continually enhancing theircapacities to create futures they truly value. Learning is about building networks of social relations
based on mutuality, trust, and respect. Sustainable learning cities cultivate people as a force of nature,continually sensing what is trying to emerge that supports the whole, and then bringing it into reality.
We face a crisis of not knowing how to live together in an increasingly interdependent world.
Governments cannot solve this problem. Giant corporations cannot solve this problem. Isolated prophets
cannot solve this problem. The only solutions lay in people discovering new ways of living together thatenhance life at all levels in nature’s community.
Peter Senge

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FEATURE 7.1

Hastily Formed Networks

Collaboration in the Absence of Authority
Peter J. Denning

O
Peter J. Denningn September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, taking 2,749 lives.
Among its other effects, the attack had a severe economic impact on airlines andresulted in a stock market loss of $1.2 trillion. On December 26, 2004, a tsunami
resulting from a magnitude 9.1 earthquake overran the shores of many countries along thevast rim of the Indian Ocean. More than 283,000 people died. On August 29, 2005, Katrina,
a Category 5 hurricane, knocked out electric and communications infrastructure over 90,000
square miles of Louisiana and Mississippi and displaced 1.5 million people. Six months later,
New Orleans still housed fewer than 100,000 of its original 1.2 million residents. On October
8, 2005, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake devastated the Kashmir region of Pakistan, killing morethan 87,000 people. Besides being unexpected major disasters, these events had one othercommon feature. They all involved hastily formed networks that quickly mobilized, organized, and coordinated massive humanitarian responses.
The severity of these disasters drove home an important point: The quality of the response
depended not on disaster planning or on new equipment, but on the quality of the networkthat came together to provide relief. How quickly were voice and data communications
restored? How well did the many players from disparate organizations collaborate? How
effectively did the network deliver help to the victims? These incidents demonstrated sharp
differences in the quality of the hastily formed network (HFN), resulting in great differencesin the effectiveness of the response. Noting that these networks almost always involve military, civilian government, and non-government organizations, the US Departments of Defense
and Homeland Security have made it a priority to learn how to effectively assemble HFNs.
We coined the term at the Naval Postgraduate School in October 2004.
The lessons learned from the government networks carry directly into private settings.
These lessons will benefit any urgent network of multiple organizations with no common
authority that must cooperate and collaborate.

Origins
The idea of quickly forming a team for a particular, urgent task, and then disbanding it when
the task is complete, is not new. Table 1 lists three categories of events to which a hastily
formed network must respond. Because it involves relatively small teams and known networks, the first category is the easiest and least likely to stress the HFN.
The middle category is the type that emergency agencies such as police and fire departments prepare for. They have professional, highly trained teams ready to respond to particularincidents. They have well-developed practices for advance planning, training in appropriate

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Feature n Denning Table 1: Kinds of Events Requiring Response from Hastily Formed Network
Category

Characteristics

ExamplesK:
Known

Know what to do
Can use existing network structures
May choose not to respondFast response team for time-critical business problem oropportunity

KU:
Known
Unknown

Know what to do
Don’t know time or place
Responding network structure known

Local fire, small earthquake, civil unrest, military campaign

UU:
Unknown
Unknown

Don’t know what to do
Don’t know time or place
Responding network structure unknown

9/11 attack, other terrorist attacks, large earthquake,major natural disasters (Note: KU events can become UU
events when scaled up to large areas or populations)skills, and positioning of equipment. They already use terms like “ad hoc network”
and “crisis response network” to describe what they do.
The third category puts the greatest stress on the HFN. These events require response
beyond the control and capabilities of any single agency. The network structure will dependon the event and the responding organizations.
The main aspects of the third-category challenge are:
• Genuine surprise. The precipitating event is in no known category. There has been no
advance planning, training, or positioning of equipment.
• Chaos. Everyone is overwhelmed. No one understands the situation or knows what todo. People are frantic and panicky.
• Insufficient resources. Available resources and training are overwhelmed by the magnitude of the event.
• Multi-agency response. Several agencies must cooperate in the response, including
military, civilian government, and private organizations. These groups have had little orno prior reason to collaborate. The shock of moving from a state of “coexistence” to astate of “collaboration” can be overpowering.
• Distributed response. The response is distributed over a geographical area into many
local jurisdictions. The authority to allocate resources and reach decisions is distributed
among many organizations. Decisions by command-and-control do not work.
• Lack of infrastructure. Critical infrastructures like communications, electricity, andwater do not work. Makeshift infrastructures need to be deployed quickly.

HFN Defined
The first priority after the precipitating event is for the responders to communicate. They
want to pool their knowledge and interpretations of the situation, understand what resources are available, assess options, plan responses, decide, commit, act, and coordinate. Without
communication, none of these things can happen: The responders cannot respond. Thus theheart of the network is the communication system its members use and the ways they interact
within it. We call this the “conversation space” of the HFN.

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An HFN has five elements. It is a network of people who:
• Come together rapidly•	Must work together to fulfill a large, urgent mission•	Represent different communities• Work in a shared conversation space• Plan, commit to, and execute actions together.
An HFN is thus much more than a set of organizations using advanced
networking technology. To be effective in action, HFN participants must be
skilled at:•	Setting up mobile communications and sensor systems• Conducting interagency operations, sometimes called “civil-militaryboundary” operations• Collaborating on action plans and coordinating their execution• Improvising•	Leading a social network, where communication and decision making
are decentralized, and there is no hierarchical chain of command or
ex officio leader.
Most participants do not have need for such skills in their individualorganizations. When they come together, therefore, they find it difficult toaccomplish tasks that require those skills. When these inherent difficulties
are combined with the overwhelming nature of the urgent event, a breakdown in the conversation space can occur.

Conversation Space Defined
The ongoing need to communicate and coordinate is fundamental for the success of any HFN. As mentioned above, we introduced the term conversation
space for the medium in which all this – from forming community responses to delivering actions – takes place. The conversation space is a mediumof communication among a set of players who have agreed on a set of interaction rules. These three aspects are summarized in Table 2 (page 4).
One of our early conclusions was that the effectiveness of the HFN restson the quality of the conversation space established at the outset. It is nota foregone conclusion that an effective HFN can be established even when
the players are trained professionals, as the situations in New York City
after 9/11 and in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina illustrate. In New
York, in the days following the collapse of the Twin Towers, then-Mayor
Rudy Giuliani understood intuitively that success would depend on ensuring that everyone, especially the residents of the city, felt included in therelief effort. He made sure information was shared, even if it was piecemeal.
Although there were some initial coordination difficulties, the network
came together and was effective in relief and recovery. A different picture
occurred in New Orleans. The various agencies had major difficulties incoordinating, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did
not deliver what people thought it had promised. At all levels, there was areflections.solonline.org

Feature ■ Denning Table 2: Components of Conversation Space
Category

Characteristics

ExamplesPhysical
systems

Media and mechanisms by which people
communicate, share

Telephone, power, roads, meeting places, supplies,
distribution systems

Players

Individual and group participants andtheir roles, core competencies, andauthority

Citizens, fire department, police department, highway
department, Federal Emergency Management Agency

Interaction

Rules of the “game” followed by theplayers to organize their cooperation andachieve their outcomes

Situational awareness, information sharing, planning,decision making, coordination, unified command, authority,
public relations. (The environment has no common
authorities, no hierarchy, many autonomous agents, anddecentralized communications.)

practices

lot of finger-pointing and wrangling over who would do what and who would pay for what.
When the president installed a new director at FEMA, no immediate improvement in effectiveness occurred, and criticism of the agency continued unabated. Attempts to impose standard military style command-and-control in Louisiana and Mississippi were ineffective.
These examples are not intended as a criticism of New York, Louisiana, or Mississippi
officials, but rather an illustration that effective coordination may not happen even when all
the parties want it to happen.
Certainly a major difference between events in New York and New Orleans was the sheer
scale. New York lost infrastructure in a limited area of perhaps 100 square blocks. The primary agencies in the network ultimately reported to the mayor. Police and fire radios provided basic communications in the “ground zero” area. In contrast, New Orleans lost an
entire city and was part of a large area (90,000 square miles) with severely damaged infrastructure. All communication systems were knocked out, and as they were gradually being
restored, the limited-bandwidth channels were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of thecitizens trying to use them. Many more agencies had to cooperate on the response. Copingwith all this effectively was completely outside most responders’ experience.
New York City quickly built trust among the responders and citizens. New Orleans experienced considerable difficulty in building trust. This is one of our conclusions: The more
overwhelming the event, the more likely turf-asserting tendencies will show up and interferewith the effectiveness of the network.
The overarching lesson is that the effectiveness of an HFN depends as much on the participating people and organizations as it does on the communications system through which
they interact.

Conditioned Tendencies
It is well known that individuals under severe stress forget their recent training and regress
to old, ingrained habits (Barthol & Ku, 1959; Weick, 1995). Richard Strozzi-Heckler (1984,1993) calls these old habits “conditioned tendencies.” The old habit is likely to be inappropriate for the current situation and to make matters worse.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (2005, p.174) concluded that “a preponderance of evidence indicates that emergency responder lives were likely lost at the World Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

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Trade Center resulting from the lack of timely information-sharing. . . . ” Police radio transcripts cited by NIST indicate that NYPD helicopters monitoring the two burning towers
detected signs of structural collapse in the North Tower and issued an emergency evacuation
order to all police. Yet no one in the police department communicated the imminent-collapse
information to the fire department. What accounts for this bizarre behavior?
Joseph Pfeifer, a deputy assistant chief in the New York City Fire Department, gives in his
master’s thesis (2005) a detailed example of conditioned tendencies instilled by emergencyresponse organizations, which paradoxically can render them incapable of effective response
in an emergency. Pfeifer was among those responding to the 9/11 disaster in the World Trade
Center. His explanation for the noncommunicative behavior was that organizational biases– ingrained social habits within the separate organizations – prevented emergency personnel
from talking to one another. One of these biases is organizational social identity that prefers
to share information within the group but not outside it. Under stress, the group members do
not think to collaborate or share information outside the group, or to take personal responsibility for the welfare of members of other groups.
The purpose of Pfeifer’s study was not to assign blame for needless loss of life in the 9/11
disaster, but to recognize the organizational conditioned tendency as a real phenomenon thatcan disable an HFN. The question is how to prepare organizations to work together in an
HFN and avoid the conditioned tendency. Pfeifer proposed that the agencies use unified com-courtesy of AFSC

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Feature ■ Denning mand networks, in which leadership is shared among different organizations; for example,
an executive committee. This practice will likely create the foundation for HFNs that do not
suffer noncommunication paralysis.

A Guide to Effective HFNs
Understanding how to create effective HFNs is a challenge, but the following guidelines offer
a framework for ensuring that a network, its people, and its equipment will function wellunder extreme stress.
(1) Ensure the high quality of the conversation space, which is critical to success. The space
includes the communication systems, the participants, and their interactions within thesesystems. Effectiveness in conversation space rests on skills that participants may not ordinarily learn in their separate organizations.
The purpose of(2) Address the physical communications systems, which are part ofPfeifer’s study was
the conversation space. Plan and test mobile technologies that can be set
not to assign blame
up quickly when the regular infrastructure is down. Arrange for security
forces to protect the temporary infrastructure. Use and test all commufor needless loss ofnications equipment regularly. Use standard software and protocols –life in the 9/11 disasinteroperability and simplicity of interconnection will be important. Web
services are a good example.
ter, but to recognize(3) Create a collaborative “executive committee” that all participatthe organizational con- ing organizations can call on during the crisis. Dissimilar organizations
ditioned tendency as a are another part of conversation space. Each has its own culture, stanreal phenomenon that dard practices, and decision-making protocols, and they may be incompatible with those of other organizations. Individuals can becomecan disable an HFN.
disoriented when familiar organizational practices are suspended. They
fail to take initiative, while waiting for orders that will never come. They
do not know how to function when there is no common authority; their established command-and-control practices do not work; and collaboration, not control, is the only way to
get actions done.
(4) Pay special attention to the key technical issues of interoperability and simplicity.
Services offered via web interfaces are highly interoperable; anyone can use them from any
computer. Chat and text messaging services are highly interoperable. But many key services
are not. For example, many responders have found the Groove software to be useful for
coordination, but Groove runs only on Windows computers; those with Sun workstations,Apple Macintoshes, or Linux computers are out of luck. Many wireless networks are notfully interoperable, e.g., Linux and Apple machines use different protocols from Windows
machines for encryption and passwords.
(5) Expect that information glut will be a problem in the network. As communications are
initially restored, the survivors involved in the event will overload the severely limited bandwidth as they try to communicate with their families. The emergency responders themselves
will overwhelm their colleagues with situation reports and other data. In crises especially, theparticipants need to make most effective use of the limited resources of decision-making timeand communications bandwidth by using new technologies to restrict the flow of unimportant bits. Hayes-Roth (2006) shows how a well-designed information system can reduce
information volume by a factor of 100,000 without loss of effectiveness.

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(6) Understand and practice the use of the technologies effective for collaborative networks. These include Web servers to distribute information, wiki and discussion-thread software, chat and instant-messaging services, virtual markets, and groupware.
(7) Prepare to overcome the barriers to interorganizational collaboration. These include
conflicting missions, unclear roles, turf protection, incompatible processes and information
systems, disparate cultures, lack of accountability, mistrust, and lack of knowledge of others’
capabilities (Hocevar et al., 2004).
(8) Prepare for organizational conditioned tendencies to appear under overwhelming
stress. Train group members in the basic HFN skills. Promote political support for the organizations to cooperate, mutual respect for the competencies that each organization brings,
concern for one another’s welfare, and personal responsibility for actions and outcomes.
Practice with “unified command” –an executive committee representing the participatingorganizations that respects the core competencies that each organization brings.
(9) Train participants in the skill of improvisation. This is a challenge for normal rule-oriented agencies, but the benefits of doing so can make a significant difference when stressful
situations arise. The article following this one, by Tracy Huston, explores the possibilities ofusing theater improv techniques in developing the capacity for effective action.
A bo u t the A u tho rPeter J. Denning is director of the Cebrowski Institute for information innovation and superiority
at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and is a past president of the Association
for Computing Machinery (ACM).
pjd@nps.edu

reflections.solonline.org

Feature ■ Denning References
Barthol, R.P., & Ku, N.D. Regression under stress to first learned behavior. Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology 59 (July 1959), 134-136.
Hayes-Roth, F. Two theories of process design for information superiority: Smart pull vs. smart push.
Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium: The State of the Art and the State of
the Practice. San Diego, CA, US Department of Defense, Command and Control Research Program(CCRP). (2006, to appear)
Strozzi-Heckler, R. Anatomy of Change. North Atlantic Books (1984, 1993).
Hocevar, S., Jansen, E., & Thomas, G. Building Collaborative Capacity for Homeland Security. NPS Report(December 2004). http://www.nps.navy.mil/Research/04techrpt.html .
National Institute of Standards and Technology. Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World
Trade Center Disaster: The Emergency Response Operation. Washington, D.C. (2005)
Pfeifer, J. Command Resiliency:

An Adaptive Response Strategy For Complex Incidents. Naval

Postgraduate School MS Thesis, September 2005. http://library.nps.navy.mil/uhtbin/hyperion/
05Sep%5FPfeifer.pdf
Weick, K. Sensemaking in Organizations. Sage Publications (1995), 102.

