Illawarra TAFE

Leadership Development Program

Workshop One

September 2008

Strategic Thinking……

• In your groups…..– How would you define strategic thinking?– Why is it a critical leadership capability?

Activity….

• List all of the business opportunities for Illawarra TAFE that you think could be explored and exploited in the next 3 years

A little about Cognitive Edge• Origins in IBM and Knowledge

Management• Became independent 2003; based in

Singapore• Focus on developing tools and methods to

‘make sense’ of complex issues • Sensemaking/decision support not

categorisation/decision making

The Cynefin Model• Developed by Dave Snowden

• Based on relationship between cause and effect

• Understanding the nature of the system we wish to influence determines the nature of appropriate decisions & interventions

The Cynefin Framework

Simple OrderObvious direct relationship between

cause and effect

Standardised rules, policies, regulations,

procedures, legislation

Sense -Categorise-Respond

BEST PRACTICE

Complicated Order –

Relationship between cause and effect can

be uncovered

Groups of experts research, analyse and

agree on the best way

Sense-Analyse-Respond

GOOD PRACTICE

Complex unorderMultiple possibilities and options

‘Safe fail’ probes and experiments

Context dependent

Emergent ‘solutions’

Probe-Sense-Respond

EMERGENT PRACTICE

Chaotic UnorderIssues that are sufficiently critical that

there is no time for research, consultation

or experiments.

Someone must take charge and ACT

Act-Sense-Respond

NOVEL PRACTICE

Disorder: cannot agree

Intervening in complex Issues• Leaders…

– Manage the boundaries– Change the ‘starting’ conditions– Monitor for changes– Move quickly to

• Modify, shut down, embed as good practice

Tackling a complex issue…• Agree on a complex leadership issue that you wish

to be difference• Write a statement indicating what will be different • List all of the tangible things (modulators) that make

the current situation the way it is– May be a positive, negative or neutral influence– Must be things that someone can DO something about

( eg rules, systems not ‘attitude’ )

Step Two….Developing Probes

• Choose those elements that you are going to change – develop multiple experiments/ probes– To be assessed within 3 months– It is‘safe to fail’– That will be monitored– DO NOT EVALUATE BEFORE IMPLEMENTATION

!!!!!

Step Three – Implementation• Risk management approach – how controlled should the

experiment be, or how much diversity ( there is a trade off between resilience and control the less control the greater the opportunity for new insights and novel approaches to emerge )

• What is the worst headline you can imagine on the front page of the newspaper? How can you mitigate this possibility?

Step Four -Final planning….

• How will you monitor what happens – and what will be the basis of evaluation

• If it had to be closed down, what would be the ‘exit strategy’?• If it works well, how would you migrate it from an experiment to

being embedded in ‘the way we do things around here’?• What marketing/communication strategy will you use ?• What elements in the environment do you need to take into

account?

Ritual Dissent• Process for developing robust proposals

• Same ritual is applied to everyone

• Focus is on listening… privilege of hearing criticisms and negative responses in safe environment.. Testing ideas

Process….• Each team nominates a spokeperson• Presentation to another group – 3 minutes,

others listen in silence• At the end of 3 minutes, the spokeperson turns

his back to the group and listens to the critcism• At the end of 5 minutes, back to original group

and refine proposals based on feedback• Process can be repeated to a number of groups

Reference Material• Cognitive Edge… www.cognitive-edge.com• Chris Fletcher

– chris@emergingoptions.com.au– 0402 308 403

• Viv Read– viv@emergingoptions.com.au– 0414 294 339