Strategic Thinking and the New Science: Planning in the Midst of Chaos Complexity and Change
A decade ago, James Gleick helped popularize the concept of chaos theory withChaos: The Making of a New Science(1987). Prior to that, the concept had largely been the province of mathematicians, but Gleick showed broader applications for the idea that systems behave in orderly ways in spite of seemingly random--and chaotic--individual events. And, indeed, investors, meteorologists, economists, astronomers, and biologists have all incorporated chaos theory into the models they construct. Others have even seen applications for management theory, and Margaret Wheatley'sLeadership and the New Science(1992) explored organizational behavior from the point of view of chaos. Now Sanders, a consultant who has worked with corporations, not-for-profit organizations, and even congressional committees, has developed a new model of strategic thinking, based on chaos and complexity, that breaks down the process into two components: insight about the present and foresight about the future. Both of these require "visual thinking," and she has developed a tool called "FutureScape" that facilitates such thinking. Here she explains her model and demonstrates the application of her method.David Rouse