© Copyright 2006, Peter J. Denning.
An earlier version of this article was published in Communications of ACM 49, 4 (April 2006), 15-20.
Reprinted with permission.

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FEATURE 7.1

Enabling Adaptability & Innovation
Through Hastily Formed Networks
By Tracy HustonA
Tracy Huston

t Nissan, we have been exploring methods for helping individuals and groups respondto the dynamic of constant change and uncertainty. Our goal is to “continually increase
our collective capacity to create the future we want.” The intended outcomes of thework concern enhancing our ability to adapt as new conditions emerge, and to innovate inways that generate significant value given
The Change Dynamic
The Change Dynamic
new conditions. We have been working
on the premise that our ability to adapt
Changes in customer Regulatory
Current
expectations
changesand innovate requires both personal andStrategyorganizational transformation, and wehave made great progress drawing from
Emerging
emergent thinking about the nature of TIME
Future:systemic change. The problem is that
Now Strategy?
Now Destination?
our prevailing structures and systems– and our leadership roles within themTechnology
Competitive dynamics
Global trends
advances(new entrants, etc.)– often present insurmountable obstacles(economic, political,
social, etc.)
to adaptability and innovation. The hierarchical structures and modes of leadership in practice at Nissan – indeed, at most largeorganizations today – are based on a mechanistic view of organization that stems from theIndustrial Revolution, a time and context altogether different from today’s. Hierarchicalstructures were intentionally designed as fixed systems to ensure stability and control;
they were not intended to allow for change, adaptability, and innovation. Although mostleaders now recognize the need to approach their organizations as “living systems,” andto move away from command-and-control forms of governance to more generative, selforganizing practices, the hierarchical structures remain embedded, impeding individual andorganizational performance.
Members of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) have been engaged in exploringquestions about hierarchical versus self-organizing structures as well, looking at alternatives.
One such structure is a hastily formed network (HFN). The term was coined by the Naval
Postgraduate School (NPS) to describe the multi-organization groups that come together tocreate coordinated action in crises, such as hurricane Katrina, the December 2004 tsunami,
and the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.1 These multiple groups – thefirefighters and police officers, the military and local government, civilians and non-governmental agencies – must somehow quickly mobilize in response to crises. The challenge for
HFNs is that all of the different groups of responders must be able to take “coordinatedaction” collectively, to adapt and innovate under rapidly changing, uncertain conditions, andreflections.solonline.org

FeatureFeaturennDenning
Huston to do so without centralized authority, and without a common set of information, skills,
protocols, and processes. Whereas most responders operate well within their own hierarchical structures, analysis of disaster response efforts reveals that collaboration across groups isoften ineffective or absent.
Disaster response is only one example of a situation in which multiple organizations must
respond to a shared challenge; HFNs occur in many other contexts as well – whenever crossfunctional, cross-company, or cross-sector groups must take “coordinated action” in response
to a new, unfamiliar challenge, and somehow generate an innovation that enables them todeal with the challenge. The question for Nissan and other members of the SoL community
is “What can we learn from the alternative structures and types of leadership being developedfor HFNs so as to enable adaptive and innovative coordinated action within and across ourown organizations?”
Based on extensive research at NPS and performed by members of the SoL community,
Part I of this article lays out some hypotheses about ways of approaching the HFN challenge
by using U-Theory. Part II builds on research conducted at NPS and at Nissan in using improvisation concepts and methods as a means for developing adaptive, innovative, self-organizing structures. The intent is to provide a model for alternative structures and modes ofleadership that might improve the effectiveness of HFN, as well as allow for the developmentof adaptive, innovative cultures in large organizations and multi-stakeholder systems.

Part I:
Exploring Hastily Formed Networks Through the U-Theory				Hypotheses
In late 2005, SoL Liaison Officers (LOs) – representatives from SoL organizational member
companies – decided to collaborate in ongoing work to address the challenges and opportunities of HFN, both to support the NPS mission of improving disaster response and to develop
models that might improve multi-stakeholder collaboration in and among our own institutions. In preparation for a meeting of liaison officers in March 2006, the LO meeting designteam began exploring some of the challenges by drawing from the research and thinking at
NPS, as well as our own experiences in our respective organizations. What emerged over thecourse of many dialogues was the sense that we need to explore “new ways of being” thatmight better enable coordinated action among diverse, multi-stakeholder groups, particularly
in response to crises or new and unfamiliar conditions, where the familiar infrastructures,
rules, and roles would suddenly no longer apply. As a starting point, a couple of hypotheses
emerged about what we might need to create in order to improve the effectiveness of an
HFN:
Hypothesis: Minimal structures can better enable both self-organization and coordinatedaction; generative systems can transcend context.
A system (defined here as the set of language, roles, structures, processes, and practices thatorganize individual and collective action) can fail when key elements are missing, such as
when infrastructure is damaged by a natural disaster, or when “foreign” subsystems are
combined but operate independently of one another – parts without a whole. One tragic
example is recounted in Peter Denning’s article about HFN, in which he describes analysis

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of the disaster response efforts after the attack on the World Trade Center: New York Police
Department (NYPD) helicopters that had been monitoring conditions by circling the towers had observed signs of structural collapse in the North Tower and immediately issued an
emergency evacuation order to all police; however, they failed to inform the firefighters, who,
having had no warning, were not evacuated. There’s no doubt that both the NYPD and thefirefighters performed heroically, beyond what most of us might imagine possible. And, by
most accounts, the command-and-control hierarchies that governed each independently alsofunctioned quite well in guiding independent action. The example raises the question, however, about how to shift independent action to interdependent collaboration across groups
when there is no super-structure to support it. The same question applies to corporations,where complex webs of multi-stakeholder relationships are needed to design, manufacture,and distribute products in ways that can require a high degree of innovation to deal withoften sudden and large-scale changes in technology, regulations, consumer preferences, orcompetitive dynamics.
Fixed structures provide clarity and order, but usually only within the finite contexts forwhich they were designed; they can easily fail us when new conditions arise, catastrophic orotherwise. They are contextually confined. As many of us have experienced in business, contexts like globalization present an ever-evolving and highly complex challenge on a scale thattraditionally centralized structures struggle to address. Fixed structures also typically operate
via centralized, hierarchical authority; when multiple stakeholder groups are needed, there isreflections.solonline.org

Feature n Huston 11

no central authority, rendering the whole less effective. Attempts at creating superstructuresthat can govern multiple stakeholder groups often fail, as we saw with the US Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in its efforts to coordinate interagency action during the response to hurricane Katrina – an abominable failure that resulted in delayed relief
and unnecessary loss of life. Although improvements to superstructures like FEMA can no
doubt be made, the feeling is that the inherent limits of hierarchical structures may continue
to impede multi-stakeholder response. Thus, rather than overlaying superstructures to govern
multiple stakeholders, the hypothesis is that employing minimal structures such as those usedin improvisatory systems in the arts might enable greater degrees of self-organization andadaptability to new contexts.
Personal

Hypothesis: Enhanced performance of multi-stakeholder sysTransformation
tems must occur on both the individual and collective levels.
Implicit in this hypothesis is the assumption that systemic transformation is dependent upon personal transformation.
Dispensing with the familiar roles, structures, and rules in orderto enable new forms to emerge can require deep personal will
SystematicTransformationand courage, as well as new ways of being as a collective. The
challenge here is that our mental models and, consequently, ouractions have been shaped by mechanistic systems, often from our early school-age years andcontinuing through most of our professional lives. Our behaviors become habituated, deeply
embedded, making personal change very difficult. We will need to do deep work in “demechanizing” our selves in order to participate in a large, dynamic, and generative field ofchange.
In addition to the disaster response challenge, the two hypotheses might be tested in any
context in which:•	Large-scale, disruptive change creates a sudden shift in conditions that affect the wholesystem, thus requiring immediate and coordinated response from multiple groups (e.g.,a labor strike, such as the Longshoremen’s Union strike that shut down the ports on theentire West Coast of the U.S.)• A high degree of self-organization is needed to generate an innovation that can addressa complex problem or opportunity for which there is no precedent or model (e.g., rapid
development of an advanced technology, such as Toyota’s breakthrough 18-monthhybrid car design)• A significant change in the deep structure of a system is needed for the system to survive
under new conditions (e.g., brick-and-mortar transition to e-distribution and new IP
models, such as have occurred in the music industry)• A shift in culture is needed to develop more adaptive, innovative behaviors throughout
the system (such as those being undertaken in the leadership development programs andevolving organizational learning practices of many companies today).

Applying the U-Theory to HFN
Although the scope and scale of challenges vary widely, the SoL Liaison Officers have cometo see that HFNs occur naturally in many places, from self-managed work teams to large
systems such as supply chains. What is common to all HFNs seems to be the need to deal withboth the structural and the relational aspects of the profound change needed to create more

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adaptive, generative systems. The U-Theory2 encompasses both the structural and relational,
the systemic and personal aspects of transformation, providing a rich framework throughwhich to test and further explore the hypotheses. Thus, the SoL LO meeting design teambegan to explore the challenges and opportunities of HFN through the framework suggestedby the “U.”U-Theory
Developed through years of research conducted by Otto Scharmer, Joe Jaworski, and many other thought
leaders, and recently explored through the book Presence (Senge, Jaworski, Scharmer, and Flowers, 2004),
U-Theory lays out three fundamental “spaces” for transformation, and a set of “capacities” needed toeffectively create and participate within these spaces.
The journey through the “U” weds the personal with the systemic aspects of transformation, generating 		the will, the vision, and the concrete embodiments of the innovation we seek to create through a highly
generative and intensely focused field of change.
In addition to use of the theory among the SoL liaisons in approaching HFN challenges, U-Theory is being
applied in addressing cross-sector innovation opportunities (such as through the SoL-/MIT-sponsored ELIAS
network), and in enhancing leadership development and organizational learning practices at Nissan.
For detail on U-Theory, see Theory U, by C. Otto Scharmer (forthcoming).

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Feature n Huston 13

HFN-U
In applying the U-Theory to the HFN challenge, we began by intentionally exploring the different levels of response tochange that the theory suggests (depicted and described below). Working from our two hypotheses, we framed a set of
focal questions within the U, as successively deeper layers of exploration and ways of being.

Levels of Response to Change3
Reacting
What responses worked well or failed in the past, and what conditions
were present that contributed to these successes and failures?

Restructuring & Redesigning
How can multi-stakeholder groups consistently contribute to ashared goal without centralized authority or hierarchical leadership?
What structures can best support highly adaptive,
self-organizing, yet coordinated action?

Reframing
How do we move from“solo” to “ensemble”?

Regenerating
How does the self both reflectand shape the whole?

Reacting occurs when we respond to a new condition by doing what we have always done; it is based on learning from thepast. It is a tactical response, often short-term in nature. Sometimes it works; however, when challenges persist, a deeper
level of response is needed.
Sometimes conditions change in ways that require us to make changes to the deep structures of the system. Responding
to change by Restructuring & Redesigning requires us to look at the underlying processes and organizational structuresthat are needed to enable effective performance within the new context.
Most organizations that survive for any length of time are adept at Reacting and Redesigning & Restructuring. However, as
research shows, most reengineering efforts fail – 70 percent, by some accounts. Why? Scharmer and other thought leaderssuggest that a deeper level of response is needed, Reframing. Responding to change by Reframing involves questioning
our deeply held assumptions, our mental models. By doing so we can deepen our perceptions of the forces at play, and how
these might be interacting and changing. Once assumptions are made known, and questioned, we can open ourselves to
new ways of seeing; it is more possible to adapt to changing conditions in harmony with them.
Although the process of Reframing can do much to deepen perception and, hence, the quality of our thought and actions,
Scharmer and others suggest that significant and sustainable change occurs when it is the result of a deeper sense of purpose, aspiration, and will. Regenerating (alternately referred to as “presencing”), is the process by which leaders connect
to the source of such aspiration and participate in a larger field of change.

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At Nissan we have adopted this practice of framing focal questions within the U, a disciplinethat has helped us to see the many facets of change we wish to undertake; the focal questions
differ depending upon context, but the discipline of reflecting on each successive level of
response is retained.
Next, to test and more deeply explore our HFN hypotheses, the LO group began reflecting
on the U, wondering:•	How do we approach the HFN challenge in ways that link the individual and collective
capacities needed?
•	How do we shift mental models about needing to know, and instead become comfortable with not knowing, with uncertainty?
• What is involved in the process of “letting go” so we can “let come” new ways of
being?
To get at the deeper levels of being, we approached the focal questions by looking at
the U-Theory’s three spaces for transformation, and the capacities required to create andparticipate in each space.

3 Spaces, 7 Capacities4
What responses worked well or failed in the past, and what conditions
were present that contributed to these successes and failures?

Suspending:Seeing Our
SeeingHow can multi-stakeholder groups consistently contribute to ashared goal without centralized authority or hierarchical leadership?
Sensing:
Transforming
Perception

What structures can best support highly adaptive,
self-organizing, yet coordinated action?

REALIZING:
Transforming
ActionPrototyping:
Enacting Living
Microcosoms

How do we move from“solo” to “ensemble”?

Redirecting:Seeing fromthe Whole

Institutionalizing:
Embodying the New

Crystallizing:
Envisioning
What Seeks to
EmergeHow does the self
both reflect and shape
the whole?
Letting Come

Letting Go

PreSencing:Transforming
Self and Will

Framing the focal questions led us to ask: What are the core methods, practices, and skills
needed to develop the U-capacities, and in ways that might improve the effectiveness of
HFNs? Although there are many possible methods to draw from, given the unpredictabilityof the contexts in which HFNs must operate, as well as the need for adaptive minimal structure, we have been exploring what we might learn from improvisation techniques in the arts.
Improvisation techniques from the theater combine the capacities for Sensing, Presencing,reflections.solonline.org

Feature n Huston 15

and Realizing into something like an “innovation field.” These techniques can be used to:(1) Develop the capacities among individuals and groups to prepare them to work as a selforganizing, multi-stakeholder collective (per the focal questions above).
(2) Prototype generative solutions for how these minimal structures might be used to
improve coordinated action.
The following, Part Two of this article, explores some of the principles and methods oftheater improvisation that might be applied in addressing the HFN challenge, within a varietyof organizational and multi-stakeholder contexts.

Part II:
Theater Improvisation as a Metaphor for Effective HFNs
Why Theatrical Forms of Improvisation?
Most large, complex systems in use today rely on:•	Fixed structures to govern process and relationships•	Hierarchical command-and-control authority to govern decision-making•	Roles defined by preconceived job descriptions and often narrowly defined tasks•	Linear and often slow processes of first planning, then executing fixed plans (or, inmore sophisticated systems, adding reflection and learning at points in the process).
Many of these features of large systems today are, obviously, antithetical to innovation,
self-organization, and generative change, as well as to large-scale, multi-stakeholder rapid
response.
The improvisational systems derived in the performing“Theater is the capacity possessed byarts were developed outside (and even in opposition to) the
human beings to observe themselves inmechanistic systems of large institutions. These more genaction. Humans are capable of seeing
erative systems were designed to nurture both the self andthemselves in the act of seeing, of thinkthe collective, to facilitate self-organization and continuous
ing their emotions, of being moved by theirinnovation, and to enable deep collaboration in service of alarger purpose. Improvisation in the arts is, by design, athoughts. They can see themselves heregroup learning and discovery process, one that is not conand imagine themselves there. They can
fined by fixed structure and is not dependent upon hiersee themselves today and imagine themarchy. The questions are: “What can we learn from improselves tomorrow. This is why humans arevisation that might be used to address the limitations ofable to identify, rather than merely recogmulti-stakeholder systems and their typically mechanistic
nize, themselves and others. . . . To identify
structures, and what might we adapt to improve the perforis to be able not only to recognize withinmance of HFNs?”
Improvisation in theater is based upon a set of interthe same repetitive context but also todependent principles that govern individual and collective
extrapolate to other contexts; to see
work. There are many principles used in theater improvisabeyond what the eye sees, to hear beyond
tion; those most relevant to our HFN hypotheses and thewhat the ear hears, to feel beyond what
focal questions we hope to explore are:touches the skin, to think beyond what• Situation (not structure)words mean.”– A u g u s t o B oal• Role and intention (not task)

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•	Ensemble (not hierarchy or centralized authority)• Discovery (not plans)•	Space (physical, relational, and spiritual)(These principles are described in the following sections.)
The principles and the practices used to uphold them might beadapted to complex multi-stakeholder systems in order to address someof their limitations. Taken as a whole, they might provide:“All human beings are actors(they act!) and spectators(they observe!). They are
spect-actors.”– Augusto Bo al• A model for self-organizing, minimal structures that transcend context• A set of practices that might be used to develop the capacities of individuals and collectives to operate effectively within these new structures
Additionally, as many of our interests reside at the “bottom” of the U, the improvisation
techniques might provide new methods for developing Presencing capacities. Improvisation
is walking into the unknown, without a script or a plan, to uncover what seeks to emerge
through us, and to co-create a future. The methods used by actors merge individual will withthe larger field of change that occurs throughout the improv, with equal emphasis on personal transformation and reliance on all the players to make the play. Improvisation by its
nature forces confrontation with both the self and the other, attention to each moment andthe future that is emerging, and exploration of the detail of each concrete action as a way toaccess and shape the whole.
The following sections describe each of the principles, with examples of how we havebegun to experiment in applying them. Note that the principles and techniques can be appliedby anyone – no acting experience is required!

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Situation (not structure): In exploring our HFN hypotheses, a central theme has been “minimal structure” as a means of allowing self-organization in the absence of a central authority.
A related idea is that the minimal structure must not be fixed (that is, a smaller version of ahierarchical structure), but rather fluid, so that the diverse players in the HFN can adapt tounfamiliar and rapidly changing conditions. These challenges led to the exploration of thisfirst principle in improvisation, where the unifying and guiding force is the situation itself,
and not a preordained and fixed structure. For example, in rehearsal of a play, the script
provides a relatively fixed structure, flexible only in interpretation by the artists; in theater
improvisation, there is no script. Interaction among the actors in
an improvisation is not governed by any fixed structure, but
Example Improv Situation
rather by the situation. The situation is given to the actors, who
Two brothers are going into a smallthen co-evolve events and outcomes, co-creating the play. The
situation
defines the context and the reason to engage as an inditown bank, intending to rob it. Bothvidual and collective: There is a clear problem or opportunity tohave guns. There is an armed security
address, but no script or plan to follow, and no preassigned
guard inside, many customers, and astructures through which to approach the situation. Thus, a sysfew bank employees. Robber A’s intentem defined by the principles of improvisation is not contextution is to get the money and escapeally confined by any structure – it is free to (and must) adapt toeach new situation (each new improv) as each situation unfolds,
without getting caught. Robber B wasin a dynamic, generative process.
coerced by his older brother, Robber
Situation in improvs is both contextual and relational. In someA, to participate in the robbery.
improvs, a single situation is given to all actors, but each actor is
Robber B’s intention is to make 		
also secretly given a specific intention, what he or she “wants” toachieve. In this type of improv, the actors approach the situation
sure that no one gets hurt.
having no idea what the other characters want. The improv
becomes a discovery process whereby each actor is acting upon the situation and adjusting to
the actions of the others – who may be in conflict. It is the shared understanding of the situation in which all are engaged that structures the unfolding performance, along with thesacred agreement that the actors must engage each other (despite conflicting intentions) insuch a way that a “play” that makes sense can emerge; these two factors are the springboard
for self-organizing, generative performance in the absence of a fixed structure.
Representative approaches: Actors are trained to expect and engage in dynamic situational
contexts as a collective. This process involves discovery and many of the other principles
described below, as well as acceptance and embrace of the unknown, of not knowing,
and of the need to create the “future” – the play that is unfolding. The example situation(text box on this page) is typical of the “minimal structure” given to actors performing an
improv. In this example, the actors know only the situation they are walking into; they do
not know how it will evolve or end, and they have no plans to follow; yet they can play thescene.
The process actors use to understand and deepen their perceptions of the situation requires
Sensing capacities: to first “see our seeing,” so as to notice our own intentions and attitudes
toward the situation and the others in it, and then to open ourselves to “seeing from thewhole” (i.e., the situation that is emerging). Given the example situation, the actor playing
Robber B must see his desire to keep people, including himself and his brother, from getting
hurt, and then, perhaps, see his seeing of his brother’s desperation to get the money – at any

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cost. Because all action in an improv is a surprise, the continual process of action-observationis required – there is no luxury of time to observe, reflect, and then act; it is a constantdynamic. The same applies to “seeing from the whole”: the actors must be highly attuned tothe situation that is unfolding (e.g., when demanding the money, the robbers must notice andadjust to the reactions of the security guard and tellers in the bank). Sensing is an active process, a series of action-observations the actor takes in an ever-evolving dynamic as contextual and relational aspects of the situation evolve. Actors are trained to quickly respond toeach new “action,” and then to either build on it or try to alter the course in a new direction– in U-terms, continual rapid prototyping.
HFNs are faced with similar conditions. The situation is never the same – infrastructuredamage varies, responders have varying degrees of skill or resources, and so on. Intentions
may be clear enough (e.g., to rescue people trapped in a collapsed building), but the actions
that each “actor” takes may be confined by the limits of their “seeing,” such as in the caseof the NYPD at the World Trade Center disaster. The need to see systemically is nothing new;but, perhaps, improvisation techniques might be used to train people in rapidly seeing fromthe whole of dynamic situations.
At Nissan, learning to “see” the situation in terms of the evolving business and social
context has become critical to our success – whether entering new markets, dealing withchanges within markets, or simply responding to a host of other challenges, we require thecapacity to rapidly size up and engage in dynamically unfolding situations. Our well-defined,hierarchical structures create only the illusion of stability and control – individuals and wholegroups can and do fail to take action in harmony with an unfolding situation, and yet thestructure keeps the “machine” chugging, on plan. To respond to the reality of the situationthat is emerging, and to adapt in harmony with it, requires courage, a new set of skills, anda new way of being. To develop the capacity to engage in dynamically unfolding situations,reflections.solonline.org

Feature n Huston 19

we have focused on the Sensing capacities, drawing from diverse methods including scenario
thinking, peer shadowing, and learning journeys. Overall, the goal has been to release innate
curiosity, to embrace uncertainty, and to do so in ways that slowly begin to shift our culture
from one that values “knowing” to one that prizes deep learning and collective discovery.
Role and intention (not task): In exploring the second HFN hypothesis, focusing on thenature of personal transformation that might free new ways of being within the minimal
structure of HFNs, intention and will seemed key. In theater improv, intention is also central, providing the basis for all action, the manifestation of one’s role. For example, in mostimprovs, actors are preassigned a role to play (you play Robber A, I do Robber B, someone
else plays the security guard, etc.). Although some role descriptions might include details
about the character’s history, world view, or feelings about the situation and others in it,
they do not prescribe specific actions or duties (like job descriptions or hierarchical roles acompany might define). Instead, each actor in the improv must approach the situation based
only on a clear intention: what he or she wants, in light of the situation. The word intention
is actually used in theater, often interchangeably with the word will. Intention is the basisof will, as expressed through observable action – action follows from intention, not from afixed process or role definition. Intention thus defines the role the actor plays by shaping theaction he takes within the role.
Augusto Boal, a pioneer in the use of theater improvisation techniques to effect socialchange, defines will as follows: each character has a dominant will, what he or she wants,
and counter will, the opposite or obstacle to expression of dominant will. It is the dominant
will that defines the “character” (or, in life, the emerging self). For example, Robber B wants
to make sure no one gets hurt (dominant will). He also would like to get the money (counterwill), but the dominant will prevails, guiding his subsequentactions – he will sacrifice the money and flee in order to avoid
hurting someone. Each of us faces internal conflicts posed bycounter will; when these are not resolved, action becomes
unfocused and ineffective. The challenge is to connect to one’s
intention, then focus intention on the basis of the dominant
will, and then allow actions to flow from it (as illustrated in
the figure on this page). In this way, the “role” one plays canbe based on deep personal intention and will, and not a prescribed definition, which may have little or no meaning for theindividual. A role that is defined by intention rather than tasks
may also be more easily adjusted to a new situation, enabling
greater flexibility and freedom for self-organization – action
without hierarchical or centralized control, and yet guided by
the need to contribute to the unfolding situation in which all“actors” are participating.
Intentions are expressed through actions; actions without aclear intention have no meaning in a theatrical performance,and cannot serve to advance the play. (How many actions performed in work-life seem to have no clear intention?) An
actor’s intention, however, is always formed within the context
of the whole – of the play or the nature of the situation, and in

DOMINANT WILLACTIONSINTENTION

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relation to the other actors within it. An actor with an intention that does not make sense
within the context of the situation would not be able to perform in the improv – he would
have no actions to take (or else would have to play a crazy character). So, in HFN terms, thequestion might be how to first develop clear intentions, focused on dominant will, within thecontext of the crisis and including all the players in it, in such a way as to enable coordinated action that can adapt to changing conditions.
Representative approaches: Actors approach a play or improv by exploring first the situation,and then the character’s intention within it: What does he want? Why? What is he trying to
make happen? What are the obstacles within himself (counter will)? Even when the actor is
working with the text of a scripted play, dialogue and stage directions are approached not tounderstand task or prescribed action, but intention – the why. (Imagine a planning meetingthat operated on the same principles.) To understand intention, the actor explores the overallrole (type or function of the character), the dynamics of the situation, his world view versus
those of others, and what he would like to “create” by influencing others or events so as toalter the course of the situation. Any one role has an overarching intention (dominant will)that is played out via a series of concrete actions, moment to moment. Actions are adjusted
and evolved through engagement with the other characters in the play, and in relation to theevolving situation (i.e., through ongoing learning). When intention does change, as it may, theobservable actions (or tasks performed) change quite naturally. To connect to the intentionof the role, the actor draws from the self. The process of connecting the intentions of the self
to the role and the situation involves, in U-terms, Presencing. Because each of us possesses
infinite capacities – the capacity to love and also hate, to rescue and also kill – intention
becomes the choice that defines the self, who we are, and what actions we will take or nottake as a result.
At Nissan, we have focused on developing methods to uncover and focus intention andwill among our leaders – those who are making big choices about the business and then acting upon them need both clarity and deep commitment for change. In our leadership development program, we have been successful in helping to create reflective spaces for leaders totake the time to allow for “stillness” that their otherwise hectic schedules deny. These few
moments have surfaced many profound discoveries for both individuals and communities ofleaders. Intention is, it seems, always present, and needs only the space to emerge; the work
has been neither time-consuming nor complex, but rather quite natural. However, it can be
hard to hold one’s intention when back in the bustle of everyday work, among the competingor unclear intentions of others. So we continue to support the space needed to maintain andhold intention through executive coaching, and through the network of peers that evolves
from the program. In Japan, other groups have embarked on the same mission by instilling
the Zen practice of shi kan. Loosely translated, shi means to stop, take time out, and kanmeans to meditate so as to lose the self, to enter the larger field, and start fresh. What is
emerging from the various approaches is the clear desire to surface a larger sense of purpose,and to connect the will to a shared field of change. The energy that arises from these reflective, “presencing” practices is palpable.
Ensemble (not hierarchy or centralized authority): In exploring the challenges of HFNs, thequestion of how to take coordinated action among many disparate groups without a central
authority remains key. The challenge here is amplified by sheer scale – whereas a self-managed

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Feature n Huston 21

team might quite easily self-organize, how can large numbers of responders do so? As astarting point, considering the focal questions at the bottom of our U, it seemed imperative
to begin to explore what it takes to move from being solo performers (e.g., NYPD versus
firefighters) to being an ensemble, a unified group of responders.
Although most plays and many improv groups are organized by a central authority figure,the director, some improv groups work as an ensemble without a director; they are self-organizing. When a director is used, it is a role defined by function, not hierarchy; a director
cannot determine how an actor will act, any more than a manager can dictate how an individual will perform. The difference in theater is that control of the actors is not expected!
This is a very different mental model about leadership and working together than many
people working in command-and-control organizations experience. To work as a self-organizing ensemble, actors must rely upon common language, methods, and goals (typicallydefined as effective engagement in the situation) in order to perform. What’s more, they must
rely upon each other, despite their diverse intentions and roles. They are bound together by
the need to act within and upon a common situation. In a scripted play (or any other highly
structured situation), it is relatively easy to perform one’s own role
without “seeing” the others or the whole; one can go through the
motions of performing one’s own tasks regardless of what is happening around one, and the structure will keep the “machine”
moving. In this way, well-defined structures can obscure intention
and inhibit connection to the others in the system, and to the sysEnsemble
tem as a whole. The NYPD’s failure to think beyond their own soloRoleroles is a tragic example of how hierarchical structures can limit
ensemble performance.
Improvisation forces ensemble behavior, because there is nopreordained structure and the scene cannot be advanced without
collaboration. Although intentions often conflict – indeed, conflict is the basis of drama
and comedy – the improvisation requires each member of the ensemble to fully explore
the intentions and actions of others, to respond to them, and then to try to effect new
responses. What makes a performance succeed is the commitment to the dynamic interplayof diverse intentions working themselves out in order to alter the situation – it is not direction
from on high!
Is an “ensemble” approach possible within large-scale, multi-stakeholder response? Wehave acknowledged that in these contexts there is no central, hierarchical authority that canhelp to coordinate the action of the disparate groups of responders. How, then, can eachstakeholder group and the collective group of responders learn to work as an ensemble?
At Nissan, shifting from solo to ensemble performance has become a key imperative – as
we expand into new markets and at the same time try to cultivate efficiencies, a much higher
degree of cross-functional, cross-regional, and cross-company collaboration is required thanmany employees have been accustomed to. Although our hierarchical structure eventuallyconnects everybody via the “top,” the agility required to navigate the complex territory of
globalization necessitates a significant shift: We must go from being leaders of empires tobeing co-actors in an ensemble. We have, therefore, begun to look for opportunities to create
intentional spaces for leaders at all levels of the company to co-create as a community. These
spaces include our global leadership development program, special forums, and social networks within Nissan and with other institutions. The networks that have been developed in

Situation

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these spaces, although still in the early stages, have continued to thrive, a welcome indicatorthat not only the logic but the desire for ensemble performance is present. However, given the
many systemic challenges of shifting from solo to ensemble performance, we continue to lookfor new approaches.
Representative approaches: Actors are trained to develop their individual skills as well as
to perform in an ensemble – imagine an MBA program doing such a thing! They begin bylearning the language and basic acting techniques (everyone becomesfamiliar with a “scene,” a “beat” within it, an “action” or “color,” how
Mattel begins its accelerated
to explore a role and a play, and so on). They then learn how to work
product development process,together. The focus is on interaction with the Other, on the results of“Project Platypus,” (12 weeks
actions being played out as an expression of each individual’s intention,
for product prototype along withand on what happens when diverse intentions are enacted so as to effecta common situation. Because intentions are based on the larger context,
a complete business plan andthe ensemble functions as a microcosm of the whole system, the emergmarketing plan) with two weeks
ing play.
of improvisation work to form
Forming a strong ensemble is a difficult process because there are so
its cross-functional “ensemble.”many forces at play. (In fact, beginning acting classes often focus first on
monologues; more advanced classes focus on scene work, where ensemble efforts are required.) Nevertheless, when actors show up for the first rehearsal of a new
production or for a new improv, never having met one another, the common language andmethods allow them to instantly engage in coordinated action without direction from a central authority.
Ensemble work does take a high degree of individual skill. Thus, most actors never stop
studying plays or performances, and never stop trying to perfect their techniques. Each new
production process begins with rehearsal – in effect, with learning. Improvisation is often
used to explore a scripted play or roles within it, for the purpose of allowing a true ensemble
to emerge through a play: It is the process of learning to “see from the whole” (the redirecting capacity in the U). Plays are always rehearsed, for the purpose of giving space for deep
exploration of the role, the others, and the play – before public performance. If theater followed the corporate world, it might mean actors would simply read the script, study memosor reports from the director and possibly other actors, then show up to put on a production!
Perhaps there might be value in making the time to develop our skills and comfort in working
as a true ensemble.
Discovery (not plans): The difference between one who approaches life or work as an artist
and one who approaches it as a participant may be: (1) the need to create, and (2) deep curiosity about the self, the world, and the self in the world. Curiosity and creation seem to go
hand in hand as part of a dynamic discovery process. Given the uncertain, rapidly changing
contexts in which HFNs must operate, developing the capacity for discovery (as opposed toreliance on fixed plans) seems a critical factor in improving their effectiveness.
In theater improvisation, there is no plan. Thus, there is only the process of discovery. This
discovery process is very much like the journey through the seven capacities of the U – except
it occurs in rapid cycles of iteration, during which any or all capacities are needed in eachsingle moment of an improv. This type of performance is reliant on a level of skill that allows
for tacit, instinctual, and intensively relational modes of action to occur. It is also dependent

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Feature n Huston 23

on the actor’s desire to let go of preconceptions and ways of being to let come whatever may
emerge. Both skill and comfort with letting go to let come are the result of lots of practice,and of participation in environments in which this level of risk-taking is cherished and supported, and engaged in by all.
The nature of the discovery process in improvisation is also largely based on trial and error– an actor must try to get what he wants or to influence the other actors or the situation bytaking many different types of actions. When an action doesn’t work, the actor is expected
to try another; other members of the ensemble are also expected to try to make the scene
work. Improv actors, rather than perceiving failure
when an action doesn’t produce the desired result,“Every human activity, from the very simplest –believe that part of the fun is to keep trying, using
all of one’s skill to effect change in others or thewalking, for instance – is an extremely complicatedoverall situation. It is especially fun when the otheroperation, which is possible only because theactors rally in sudden inspired coordinated action.
senses are capable of selection; even though they
Improvisation is a continual discovery process
pick up all sensations, they present them to thewhere everyone is inspired to explore the other andconsciousness according to a definite hierarchy,
the play, as well as the self that is arising through it– through moment-to-moment action.
and this filtering process is repeated over and overIn HFN contexts, while each group might have ain our daily lives. . . . This process of selection andplan, there is often no central plan through which tostructuration results in mechanization because
coordinate action among the groups. Thus, thewhen confronted with similar circumstances the
responders must engage in a continual discovery
process. How might these skills be developed?
senses always select in the same way. . . . For thisreason, we must start with ‘de-mechanization,’

Representative approaches: In order to engage inthe discovery process, each actor must have strong
who takes action]. . . . He must relearn to perceive
skills in deep listening and observation, across many
emotions and sensations he has lost the habit 		dimensions: It is impossible to participate without
deep understanding of the others and the situationof recognizing.”– A u g u s t o B oal
as it was, as it is, and as it is emerging. This involves
seeing our seeing (our own world view and theworld view of others), seeing ourselves and the rest of the actors from the others’ perspectives(how the other characters view me and each other), and seeing from the whole that is emerging (noticing how the story is unfolding, what forces are shaping it, and where it “wants” togo). Additionally, the actors must be driven to experiment and then reflect on the outcomesthrough repeated improvisation – it is, in effect, a process of continuous rapid prototyping.
“Seeing” and “hearing,” however, are not so easy; our brains naturally go through a filtering process to select what sensory information is needed to complete even the simplest functions, and, over time, this results in patterned behavior that habitually limits our field ofreality. Otto Scharmer suggests that failure to see may be the biggest obstacle to addressing
our challenges. Frank Barrett of the Naval Postgraduate School describes methods used byjazz musicians to intentionally interrupt habit patterns so as to enable innovation.5 Boal suggests the use of both individual and group exercises that are designed to “de-mechanize” ourhabitual ways of perceiving, to intentionally disrupt our physical and sensory habits so as toallow the mind and body to open to new ways of seeing and, hence, of being.6
the retuning (or detuning) of the actor [a person

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These de-mechanization methods and others to develop ensemble skills are being developed within business and multi-stakeholder contexts. At Nissan, we have included the discipline of intentional de-mechanization within our leadership development and ongoingorganizational learning practices, for the purpose of continually opening ourselves to new
ways of seeing and of being. Some of these methods are focused on de-mechanizing the body;others are intended to open the imagination, through dialogic and immersive learning methods. The result seems to combine a deep questioning of individual and collective mental
models, a desire to learn from others inside and outside our own system, and a desire to begin
to think together.
Space (physical, relational, and spiritual): Some thought leaders suggest that the quality ofplace is the single most important driver of innovation – physical space, and also the relational and spiritual dimensions of space (referred to by Professor Ikujiro Nonaka as “ba.”7)Companies like Mattel (Project Platypus), Toyota (Prius development) and IDEO (design firmand leader in innovation methods) have based their cultures and practices largely on shaping
space across these three levels for the purpose of enabling product and process innovation,
reduction in cycle time, cross-functional collaboration, and connection with the customer– with amazing results. In exploring the needs of HFNs, Denning describes the need for a“conversation space” that is created through both technology and an enhanced relational
field. Developing the capacities among responders to create the relational aspects of the conversation space may, thus, be of some value.
In theater of all types, the “set” is carefully designed so as to inspire certain types of action
and interaction. Props are often used to further evoke specific types of action – consider thedifferences in how you would feel or act after having been given a sword, a martini, or aflower. Even in a physically empty space, “place” is created by the actors, as is an energy, a
relational space. When a performance is going very well, this sense of space transcends theboundaries of the stage, encompassing the audience. In rare cases, it can access a muchlarger collective field. It is the goal of any theatrical performance to reach this highest, spiritual space as one, with the entire community present.
Representative approaches: Little things make a huge difference. Consider the World Café’s
attention to creating a café-like setting; drawing out ideas together using a table covered withpaper (versus flip charts); Mattel’s use of a separate, intentionally designed “play” space for
its Project Platypus; having a meeting in a circle; “checking in” as a way to start a meeting.
(See the ba case, IDEO-U, and cases about Mattel’s Project Platypus for some interesting
examples.)8
At Nissan, we have introduced ba concepts and methods, along with IDEO and Mattel
practices, to offer alternatives for how we create the physical, relational, and spiritual dimensions of space, for the purpose of shifting our culture and behaviors in ways that inspire
innovation. Some work teams (particularly those from engineering) have taken the ideas
further on their own, taking field visits to IDEO, experimenting with their own ba practices,
and intentionally redesigning the physical places in which they engage.
Additionally, merely having people in positions of authority can set a certain tone in thespace that may be counterproductive. Removing the authority aspect can open the field tomany leaders, who can share the role in either rotational or differing capacities. Working tocreate the “right” tone, however, remains a big challenge!

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Feature n Huston 25

Improv Methods and Skills to Explore
Whereas the HFN challenge implies very large-scale and immediate, short-term response tocrises, the thinking is that developing the individual and collective skills used in improvisation
might enable better response when the crises occur (i.e., the HFN “actors” will have developed their “instruments”). Additionally, improvisation principles and methods can be applied
within many different organizational contexts to (1) create minimal, adaptive structures and(2) enable non-hierarchical leadership.
Based on the principles of improvisational systems described previously, techniques todevelop the needed capacities might include:“De-mechanization” exercises to breakingrained habits and mental models

Suspending:Seeing Our
SeeingSensing:
Transforming
Perception

Institutionalizing:
Embodying the New

Physical, sensory, emotional, and imagination
exercises to deepen perception

REALIZING:
Transforming
ActionImprov techniques to enable
diverse “actors” to see the situationfrom the whole

Redirecting:Seeing fromthe Whole

Prototyping:
Enacting Living
Microcosoms

Ensemble exercises and situational
improvs to develop the collective capacity
to create the future we wantLetting Go

Intention and willtechniques

Crystallizing:
Envisioning
What Seeks to
EmergeLetting Come

PreSencing:Transforming
Self and Will

Specific methods are continually evolving through experimentation at Nissan, for the purpose of better understanding the structural and leadership challenges of HFNs, as well as theoverall challenge of creating more adaptive, innovative cultures. We welcome exchanges ofideas and practices.

26 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

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Acknowledgments
Many of the ideas in this article were generated over the course of several dialogues with the SoL Liaison Officer
Meeting Design Team (for the March 2006 meeting), and as a result of the ongoing work at NPS. Although thespecifics in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of anyone other than the author, the following are
acknowledged for their ideas and inspiration:
Frank Barrett, Naval Postgraduate SchoolPeter Denning, Naval Postgraduate School
Sue Higgins, Naval Postgraduate School
Henry Frechette, SoL facilitator
Jean Tully, SoL facilitator
Jeff Clanon, SoL staff
Frank Schneider, SoL staff
Carol Gorelick, SoL researcher
Otto Scharmer, MIT professor and author

A bo u t the A u tho r

Tracy Huston joined Nissan in 2002 to lead the design of its global leadership development program. She continues
to support the evolution of the program through experimentation with emergent learning methods and practices, andthrough executive coaching. Prior to entering the corporate world in 1989, Tracy worked in the theater, where she
directed an improv group for the former Boston Shakespeare Company. She is continuing to explore improv methods
through L.A. theater groups and the work of Augusto Boal, for the purpose of finding new ways to support systemic
and personal transformation in business and social contexts.
tracyhuston@comcast.net
Endnotes
1

For a detailed explanation of HFN, see “Hastily Formed Networks” by Peter J. Denning in this issue of Reflections.

2This model and all related content on the U-Theory are adapted from the work of C. Otto Scharmer.

3

Adapted from the work of C. Otto Scharmer.

4

Adapted from the work of C. Otto Scharmer in Theory U (forthcoming).

5

See Frank Barrett’s article, “Creativity and Improvisations in Jazz Organizations: Implications for Organizational
Learning” in the SoL Library at www.solonline.org.

6	

To learn about Boal’s methods, see his books, Legislative Theatre, Theatre of the Oppressed, and Games for Actors
and Nonactors.

7

See “Building Ba to Enhance Knowledge Creation and Innovation at Large Firms,” by Ikujiro Nonaka, Ryoko Toyama,
and Otto Scharmer, available on www.dialogonleadership.org.

8	

For information about IDEO, see www.ideo.com. A variety of articles and cases have been published on the Web
about Mattel’s Project Platypus, and can be found through a search using keywords “Mattel Project Platypus.”reflections.solonline.org

Feature n Huston 27

commentar y

Commentary
By C. Otto Scharmer

C. Otto Scharmer

The article “Enabling Adaptability and Innovation
Through Hastily Formed Networks” explores a core
issue of leadership today: how to deal with the crisis
situations that occur when existing structures andinfrastructures break down. This is relevant not only
to disaster and disaster relief challenges, but to alltypes of management issues when knowledge about
what worked in the past is not adequate to copewith the situation at hand. The situation becomeseven more complex when the crisis or challenge
involves multiple stakeholders from different
institutions and organizations.
Author Tracy Huston outlines two ways to enhance
the performance of HFNs: developing a minimal structure that allows for self-organization, and building
new skills at the individual and collective level. The
U-process serves as a framework for testing the ideathat theatre improvisation techniques can provide
some of the skills that help prepare us for crisis situations, and can also teach non-hierarchical leadership processes that are flexible and decentralized.
Most learning approaches are based on the Kolb
learning cycle that suggests that reflecting on pastexperience is the basis for learning. In a crisis, pastexperience might not help. Decisions need to bemade on the spot; action might be based on “gutfeeling.” There is no reliable set of data to help guidethe action. In working with leadership teams composed of people from many different sectors andindustries, I realized that leaders often could notmeet their existing challenges by operating only on
the basis of past experiences. I wondered whether
there could be a deeper learning cycle based on
one’s sense of what was emerging, rather than on
one’s experience of what had already happened. I
began to call this learning from the future as it
emerges “presencing.” Presencing is a new termthat blends the two words “presence” and “sensing.”
It means to sense and bring into the present one’s
highest future potential – the future that becomesreal through our actions.
The core idea of the U-process and of presencing
is to learn from an emerging future. The work of anartist can provide an example. There are at least
three perspectives on how an artist works. We can

28 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

focus on the thing that results from the creative
process – say a painting; we can focus on the process of painting; or we can observe the artist standing
in front of a blank canvas. In other words, we canlook at the work of art after it has been created (thething), during its creation (the process), or before
creation begins (the blank canvas). The same applies
to lead-ership. We can look at a leader’s results. We
can look at the processes he or she uses to achieve
those results. And we can look at the work from theblank canvas perspective: what sources are leaders
operat-ing from? The process of activating this deeper
source or level of leading and learning involves three
move-ments: (1) observe, observe, observe: open up
and connect to what is going on outside; (2) allow the
inner knowing to emerge: open up and connect towhat is emerging from within; (3) act in an instant:bring the new into reality as it desires.
The improvisation theatre skills that Houston suggests
are a very effective way to hone the practical skills
necessary to operate effectively from deeper sourcesof knowledge in a particular situation. They help
individuals or groups learn to activate qualities ofpaying attention that
1) stop the pattern of downloading old mental
models (de-mechanization exercises)2) build the skill of observation (physical, sensory,emotional, and imagination exercises)3) allow one’s inner knowing to emerge (theatretechniques to enable diverse actors to “see” thesituation from the whole), and to act in an instant(ensemble exercises and situational, intention,
and will techniques).
The research on HFNs from the viewpoint of Theory U
and improv theatre is a promising field of future research and application. The newly formed Presencing
Institute (which operates under the umbrella of SoL)
has created an action research group called Social
Presencing Theatre in which similar questions arebeing explored. I recently invited the Boston-based
Ariel theatre group into the week-long workshops I run
in my current work with a global car company. Theirtechniques help leaders develop authentic presence
and learn new communication skills. The success ofthese programs is only one of many experiences I

reflections.solonline.org

have had over the past few years that support thebasic hypothesis which underlies Tracy Houston’s
article: that learning from the creative practices that
real artists use will help us respond effectively tosome of the toughest leadership challenges weface. Without intentional cultivation of the deep
creative force that is available to all human beings

reflections.solonline.org

and systems in all situations, we will be unable todevelop the distributed leadership skills we need todeal with some of the most pressing issues andchallenges of our time.
C. Otto Scharmer
Scharmer@mit.edu

Commentary ■ Scharmer 29

Mental Models That Block
Strategic Plan Implementation
Jon Kohl

Bookshelves around the world
are laden with written plans.
Having spent a brief time inthe limelight, each now rests
unimplemented and often
forgotten. Despite the celebrations of strategic plans inboardrooms, at press conferJon Kohl
ences, and throughout grantreports, such plans often end up dead on arrival –even before planners complete the planning process.
Curiously, organizations continue to churn out strategic plans and accept their demise without question.
The causes of such repeated failures lurk deep in themental models that program managers, executives,
planners, and donors hold about the process andproducts connected with a given organization. Though
the problem can easily be discussed in the context
of any organization or institution, this article will
illuminate such mental models by looking closely at
one example: the park systems.
Parks, whether public or private, large or small,are part of society in countries around the globe. And
highly dissimilar parks can suffer remarkably similar
problems when it comes to planning. “Planning”
ranks among the most common park management
functions. Yet something haunts that long hallway
between the initial intention to create a plan and theplan’s implementation. The strategic plan can takeany form, for example, general management plan,
tourism plan, financial plan, or protection plan. Park
managers, of course, embark on the planning process wholly expecting the plan’s implementation. No

30 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

manager would ever spend tens of thousands of dollars and countless hours on a project only to shelve
it and watch it gather dust alongside old, unfunded
proposals.
Still, during the very act of setting up the planning
process, managers often unwittingly set up implementation barriers that scuttle the very project they
are laboring to create. In the background of theirawareness, systemic elements hum along like quiet
machines. Yet instead of building plans, they build
barriers. If managers were to stop and cast light onthese mental machines – models – then they could
retool them to diminish the likelihood that certain
barriers would halt a plan’s implementation.
Few studies have documented the extent of plan
implementation failure (Burby, 2003; Lachapelle etal., 2003; Lane, 2003). Any park manager, nevertheless, can name handfuls of unimplemented park
plans at his or her own park or those managed byothers. When I worked in international conservationand park planning in Mesoamerica in the early
2000s, I regularly told people about the series ofpublic use plans in the Dominican Republic thatdisappeared from public view after being written. In
Guatemala, the Cerro San Gil Reserve’s ecotourism
plan sat idle. In Mexico, Sian Ka’an and Cerro
Grande Manantlan’s public use plans were left unimplemented. In Honduras, La Tigra National Park
had both an interpretive plan and a management planthat, like falling stars, glowed bright before fading
away. Even the venerable Galapagos National Park
had an interpretive and environmental education
plan on the shelf.

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Mental Models Erect Barriers
to Plan Implementation
Many implementation barriers grow out of park
managers’ assumptions or mental models. Without
training, it is difficult for anyone to cast light on his
or her own deep assumptions. When assumptions
remain obscured, the holder tends to repeat the same
patterns of behavior over and over (see “Story of aStrategic Park Planning Failure”). But once a manager
perceives her own mental model, she soon discovers
that her assumptions are just that: assumptions, nottruths. Once she strips them of truth status, she canmuch more easily mold the assumptions and replacethem with a new interpretation of reality.
When we lower the drawbridge to the traditionalpark planning mind, we find a variety of assumptions that shape the planning process. We can groupthem into four general categories: Learning andConsultants, Planning Process, Plan Nature, and Plan
Format. This grouping, somewhat arbitrary andoverlapping, may aid the reader in setting up his or
her own mental model about “mental models that
explain park planning implementation barriers.”
The following causal loop diagram illustrates a
generalized traditional park planning model that
focuses heavily on management resources and consultant expertise, and not at all on learning. Thiskind of model does not indicate how strong or influential relationships are, but strength can be inferredby the presence or absence of variables. “Learning,”
for example, does not appear in this model, notbecause traditional park managers never think about
learning, but because the concept does not play astrong role in their mental model. (The art of effective modeling is to include the fewest elements possible while explaining the system behavior that answers
the problem question.) This model answers the following question through the eyes of a traditionalpark planner: “What is the relationship between
strategic park planning and management issues?”
In a systems model, there is no true starting point,
but for simplicity, the reader may begin with “Perceived
need to plan” at upper left in the diagram. This needincreases pressure to plan, which increases the intensity

reflections.solonline.org

Story of a Strategic Park
Planning Failure
1.

Park and donor retain expensive outside consultant todevelop a strategic plan.

2.

Consultant runs workshops with stakeholders.

3.

Consultant compiles the results and analyzes them.

4.

Away from the park office, consultant then produces anicely bound plan replete with appendices. Usually the plan
will not have operational elements such as budgets andchronograms indicating which person will do what when.
The “plan” may have recommendations instead of commitments (indicating that it is actually a study, not a plan).

5.

Consultant delivers finished plan and departs. Contract is over.

6.

There is much fanfare and celebration. The park calls
together the media. It passes out published and polishedcopies of the plan.

7.

If the park is lucky, the government approves the plan within
the year (depends on country). Quite likely it is approved
after the implementation should already have begun.

8.

The park then cherry-picks for implementation those actions
it probably would have taken even without a plan – thoseactions the managers truly wanted to do.

9.

The park did not learn to use the plan during its development and harbors no intentions of learning how to use it
now. Learning has little to do with plan implementation.
Managers and planners are different people.

10. Within six months, implementation has been delayed one
or more times; the plan is going out of date. Because it is
nicely bound, with professional page layout and photos, no
one can imagine updating it for years to come.
11. Stakeholder attention shifts to new issues that arise on theradar. Park managers lay the plan on the shelf, only momentarily, until they have a chance to kick-start its implementation.
12. The plan remains on the shelf. The park claims it does nothave the money, time, or personnel to implement it.
13. Dust falls. The plan sinks into a pile of documents like justanother layer of sedimentary rock.
14. Several years pass. Stakeholder confidence in planning erodes.
15. A new donor comes along and decides the park needs astrategic plan. It dangles money. The park bites.
16. The story begins anew.

EKF ■ Kohl 31

Figure 1: Mental Model of a Traditional Park Planner
Perceived donor
availability

delay

+

Time sincelast planning+
Perceived
need to plan

+

+

+

+

Donor
funding+

Pressure
to plan++++Park planning
intensity+

magnitude ofmanagement
problems

Availability ofresources after
plan approval

consultant
expertise(Money, time
persononnel)++

Quality ofcompleted plan

+
delay

Managment
actions completedPlan
implementation
rate

+
+

Park capacity
to implement+

Appropriations
Politics
Government Invention

or scale of the planning effort (once it launches). The
greater the effort is, the better the plan’s quality. The
better the plan, the faster the park should implement
it (implementation rate). The faster the implementation, the more actions the park will complete, which
will reduce the magnitude of its management problems(biodiversity threats, political wrangles, budgetary
shortfalls, etc.). If such problems are mitigated, there
will be less perceived need to mount another planning campaign, and donors will likely spend theirmoney in other places where greater urgency looms.

32 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

When donors contribute more money anyway, it
increases planning intensity (for example, the number of planning workshops and participants rises),
improves the quality of consultant the park can hire(quality according to the consultant’s CV), and fills
coffers necessary to implement the plan. The consultant’s expertise has a major impact on the quality ofthe plan. The park’s ability to implement it depends
most of all on the money, personnel, and time (allreducible to money) available. Despite the relationship between park and donor, government has areflections.solonline.org

heavy influence, both through its appropriations forthe park and through the politicking and bureaucracy (especially the plan approval process) thatcause problems for the park. Of course, for a privatepark that receives no governmental funding, themanagers may substitute donors for government
appropriations.
Just as “learning” does not appear in the model,“barriers” too are reduced above. A manager might
point only to a lack of resources. All other barriers
are unexpected, assumed not to exist.
This blindness to park barriers plays a major rolein implementation failure. Until barriers become visible, a cadre of professionals cannot evolve to help
parks deal with them. Thus, in early stages of recognizing barriers, assistance proves rare. This phenomenon happens in many fields. For example, until
doctors began to regard mental illness as a treatabledisease of the mind, rather than possession by witchcraft, a patient could hope for scant succor. In thecase of park planning barriers, one program did
evolve to diagnose and treat them. That was theRare Center for Tropical Conservation’s Public Use
Planning Program.

A Program to Address Obstacles
In 1999, Honduras’s Pico Bonito National Park had
money for a public use plan. It asked a partner organization, the Rare Center for Tropical Conservation(hereafter “Rare”), to locate a park planning consultant. After searching Latin America for successfulplans and methodologies and discovering precious
few of either, Rare offered to develop a planning
methodology on the condition that Pico Bonito, notRare staff, write the plan. Rare’s president issued amandate to his staff that this program should avoid
the implementation problems often encountered in
traditional planning. Accomplishing that mandate
required that the program identify and classify thosebarriers.
Six months later, the park publicly presented theprototype public-use plan, written by its own boardof directors. It was the first in Honduras and the firstin Rare’s history. A year and a half later, with improved methodology, the park and Rare used its
updated methodology and developed the second prototype. In 2001, Rare and UNESCO launched theWorld Heritage Partnership, under whose funding
the planning program expanded to other sites in

E.F. Schumacher on Development in Small Is Beautiful:
Economics as if People Mattered“Development does not start with goods; it starts withpeople and their education, organization, and discipline.
Without these three, all resources remain latent, untapped,
potential. There are prosperous societies with but the
scantiest basis of natural wealth… and we have had plentyof opportunities to observe the primacy of the invisible
factors after the war. Every country, no matter how devastated, which had a high level of education, organization,and discipline, produced an ‘economic miracle.’ In fact,
these were miracles only for people whose attention is
focused on the tip of the iceberg. The tip had beensmashed to pieces, but the base, which is education,organization, and discipline, was still there.

reflections.solonline.org“Here, then, lies the central problem of development. If
the primary causes of poverty are deficiencies in these threerespects, then the alleviation of poverty depends primarily on
the removal of these deficiencies. Here lies the reason why
development cannot be an act of creation, why it cannot beordered, bought, comprehensively planned; why it requires
a process of evolution. Education does not ‘jump;’ it is a
gradual process of great subtlety. Organization does not‘jump;’ it must gradually evolve to fit changing circumstances. And much the same goes for discipline. All three must
evolve step by step, and the foremost task of development
policy must be to speed this evolution . . .” (p. 169)

EKF ■ Kohl 33

Mesoamerica and Indonesia. Since that time, Komodo
and Ujung Kulon National Parks in Indonesia havecompleted the first official drafts of their public use
plans; the program also contributed the public use
section of Guatemala’s Tikal National Park Master
Plan.
The Public Use Planning Program, as it was now
called, soon coupled its search for barriers with thework of renowned economist E.F. Schumacher, whowrote in his book Small Is Beautiful that real building of capacity depends on the development of education, organization, and discipline (see box). Rare
integrated this observation into its program philosophy, its basis for combating implementation barriers.
The entire approach then boiled down to one message that all park managers had to understand:
Strategic park planning will not yield benefits forconservation unless parks learn the skills necessary
to create and implement their own strategic plans.
The implications of this message precipitate aradical new way of conducting park planning. The
approach converts unseen barriers into regularchallenges faced throughout any strategic planning

34 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

process. It does this by understanding the mental
model park managers use to inadvertently erect
those barriers. Without any conscious intention of
doing so, Rare embarked on a de facto systems
thinking approach to circumvent strategic park planning barriers rooted deep in the mind.

A New Planning ModelIn the following loop diagram, managers have madebarriers and learning explicit considerations in theirmental model of park planning. Begin with “qualityof plan” at upper left. As the plan’s quality goes up,
the park can implement it faster (better plans areeasier to implement). Over time, as the park managers implement more of the plan, they will find more
ways to improve it (experimentation, feedback).
That is, they will learn faster, which increases implementation. Over time, as the park learns, it will also
institutionalize its lessons into park management
capacity (operating manuals, culture of organizational learning, personnel capable of learning, people
applying planning lessons to other management

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Figure 2: Mental Model of a Traditional Park Planner
Quality of management decisions

delay

Magnitude ofmanagement
problems

Quality of plan

delay

Need to planPlan
implementation ratedelay

Planning
intensity

Pressure to plan

Implementation barriersPark learnig

delayPark managment
capacity planand implement

functions, rules mandating the identification andapplication of lessons, etc.).
Increased park capacity helps parks to identify
previously unknown barriers and avoid them.
Additionally, greater capacity leads to higher-quality
plans. Presumably, higher-quality plans will lead tohigher-quality management decisions, reducing themagnitude of problems, which will then reduce theneed and pressure to begin new planning efforts. In
this model, managers are continuously planning aspart of normal management processes (management
and planning are integrated, not separate, functions),
so they do not need large new infusions of money
and consultants (hence these resources do not appear
in the model). Also note the multiple delays in thismodel, which underscore that building capacity
takes a long time and does not happen during thecontract duration of a traditional consultant.

reflections.solonline.org

Despite the ubiquity with which mental models
can lead people, industries, and cultures toward
counterproductive behavior, this deep causation
often goes unseen, precipitating repeated failures,
even though those failures are startlingly obvious tothose with different assumptions. This is the case forpark planning when managers assume that their next
effort will rise to success above the discarded plansthat litter the landscape. The following table identifies some of the major assumptions, their consequent
implementation barriers, and actions that managers
can take to circumvent or mitigate the barrier. Many
assumptions derive from the traditional park planning model above; others are unrelated.
Though this was written specifically to address
park planning, managers and planning stakeholders
from many domains will recognize many of theseassumptions and barriers.

EKF ■ Kohl 35

Table 1: Assumptions, Barriers, and Responses
Parks Assume…

Planning Barrier

Exemplary Response Strategies

Parks do not have the management capacity to create andimplement a strategic plan.

Facilitators should make significant efforts before planning to identify the capacity levels of the park so it does
not proceed overconfident and blind to its own limitations.

The ability to create and implement
a strategic plans is not innate.
Strategic plans are sophisticatedtools that, like any other sophisticated tool, require training andexperience to use effectively.

While many capacities are technical, such as the useof a monitoring system, other higher-level capacities
refer to learning, discipline, and organization that are
more difficult to articulate. For example, only an organization with discipline can say “no” to an offer ofmoney for developments outside its strategic priorities.

Parks do not learn how tocreate and implement thestrategic plan.

Facilitators should build learning tools into the process,such as systematic discovery, documentation, andapplication of lessons learned; periodic evaluations;
explicit trainings, etc.

Learning & Consultants
Given the appropriate resources,parks already have all the management capacity necessary to implement a strategic plan.
Implementation failure comes froma lack of resources and other exogenous factors (not a lack in their own
capacity).
The locus of knowledge should
be with the consultants.
Learning is not a componentof organizational performance.
Technical assistance of a consultant
need only be short term, because parks
need no help to implement the plan.
The consultant has all the answers
and skills.
If something goes wrong, it is theconsultant’s fault.

Expert knowledge, even if it originates
outside the community, is critical tosuccess.

Learning is not an explicit
objective of the planning or
implementation process.

Parks task consultants withdoing most of the planningwork, thus robbing parks ofopportunities to learn andcreate their own management
capacity.

Parks should hire facilitators experienced in participation and organizational learning.

Outside planning consultants
can reduce stakeholder ownership, leading to lower levelsof implementation.

There is a balance between acquiring skilled facilitatorsand choosing facilitators who have the trust of stakeholders and understand them. Skilled outsiders using
participatory methodologies can make stakeholders
feel ownership of the document, but the more “outside” facilitators are, the more challenging the task
will be.

A side effect of using traditional
planning consultants is thatstakeholders do little, if any, ofthe work. The plan then does not
represent their labor and probably
not their ideas.
Experts making recommendations will
yield better results than stakeholders
making commitments.

Donors should pay for medium-term (four to six years)
technical assistance to help parks learn to use theirstrategic plans.

Outside consultants makerecommendations that are
not implemented.

The terms of reference for the facilitator should limit
facilitation to organizing and running meetings. The
bulk of analysis and writing should be carried out by
stakeholders (under the facilitator’s guidance).

Facilitators need to clarify whether they are facilitatinga study or a plan. If it is a plan, then they need tomake clear that stakeholders are agreeing to binding
commitments, not recommendations.

Parks confuse studies and plans.
Documents with recommendations are studies. True strategicplans do not make recommendations, they record commitments.

36 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

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Table 1: Assumptions, Barriers, and Responses (continued)
Parks Assume…

Planning Barrier

Exemplary Response Strategies

Parks do not adequately involve
stakeholders in the planning
process. As a result, stakeholders impede or actively
sabotage the process.

Facilitators should have experience in participatory
methodologies and stakeholder analysis.

Planning Process
Expert, scientifically derived knowledge
is more important to the planning
process than personal experienceand values. Thus, expert planners are
more important than subjective, quarrelsome, untrained stakeholders.
The plan is ultimately both property
and responsibility of the park management authority, rather than a collective
work of park stakeholders. Park managers must maintain control over theplan in order for it to be properly
implemented.
Parks can and will transform strategies
defined in the plan into operations.
The time between the completionof a strategic plan and the start ofoperational planning does not diminish
motivation, knowledge, or momentum
created by the planning process.

Burby’s 2003 study indicates thatthe more stakeholders are involvedin the planning process, the more
likely a state government plan is
to be implemented. This assumes
true and well-facilitated participation.
Parks are unable to transformstrategies into operational
mechanisms for implementation.
Strategic plans are often createdin a different time and place than
the subsequent operational plans(budgets, implementation plans,
logistics).

Facilitators should explain that having people whoshare values and work together ultimately increases
the chances of implementation and longevity ofsolutions.
Facilitators should forge a shared vision of a plan
as a collective work for which the park authority
is just one stakeholder.

Facilitators should build operational planning into
strategic planning, not leave it separated from strategic planning in time and place. Hence, a strategicplan should budget time and money for a three-year
or five-year term.

Once the vision is clear, implementation comes easily.
Parks will deal with the approval
process when they get to it.

Strategic plans get bogged downin the approval process andthen are never implemented.

Approval processes are immutable.

Facilitators should include, as a pre-planning step,research of the approval process. Parks need to know
exactly how it works and how to develop a plan thatwill move more quickly through the process.

Lane (2003) reports that 80 percent of protected-area directors
interviewed in Honduras stated thatthe plan approval process hinders
their ability to implement plans.
Research is a necessary part ofstrategic planning.
Scientific research yields data of muchhigher quality than does participatory
research based on people’s knowledge.

Research during planning takes
so long that stakeholders lose
interest.

If research is unavoidable, the research component
should be separated from the planning.
Parks should consider using participatory researchwhen possible rather than field research. That is, in aworkshop, have participants name tourist attractions(one day) instead of field inventory (days to weeks).

Strategic plans must contain databases
and inventories even though those
who would use the plan already haveaccess to that information.

reflections.solonline.org

EKF ■ Kohl 37

Table 1: Assumptions, Barriers, and Responses (continued)
Parks Assume…

Planning Barrier

Exemplary Response Strategies

Parks do not adequately define
planning process goals at theoutset, which can lead theplan astray.

Facilitators should help parks tailor the planning process to meet their specific needs. This tailoring thenbecomes formalized in goals for the planning process.

Planning Process (continued)
The standard planning process issufficient to generate a plan focusedon park priority concerns and needs.

This barrier is discussed in
Lachapelle et al. (2003).
All major issues will arise throughan expert-driven process.
No special steps are necessary
to deal with park’s major conflicts.

Inflexible methodologies
increase the chance that thestrategic plan does not reveal
and deal with the park’s major
issues.

Facilitators should have experience in adapting
methodology on the fly to address major issues.
Facilitators should also have skill in bringing conflicts
out into the open where they can be discussed andresolved.

This barrier is discussed in
Lachapelle et al. (2003).
Planning can occur simultaneouslywith whatever other urgent issues
arise.

Parks can lose attention andcommitment as new programs
and problems distract themfrom planning.

Donors should determine a park’s readiness before
beginning to plan. Planning requires complete attention. If other issues are emerging on a park’s radar,
it may be best to postpone planning.

Traditionally, the planning field
regards park readiness as an ability
to concentrate on and invest significant energy in planning. When thepark grapples with other major problems, whether budgetary, management-related, or administrative,
it is not ready to commit to planning.
Nature of Plan
Credibility in one area (e.g., longtime
park planning advocacy) qualifies a
consultant to facilitate a quality strategic planning process.

A plan’s poor technical quality
derails implementation.

Parks should research and choose a methodology
and facilitator that have demonstrated success instrategic planning.

Plans require nothing more thansufficient resources to implement.
Resource deficiencies are root
causes for non-implementation.

Parks do not implement theplan, and they blame insufficient resources.

Parks should plan for everything
they want in the park, regardlessof resource availability.

Resources usually refers to money,time, and personnel.

Facilitators should measure the likely resources
available and take them into account during planning.
If the plan has an operational component (budget,
implementation plan), then the park often has a much
more reasonable projection of what can be achieved
with given resources.

38 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

Donor should include funds for implementation,
not just planning.

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Table 1: Assumptions, Barriers, and Responses (continued)
Parks Assume…

Planning Barrier

Exemplary Response Strategies

The plan is not updated, and,once out of date, no longer
addresses current challenges.
Then it is not implemented.

Facilitators should build in discrete “update
moments” during the implementation plan, more
frequent in the first year or two than later on.

Nature of Plan (continued)
A strategic plan should be updated
only when it is redone or when its
long-term planning horizon (three,five, or 10 years) expires.

Governments often mandate thata plan can be updated only upon
expiration of its formal term.
Strategic plans will solve all major
problems.

Parks have high expectations
for plans. When their expectations are not met, they lose
confidence in the plan. The
result is non-implementation.

Facilitators need to emphasize that plans will growand change as the park learns. Problems will always
crop up, and even solved problems often do not staysolved. Planning goals should be realistic and attainable, not pipe dreams.

The plan is not user friendly,
which discourages staff andstakeholders from participatingin the document’s use, leaving
only very few people who know
and understand its content.

Facilitators need to agree with parks in advanceabout a format that promotes visual communicationand high-quality writing.

Power struggles among stakeholders essentially paralyze andscuttle planning or else water it
down so much that it no longer
can effect change.

One of the best responses to power struggles is tohave a forum where both sides speak their position
and reach a conclusion. This should involve thefacilitator.

Format of Plan
A plan must be large and filled withmethodological, cartographical, technical, and inventorial information, andappendices and charts, to earn
respectability.
Visual communication is less important
for the plan’s implementation.
A polished, published, and bound volume can still be a “living document.”
Political Context
A strategic planning process is not
the place for conflict resolution.

Lachapelle et al. (2003) discuss
the barrier of power in terms of theorganization itself wanting to control
the process.
The park authority is responsiblefor implementing the plan.

When governments change,
existing plans can be tossed.
Sometimes the planners (andtheir bosses) are also tossed.
When personnel leave, so does
institutional memory.

Facilitators should also identify conflicts very earlyon through interviews or any site assessment thatmight accompany the process.

If nothing else can be said about government change,
its timing and consequences are predictable.
Donor and park should not start a planning process
within a couple of years of an expected change ofpark director or key staff.

Lane (2003) reports that 87 percent of interviewed protected-area
directors in Honduras stated thatgovernment changes hinder theirability to implement plans.

reflections.solonline.org

EKF ■ Kohl 39

Table 1: Assumptions, Barriers, and Responses (continued)
Parks Assume…

Planning Barrier

Exemplary Response Strategies

Physical Barriers“It can’t happen to us.”Plans can be physically lost
because of computer crashes,
office fires, theft, or negligence.

Facilitators should back up plans both on
and off site.

“It can’t happen to us.”

Disasters, either political or natural,
can interfere or stop the planningor implementation process. These
could include earthquakes, volcanic
eruptions, rebellions, violence,
employee strikes, severe budget
cuts, or the death of the park
director.

Parks should not begin planning when facing
imminent disaster.

A Question of Assumptions
That there are so many assumptions (and the abovetable is by no means exhaustive) prompts the question “Why so many?” Coincidence as an explanation would be shortsighted. An alternative explanation is that these assumptions rest on still deeper
assumptions in the system – commonly rooted waysof viewing the world. In fact, we can trace the aboveplanning assumptions back hundreds of years.
Consider the lineage of assumptions tying today’splanning to several fundamental assumptions originating 300 to 400 years ago.
In the 17th century, Sir Isaac Newton described
the interaction of objects in a manner that still
underpins modern perceptions of reality. He said
that the interaction of any two objects could be
described through motion. If one knows an object’s
material, velocity, and angle of approach, one canpredict how it will interact with other objects. From
this perspective, the world and its problems are as
stable, linear, and predictable as two billiard balls
caroming into each other. Earlier in the same century,
Rene Descartes had argued that if one breaks any
object or problem down into constituent parts andstudies those parts, one can understand the whole. In
essence, Descartes implied that even highly complex
problems can be understood through reductionism.
Together, these thinkers built a mental model that

40 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

assumes the world to be stable, linear, predictable,
and understandable.
Thus, if problems can be studied and understood,
then solutions are limited only by resources, whether
time, personnel, or money (all reducible to money
anyway) – not by any inherent difficulties in understanding the world or by the need to learn.
And if the only significant limitation is resources,
then planning is basically a bureaucratic requirement
necessary to obtain resources. Meanwhile, timeneeded for planning competes with time needed bydirectors to actually manage and solve problems.
The outcome is that planning and managing havebecome two entirely distinct processes within parkadministrations. Managers tend to delegate planningto lower-level staff and outside consultants, participating only when necessary, and preserving time forreally critical matters in the park.
Into the chasm between thinking (planning) anddoing (managing), plans have fallen, partially or
entirely unimplemented. This emphasis on resources
over learning, doing over thinking, has resulted in awide variety of interrelated barriers. For example,
managers place great importance on the form andformat of the plan necessary for winning approvaland money, rather than its usefulness. They outsource planning and rely on expertise both to savetime and, again, to impress prospective donors. They
do not concern themselves with mechanisms thatreflections.solonline.org

link strategies to tactical implementation; thus, plans
are left behind when managers go to the field. Manyother assumptions and barriers can similarly be tied
to these common roots descending all the way backto the Enlightenment.

An Assumption to Metamorphosethe Planning Process
What alternative paradigm might there be to thisreductionist foundation of planning? Modern systems thinking sees the world not as a group of separate
parts related in linear cause-and-effect chains, but asa complex system with multiple feedbacks anddelays. This world is complex, ever-changing, unpredictable, impossible to fully understand, and messy.
But it follows the “rules” of systems dynamics.
To survive in such a world, organizations must
continually learn to keep up with the changing context and to find high-leverage solutions to dynamic,
complex problems. Seen this way, planning becomesan integral part of changing the world or tacklingproblems that challenge park managers.
In a holistic world, because learning is integral tosolving problems, managers would not separate
planning and managing. They would adopt adaptive
management, an approach originally designed to
Planning
manage complex ecosystems,
whereby practitioners
plan, do, receive feedback, and improve theirapproach in continuous iteration. There would be
noFeedback
need for one-time major planning campaigns
run
Doing
by outsiders that produce polished and published
Figure 3: MentalEffects
Model ofina Traditional
Park Planner
the world
Planning

Feedback

Doing

Efftects in the worldreflections.solonline.org

plans. Park staffs would create true “living documents” that they would update every quarter or so inaccordance with changing conditions, goals, andcontext. As they tried one approach and learned,
they would document their learning in writing andadjust their strategies. The notion of a one-document
plan, immutable in time and space, would yield todispersed learning and documentation, always changing and always guiding management action.

Planning as Integral
to Continuous Learning
Managers, donors, and even consultants can all
work together to change mental models of planning.
Doing so, however, requires a new holistic mental
model that places planning firmly at the center oflearning and capacity building, rather than on the
periphery. In The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge offers
five core disciplines necessary for effective change:
1. Personal mastery includes integrating reason
and intuition, continually seeing more of ourconnectedness to the world, compassion, andcommitment to the whole.
2.	Managing mental models involves identifying,clarifying, and changing one’s mental modeland its component assumptions.
3. Building a shared vision motivates participants
toward a common future.
4. Team learning consists of three essential criteria: the need to think insightfully about complex issues; the need for innovative, coordinatedaction; having roles for team members on otherteams.
5. Systems thinking allows managers to understand reality enough to create strategies toreach their shared visions.
Thus, the most important capacity a park candevelop is learning. Through learning, it can examine and modify its mental models, test hypotheses,and continuously adapt and improve. Once the mind
closes, assumptions grow hard and immobile, and achanging context will pass them by. Unfortunately,

EKF ■ Kohl 41

those park managers who already “know” how tosolve their problems – if only they could command
greater resources – are unlikely to ever read this article.
You can give a park a strategic plan and the managers will shine for a day (when the media show up),or you can help managers learn how to learn, andtheir park will shine for life.
This conclusion refers specifically to park planning; however, it echoes throughout the world ofplanning where plan promoters assume the world tobe stable, linear, predictable, and understandable andwhere system structures reward the creation of plans
as artwork rather than management tools. These
structures – whether in parks or in corporations –won’t change until light shines down on the mental
models that imbue those structures with power. Oncethe assumptions are illuminated and seen for what
they are and what they do, a new age of planning canrise from the stacks of unimplemented plans.

A bo u t the A u tho r
Jon Kohl worked with Rare for nearly seven years developing park manager and inter-pretive guide capacity-building

programs. He left to become an independent consultant and freelance writer, spending time with Fermata, Inc., asustainable tourism planning company in the U.S. and collaborating with Unesco’s World Heritage Center to develop
the systems thinking approach initially explored at Rare. Kohl presented a version of this article at a World Heritage
Center-sponsored seminar in Spain on tourism planning for World Heritage archaeological sites in February 2006.
More information on his work and writings can be found at www.jonkohl.com.

References
Burby, R.J. (2003). Making Plans that Matter: Citizen Involvement and Government Action. APA Journal 69(1), 33–49.
Kohl, J. (2002). Park Planning for Life. Legacy 13(2), 32–42.
Lachapelle, P.R., McCool, S.F., & Patterson, M.E. (2003). Barriers to Effective Natural Resource Planning in a “Messy”
World. Society and Natural Resources 16, 473–490.
Lane, E.A. (2003). Obstacles to Implementing Strategic Plans: A Study of Honduran Protected Areas. Master’s Thesis.
Duke University. USA.
Margoluis, R., & Salafsky, N. (1998). Measures of Success: Designing, Managing, and Monitoring Conservation andDevelopment Projects. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
Schumacher, E.F. (1973). Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. New York: Harper & Row.
Senge, P.M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York: Currency
Doubleday.

42 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

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B ook E xcerpt

Learning for Sustainability

Engaging the Future
Bryan Smith, aseasoned consultant and coauthorof all three Fifth
Discipline Fieldbooks, is a leader
in innovation andlearning organizaBryan Smithtion practices. In

this excerpt from the new SoL resource,
Learning for Sustainability, he lays out
three steps for engaging key decision
makers in strategic conversations about
the future.

Imagine you are the CFO of amajor U.S. electric utility that is
rapidly expanding into a global
company, with important investments in developing countries. You
are attending an executive teammeeting early Monday morning.
During a relatively routine discussion on an agenda item about next
year’s capital budget for the company’s coal-, oil-, and gas-fired generating facilities, this heated skirmish
occurs:Ted (VP, Environmental Healthand Safety): Global oil and gas production is going to peak and begin
to decline within the next five years.
This will cause major disruptions in
supply and rapidly escalating prices
for oil, gas, coal, uranium, and allother conventional fuels. To prepare for this, we need to swing atleast 30 percent of our future capital allocations to renewables beginning next year.

reflections.solonline.org

Joanne (VP, Operations): Breakthroughs in technologies for oil andgas exploration will lead to discovery of huge new reserves. Oil andgas prices will definitely stabilize or
decline and we . . .
Stan (VP, Public Affairs) (interrupting Joanne): But even with
ample supplies of coal, oil, and gas,
we may still get clobbered by carbon taxes in many of our markets.
Public pressure for action on climate change is growing exponentially around the world. And pollution from coal-fired power plants in
China is causing riots and widespread social unrest. As these incidents and harsh government actions
to crush them get wide publicity
globally, it will trigger similar unrest
and challenges elsewhere.
Robert (CEO): I don’t believe
the science on climate change isstrong enough for us to change ourstrategy. This is a temporary issue
that will fade quickly when it dawns
on people that it will cost them theirjobs. I have seen issues like this comeand go many times in my career here.
And I agree with Joanne – there is
no way we are going to run out ofoil and gas in our lifetimes. It is awaste of time to worry about that.
Anthony (VP, Strategy): Robert,
you have every right to your opinions about climate change and oil
and gas reserves, but what are theimplications for the future of ourcompany if you are wrong on bothissues?
As you listen to this conversation in your role as CFO, you con-Peter Senge, Joe Laur, Sara
Schley, Bryan Smith
SoL, 2006

clude that Anthony’s question to
the CEO is the most crucial portionof this exchange. You had the same
gnawing question in the back ofyour mind before Anthony spoke.
But the next question on your mind

is “How can I intervene effectively
here so that our whole team cansurface and address this uneasinessthat many of us feel? I know thatseveral other members of the teamhave voiced similar fears outside
our meetings, but there is no forum
to raise them together.”Rest assured that there are goodanswers to that question, but yourfirst step is to stand in the shoes ofRobert as CEO and understand his
point of view, assumptions, andmental models. Robert instinctively
feels fully justified in forcefully
advocating that he has the bestplan. After all, he has had an exemplary 30-year career with the company, and, during the last 10 years
as CEO, has led one of the mostBook Excerpt ■ Smith 43

successful periods in the 80-year
history of the company – primarily
by maintaining a steady course
when others overreacted. He has
been successful in the past by insisting that the company focus on one
best prediction of the future andignore the noise of other variables
and forces that distract people fromdriving the business forward for
growth.
  Robert’s predictions over time,
including his views today, are consistent with his personal beliefs andmental models, and represent a
continuation of the past 20 years ormore of his experience in key leadership roles in the company, focused
primarily on the U.S. market. His
world view is made up of variables
with which he is familiar and comfortable. He has high confidence in
his ability to control his company’s
future the way he has controlled thecompany up to now. But is that
confidence well founded?
  On the surface, his views areconvincing and seem to represent
the lowest-risk strategy, but a wider
view of emerging global forces suggests Robert’s strategy may carryhigher risk than he realizes. And
that risk emanates from the way heand some of his executive teamthink about the future. Their wayof employing their historic mental
models to provide a feeling of comfort and confidence about the futureis typical. But it may be masking
deeper uncertainties that need to bebrought to the surface, whether
they are uncomfortable to consider
or not.

The Risks of Predictions
Since the shock of the energy crisisin the early 1970s, the risks andopportunity costs of building any
company’s strategies around a single

44 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

preferred picture of the future havebeen quietly but steadily in-creasing. And between 1970 and 1990,
Royal Dutch/Shell moved from thebottom of the pack of global oil
companies (known then as the Seven
Sisters) to near the top.
  This success is often credited to
the resilient strategies provoked by
the multiple future scenarios RoyalDutch/Shell executives created, including some that seemed very unlikely to occur, like the first energy
crisis. But the real key to their success was in how the executive teamsin Shell operating companies aroundthe world actively used these seemingly improbable stories about the
future to challenge their mental
models and drive the creation of
options. For example, many executives from other oil companies knewthat the energy crisis could happen,
but tended to discount that possibility in relation to their preferredprediction – relatively stable oil prices,in keeping with past trends.
  Only Shell’s executives spent asignificant amount of time thinking
through their strategies in light ofthe possibility of such a crisis occurring. Even though it wasn’t certain,
it triggered their creativity; they
pioneered the use of flexible refining processes that could handle any
type of crude oil available, they
developed trading practices thatallowed them to allocate oil supplies where they would be mostneeded, and for many years they
decentralized management control
so that regional managers could
adapt to differing country responses to supply shortfalls and priceinstability. These practices would
probably have served Shell well even
if the oil supply crisis hadn’t takenplace; they turned out to be crucial
forms of leverage when the crisis
did occur.

  Now fast-forward to 2001.
Prior to September 11, few peoplesuspected that successful terrorist
attacks on the United States, using
airplanes to destroy key buildings,
were even possible, let alone likely.
Yet in a scenario called “Fortress
World” (one of a set of three scenarios developed in 1995–96 andpublished in the book Which Worldby Allen Hammond in 1998), shocking events like the terrorist attacks
of September 11 were portrayed asa highly plausible outcome of widening gaps between haves and havenots, and of hordes of desperate,
unemployed young people joining a
rapidly rising number of idealistic
and nihilistic terrorist organizations. Leaders in charge of counterintelligence efforts proposed strategies and tactics to counter thoseorganizations, but they didn’t gain
enough of a voice to be influential.
They might have been far more persuasive if they had been able toactively explore these scenarios andtheir implications with key decision
makers, instead of simply advocating their point of view.
  Like preparation for terrorist
attacks before 2001, sustainability
is rarely incorporated into the heartof most companies’ business strategies. Why does this integration
occur so rarely? Clues can be foundin the executive team conversation
above. Both Ted (VP, Environmental Health & Safety?) and Stan (VP,
Public Affairs) set the course of theconversation by advocating for a
specific sustainability issue (peakoil production), and attempted toconvince the others to place a big
financial bet based on that one prediction, taking immediate action.
   Joanne and Robert had very different predictions about the future,defined sustainability issues as nonstrategic, and used their predictions

reflections.solonline.org

to justify staying on a course similar
to the one that had been successful
over the last 10 years. Neither side
inquired into why the others saw
the future differently. The CEO had
the last say, declaring that further
discussion would be a waste of time.
  The conversation above is acomposite of many such conversations I have observed over time. I
have heard all the specific arguments
made by individuals in this conversation many times. Just like the impasse they reached, the statements
they made are real, not imaginary.

Strong Advocacy Usually
Backfires
Here is the pattern that I see at theheart of most of these discussions.
People who believe strongly in sustainability issues often unleash theirenergy in direct attempts to convince others of their views. They
predict a very negative future ahead
unless there is a significant change
in course. They then forcefully
advocate one or more “big bets”
based on their personal prediction.
These might be large investments in
new technologies, production facilities, materials or processes thatwould leave a smaller environmental footprint, or “green” marketing
campaigns that might lead the market or force a commitment from therest of the enterprise or industry.
Their intent is to provoke immediate and large-scale change.
   But such sustainability champions generally get the opposite
results. The executive team discounts their prediction, resists any
significant change, and often takes
no action at all, not even placing a“small bet” to learn more about theissue together or start a small pilot
venture. Even worse, the advocatesmiss an important opportunity toreflections.solonline.org

enroll the entire leadership team ina conversation about the broader
future of the company. Such a conversation could lead to a fresh start,a chance to engage the whole organization with high collective ownership and commitment.
  Engaging key decision makers
in a more productive conversation
requires a clear strategy for engagement. Having passion about big
issues is not enough. Being “right”
can backfire. I find that the mostconsistent point of energized connection for line business leaders isthe commercial viability and economic sustainability of the firm.
That is where they have a stake. If
you attempt to engage them in amore isolated conversation about
the environment or social responsibility, they will tend to see that as avery narrow, perhaps trivial slice ofthe future – one that is only marginally relevant to the core of the business and its viability. Their pastmental models – that these issues
should be delegated to specialists to“take care of them and keep themout of our hair so we can get on
with business” – reinforce this perception.
   A second key criterion for aneffective engagement strategy: It
must improve the quality and capacity of the team’s thinking about the
future, and the quality of relationships and interactions between theparticipants as they think together.
This is not a one-shot conversation, and any effective step forward
in engagement will lead to others.
Building the team’s capacity to keep
digging deeper is paramount. Onetime “victories” for sustainability
advocates that leave bitterness andpolarization are a classic exampleof winning the battle but losing
the war.

Step One: Seeing past
the big bets – An initialconversation
What can you do to make anengagement successful? People likeyou in your role as CFO (or VP of
IT, R&D, or other roles that are
one step removed from the heat of
the conflict between advocates) canplay a crucial role in helping thesenior team step back from promoting their specific predictions aboutnarrow slices of the future, andengage in a much wider conversation about a full set of futures that
could have a large impact on thecompany. In doing this, you will bemaking an essential contribution to
the team by creating a new forum
within which a truly generativeinquiry can occur about unknowns
in the future, with all members of
the team fully engaged and contributing valuable new insights fromtheir unique vantage points.
   If you are in the role of the VPof strategy, you are in an ideal position to propose that such a dialogue
occur as part of the planning cycle.
You can set aside time for meetings
that focus on the future, includingtime horizons from one to at least
five years out, and can likely get
support for a one-time excursion
farther out into the future – ideally,
15 to 25 years. You can suggest that
this time horizon at least match thereplacement cycle for your capital
assets.
   It is usually not difficult to set
aside some quality time for thinking
about the future if you position thebenefits clearly. If necessary, enlist
support for allocating this agenda
time from members of the team
who are not directly involved inheated advocacy. You can also ask
them to help you ensure that theconversations are broad enough toBook Excerpt ■ Smith 45

be relevant to all members and to
the entire scope of the business, notjust slices of it, like environmentand social responsibility. These issues
will be seen by many members as
narrow stovepipes that should be
handled by the functional VPs responsible for those areas. Fine-tuning animplementation plan involving how
to position public announcements
to appease your strongest critics inthe environmental and social justice
movements, for example, may end
up being the responsibility of the
VP of EHS. Unfortunately, the handoff usually happens at the end of thedecision pipeline, after the importantbusiness decisions have been made.
   I will outline here a relatively
simple first step that involves fourbasic questions for leadership teams,
which can combat the myopia of
their single-forecast approach tothe future. I will later recommend
the use of a broader, more robust
process based on developing a fullset of driving forces and scenarios.
But here is a simple team processthat can definitely help as an initialstep, and can build commitment togoing further with scenario work.
  This approach works best if theteam engages an unbiased, credible
person to run the meeting. This
could be the VP of strategy or a different member of the strategy team,another member of the senior team
who is a good facilitator and will
ensure full participation by everyone, or even a respected board
member from another company.
  The first question is “What are
our assumptions?” and the first goalof the meeting is to unearth all the
assumptions underlying your strategies for the future. Here are someassumptions of the electric utility:
Ample long-term (20-year) supplies
of coal, oil, and gas will continue tobe available at prices similar to

46 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

today’s. Climate change concerns
and associated taxes or penalties
for CO2 production will not materialize over the next 10 to 20 years.
   An airline company’s strategy
might be based on the assumptionthat carbon taxes will not materialize. In addition, company executives might assume that in theunlikely event that such taxes are
implemented, airlines will continue
to fly freely above any national orinternational agreements and be exempt. (It’s worth noting that Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic Airlines seems to be hedging against a
different assumption, and is actively exploring investments in largescale ethanol production from cropand forestry waste.)  Once all assumptions and mental models about the future havebeen posted where everyone in themeeting can see them, the first question has been answered. The second
question is “How do our current
strategies serve us if these assumptions change?” The third question
is “What options could we create
and invest in over time that would
improve the robustness of our overall portfolio of strategies in the eventthat these assumptions change?” I
find that participants naturally
gravitate to these or similar questions, as the prior exploration of assumptions generates a lot of tensionthat they want to resolve throughfurther work together. Once yourteam sees how their current strategies are affected by changes in someof the key assumptions on which
they are based, they will want toexamine how significant those impacts are, and in what areas.
  That exploration, in turn, creates
energy for tackling the final question, “What should we be doing now
so that we are more prepared if
these assumptions change?” Direct

the team’s attention to generating
options (often small bets focused on
becoming more knowledgeable about
particular areas of vulnerability andthe surrounding territory). Emphasize a more open, creative process
here, going for quantity of ideas
first, then narrowing them down toa set of options that each have anowner or sponsor from the seniorteam. These sponsors take ownership for fleshing out the actions
needed to develop each option andmonitor changing external businessconditions relevant to that option.

Step Two: Identifying
driving forces
A valuable second step to take thatwill build on the momentum of theinitial process above is to ask “Whatare the deeper forces that are driving the assumptions we identified?”
From the conversation on surfacing
assumptions, you will have alreadybegun to identify some of these. For
example, in considering the forcesthat might drive international climate change agreements and carbon taxes, you may have identified
three separate forces that need to beunderstood and monitored overtime, both separately and together:   1) scientific opinion and objective current data about global warming, including subtle measures likesmall changes in ocean temperature   2) physical changes in climate,weather, and storms that citizens
can see and experience directly   3) public attitudes toward andperceptions of climate change: Youmay have already noted that the
public has a mixture of concerns
about local air pollution; concerns
about regional accumulation of
toxins like PCBs and mercury in air,water, and soil; and global concerns
about greenhouse gases. (Most citizens don’t know the scientific dis-reflections.solonline.org

tinctions between these factors. Survey research shows that people seethem as a single cluster of effects
that are all bad for the health oftheir children.)   In looking at the assumptions
you might have made about the impact of China on markets and pricing for oil, gas, metals, and othercommodities, you may have identified the driving force of the race for
economic growth in China, the desire of the Chinese to establish their
dominance and make the country
the global center of manufacturing,with all the accompanying implications for wealth creation in China
and global financial dominance(and perhaps political dominanceas well). Those driving forces are
inescapably intertwined with bottomup pressures in Chinese society forsocial change toward democracy.
  Once your team has identified afull list of driving forces, you can
extend the dialogue into exploringeach one more fully and categorizing them with regard to their degreeof impact on your business (lowversus high impact). For example,
breakthroughs in biotechnology that
could extend human life might havehigh impact for a health-care insurer, low impact for a global oil company – but be careful here. Biotech
could also have high impact for an
oil company through the development of generic enzymes that candigest thousands of tons of waste
daily, and create alternative feedstocks or materials for producing
plastics and fuels.
  Once you have sorted the driving forces into two lists – those withlow and high potential impact on
your business – sort each of thoselists again into two subsets: thosefor which the outcome is certain andthose for which outcomes are uncertain. For example, you can predictreflections.solonline.org

the number of native 25-year-olds
living 20 years from now with relative certainty from the number of
5-year-olds today. Predicting net immigration patterns may be more uncertain, driven by global events
beyond your country’s borders.
  For those driving forces that are
relatively certain, you can rely moreheavily on forecasting and build
your plans accordingly. For thosethat are highly uncertain and alsohigh impact, it is dangerous to have
only one set of plans and strategies.
It is most crucial, then, to focus inon those driving forces.
  For example, here are the twomost crucial driving forces identified by a team from an energy company (I will call it Futures Energy toprotect the innocent) with strategicinterests in building a broad portfolio of investments in power generation and transportation fuels, and afuture strategy to extend into specialty chemicals. The two potential
extremes for each of these forces
are shown at left and right. (SeeFigure 1.)  Note that the mandate for thisteam’s work was clearly focused on
the long-term growth and viabilityof the business over the next 35
years. It was not focused in any way
on the environmental and social di-mensions of their strategy. Yet thesocietal issues of cultural inclusiveness and the urgency of environmental challenges surfaced in thecourse of the discussion as having
the highest impact and most uncertain driving forces. If you are abeliever in the importance of sustainability considerations, you canhave faith that people will find theirown connections between their current world and sustainability, if you
give them a clear, unbiased process
for exploring the future.
   A team from a different company in the chemical industry (let’scall it Scenario Chemicals) chosethe following two driving forces as
the most uncertain and highest
impact for their business over the
next 25 years. Again, the two
extremes are displayed for each of
the driving forces. (See Figure 2.)   Again, future impacts of sustainability considerations (e.g., socialand environmental driving forces)
came up naturally as crucial factors
affecting the core business, andwere validated by all participants inan open, consensus-based process.
   Both teams derived substantial
new insights by considering theimpacts that these top two driving
forces could have on their business.
Futures Energy immediately began

Figure 1
Cultural Values and Response Patterns
Exclusive cultural values
Win/Lose
Protectionist
LinearHave and have-nots

Inclusive cultural values
Win/WinHolistic
Systemic
Global mindsets

Cultural Values and Response Patterns
Changes in the environment
are of low urgency

Changes in the environment
require urgent responseBook Excerpt ■ Smith 47

Figure 2
Pace of Technological Change
Very slow technologicalchangeVery rapid technologicalchangeThe degree to which environmental, social and other“limits” are reflected in taxes and pricing
Low degree

High degree

Spooked by the post-Katrina gas
price spike, the U.S. Congress has suddenly
found the religion of conservation.
A broad and powerful coalition of lawmakers – from environmentalists tofundamentalist Christians – introduced sweeping legislation yesterday that aims
to cut U.S. oil consumption in half by 2031 and would require that half of allcars sold be fuel-miserly hybrids within a decade.
“There was a mental sea-change that we saw in America when gasoline hit$3 (U.S.) a gallon,” explained Republican Senator Sam Brownback, one of
the bill’s co-sponsors.
Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman warned that the United States risks
becoming a “pitiful giant” unless it curbs its dependence on foreign oil, which
accounts for two-thirds of the roughly 20 million gallons a day the country
consumes.
“We will become like Gulliver in Lilliput, pegged down and subject to the whimsof those smaller nations because we are giving them, by our own consumption
patterns, the ropes and helping them tie the knots that keep us down.”
The legislation includes tax breaks of up to 35 per cent to get fleet operators
to buy hybrid gas-and-electric or alternative fuel vehicles. It would also provide
loan guarantees to get auto makers to move from producing gas guzzlers
to making lightweight and fuel-efficient autos, as well as new incentives forbio-fuels, such as ethanol and cellulose biomass. . . .

to monitor these forces for earlysignals on their direction. For example, within six months of company
executives’ initial work, they began
to see signs of systemic thinking
appearing in unusual coalitions on
U.S. energy policy, at the federal,
regional, state, and local levels.
Here are a few paragraphs from abellwether article that surfaced in

48 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1

their scanning of news media fromThe Globe and Mail newspaper on
November, 17, 2005. (See box,
above.)  The Futures Energy team alsobegan to sketch systems diagrams
to reflect this emerging systemic
perspective. One example, using theshifting the burden archetype as the
template, follows. (See Figure 3.)  This archetypal pattern represents the tendency of any system toseek balance. It includes a lower
loop that represents a fundamental
long-term solution – in this case, toincrease investments in energy efficiency and new technologies, which,as they mature, reduce demand forenergy; create alternative domesticenergy sources (such as ethanol,
wind, and solar); and achieve balance by reducing dependency on
imports of foreign oil. As with allother investments of this kind, thesewill take time to come to fruition.
  The upper loop represents a
shorter-term solution, and one thatappears easier to implement, atleast at the outset. The intent here is
to use military measures to secure
Middle East sources of oil, so that
U.S. imports can rise to balance
growing demand. Strategies that
attempt to achieve balance throughthis upper loop often have an addictive effect; as growing energy needs
are met in this way, the U.S. becomes
more and more dependent on oilfrom the Middle East. It is this pattern that Senator Lieberman aptly
described above. Often, nasty side
effects accompany this addictive
pattern and make matters worse.
Here a vicious circle comes intoplay – a portion of the cash flowsthat are directed to the Middle Eastin payment for oil are channeled toterrorist organizations. In defense,
the U.S. has to redirect funds tohomeland security measures that
could instead have been used tosupport R&D and new technologies. Side effects like these weaken
the ability of the system to pursue
fundamental long-term solutions,and increase dependence on shortterm fixes.
  Monitoring trends and patterns
like these can allow you to adjust
your strategies much earlier thanreflections.solonline.org

your competitors, as you will be
attuned to the possibilities of theiremerging, and will be proactively
looking for them. In addition tomonitoring, the next stage to derivevalue from your work on highimpact driving forces is to use themto “stress test” or “wind tunnel test”
your strategies in each of the extremes you have identified. How doyour strategies allow you to compete if you imagine you are doing
business at the extremes of thesevariables? If you find you do poorly
or are out of business in any of
those situations, then create options
that allow the company to survive
and thrive no matter which way thedriving forces play out.

fied and explored, a valuable third
step is to create scenarios that portray a set of imaginative but plausible stories about the varied ways
in which the world might turn out
tomorrow. This step allows yourteam to combine the implications ofseveral driving forces into distinct
stories. You are then free to imagine
how multiple forces might interact
systemically within one possible
future, in line with how the realworld actually works. We don’t
have the luxury in the real world of
looking at one variable alone (liketechnological change) while holding all other variables constant! In
creating scenarios, as in real life, itis the surprising systemic interdependencies between events andforces that make life interesting –and highly unpredictable.
	For example, at Futures Energy,
the team first explored the two scenarios that emerged when changes

Step Three:
Creating scenarios
Once the most crucial and uncertain driving forces have been identiFigure 3“Security” of Middle East
security of oil
U.S. import offoreign oil
U.S. Military expendituresin Middle East

B

Cash flow to Middle
East terrorists
R

Energy andhomeland security

B

Dependency on
foreign oil

reflections.solonline.org

Expenses for homeland
protection, e.g., CIA

Investments inenergy efficiency

in the environment required urgent
responses.
In their view, virtually none of
their current strategies were viablein these worlds. When cultural values were holistic and systemic, theteam envisioned a world in which“we survive the storm together –barely.” Given the scale, scope, andurgency of responses needed, they
saw that it took all hands on deckon spaceship Earth, working systemically, to get through the crisis.
At the other end of the scale, when
they imagined that prevailing cultural response patterns were win/lose and protectionist, they saw aworld of scarcity, conflict, and“subsistence of the fittest.” Basic
survival became the goal of citizens.
Quality of life in the developed
world dropped well below current
standards. The team also portrayed
the impacts of a flu pandemic (labeled “quarantine world”) that pushed
fear and protectionism to an extreme and created a major economic
depression due to health-related barriers to trade and travel.
  Using these scenarios as provocation, the Futures Energy teamrecognized that they needed to generate and invest in a much wider
range of options than they had been
considering until then, including abroad swath of renewable energy
technologies and applications. Initially many of these options required
the placement of small bets relative
to the company’s size. These ranged
from $10,000 to $100,000 andwere primarily focused on accelerating their scanning, learning, andtesting of a portfolio of options.
Today, as the company learns more,
it is ramping up its investments – insome cases to much bigger bets,
particularly where early indications
are that some of the modeled scenarios are actually materializing.

Book Excerpt ■ Smith 49

  Scenario Chemicals, similar to
Futures Energy, focused initially ona future in which social, environmental, and other limits would drive
high taxes and high materials prices
at every step of their value chain.
When this was coupled with rapid
technological change, they saw themselves in a very leaky, flimsy boat ina “continuous whitewater world.”
They concluded that they had very
weak capabilities to respond to thisworld. They saw that they would betaken out by innovative new competitors with a much cheaper replacement product that had thesame or better functionality and aradically reduced environmental
footprint.
   Conversely, with the pace oftechnology change being slow, they
could foresee a world they called“the big squeeze” where they would
be driven into a loss position withno technological innovations toallow them to break free.
  The team aligned quickly on theneed to create and actively invest in
three separate innovation options
that would allow them to prosper
in these scenarios. They moved forward immediately on these three
options:   1. Ramping up staffing andbudgets in R&D, focusing on creating new innovative products before
nimble competitors, and agreeing
to propose acquiring one of thosesmall competitors if they deemedthat it was the most cost-effective
way to make progress.
   2. Charging a high-profile teamwith creating a breakthrough intheir manufacturing process thatwould cut capital and energy costsin half, and cut their footprint by
more than half for any new plants
to be built anywhere in the world.

50 Reflections ■ Volume 7, Number 1   3. Focusing a team on improving the capacity and productivity of
their existing plants.
  The first two teams are developing plans that will likely require asignificant step up in the scope ofthe option they are working on –that is, they are developing proposals to move from a smaller bet to amuch bigger bet as they further
define the Stage Two investments
needed and the size of the prize.
They have maintained excellent top
management interest and sponsorship for their efforts.

A Few Final Tips
As your team begins work on anyof the steps outlined above, be sure
to forewarn them that emotional
tensions may run high as they explore the future, and prepare forthis. Emotional reactions (like fear,
anxiety, denial, and anger) are virtually unavoidable when you are
exploring plausible stories about
the future that include negative
events. Your goal in the process isto step into those futures as if you
are living there. If you do thiswholeheartedly, you will almost certainly find yourself thinking about
how you and your loved ones will
fare in those worlds. The short answer
in some futures will be “not well.”   I notice that many leaders who
participate in scenario planning end
up developing their own familystrategies and options for coping indifficult worlds. These might include
becoming more involved in theirlocal community to help make it
more resilient, changing their personal investment strategies, or buying a remote cabin on a lake with a
100-acre woodlot and a woodburning stove. So when emotional
tensions run high, find a way tomake them discussable so they canbe honestly acknowledged as legitimate. Use those feelings to build
candor, empathy, and spirit withinyour team, and then set them aside
to once more focus on the work at
hand. If you don’t plan for this,
your team will run out of energy,
and you may not know why it has
happened.
   Certainly the steps I have suggested here require commitment,
rigor, and the willingness to challenge assumptions and mental models, but they are worth the effort.
For in the process of engaging thefuture together, leadership teams
can develop a much more confident, proactive stance toward theircollective future, and forge a deep
commitment to address all aspectsof the sustainability of the company– economic, environmental, andsocial.
   Paradoxically, by exploring
what might happen in the worldthat is beyond their control, teams
will develop much more confidence
about what they can control –theirvision and the process of creating
viable options and actions to realizethat vision. And the original advocates for sustainability will land abigger prize – the entire top teamengaged in a rich set of stories
about the future, naturally including the sustainability issues theymight have advocated for in isolation. These issues will now beembedded in a much more inclusive
picture, and fully integrated into
the company’s portfolio of strategies and options for the future.

reflections.solonline.org

Resources

A bo u t the A u tho rPeter Senge, Art Kleiner, Charlotte

Bryan Smith is an internationallycontributor to the development of theRoberts, Rick Ross, Bryan Smith, The

recognized author, speaker andfield and the creation of innovative

Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, New York:consultant to business, education

tools and strategies for building

Currency/Doubleday, 1994, pp 275-

and government on leadership andinspired learning organizations. Bryan

278

innovation within the context ofreceived his M.B.A. and Ph.D. inglobal sustainability. Prior to founding

Organizational Behavior from theBroad Reach Innovations, Bryan was

University of Toronto and lives ina senior partner for eighteen years atToronto, Canada with his family.

Peter Schwartz, The Art of the
LongView, New York: Currency/
Doubleday, 1991

Innovation Associates, a firm that
pioneered the field of Organizational
Learning. He has been a centralreflections.solonline.org

bsmith@broadreachinnovations.com

Book Excerpt ■ Smith 51

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change
Volume 7, Number 1

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Reflections: The SoL Journal
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