Thinking about uncertainty

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we do not know we don’t know. (Donald Rumsfeld)

Yesterday I had the pleasure to chair the &Co CEO symposium http://www.andco.uk.com/.  We had two great keynotes: Mark Robinson on adaptive resilience http://www.thinkingpractice.co.uk/ and Graham Leicester on work IFF has done on economies of money and meaning with Watershed http://www.internationalfuturesforum.com/home.php - both publications are well worth a read.

What struck me most strongly during the subsequent discussions was how difficult it is for organisations to plan in times of such uncertainty, times when the past is no longer a good guide to the future.  One good tool for getting our collective heads around uncertainty is scenario planning; this does NOT mean modelling different levels of cuts (that is more akin to sensitivity analysis) but rather imagining a number of future worlds, and then planning your response to that alternative world.  The technique I like best is the one which plots two spectra against each other in a matrix - producing 4 possible future worlds.  See http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/tools/scenario-planning and thanks to Dawn Langley (Alchemy Research & Consultancy) for sharing, as always.

The 2 spectra I would choose are both focussed on the external world and beyond the control of individual organisations (hence the uncertainty):

• impact of public sector cuts on the economy and audiences - recession => recovery
• response of the arts sector as a whole - internecine warfare and every organisation for itself => new era of collaboration and joint working

The matrix above is my picture of the results 4 worlds.

I would not include the cuts themselves, they are here and more are coming, all that is uncertain is quantum (substantial by any standards); what is uncertain is how they change the landscape we all live in.

Hope this is helpful and thanks for reading

Susan

Hard questions

I am a fan of New Philanthropy Capital - a think tank which is ' dedicated to helping funders and charities achieve a greater impact' - see http://www.philanthropycapital.org/

They have recently produced a report called Proving your worth to Whitehall which highlights the key questions which the Treasury is currently asking of other government departments.  They make pretty sobering reading.

Is the activity essential to meet government priorities?

Does the government need to fund it?

Does it provide substantial economic value?

Can it be targeted at those most in need?

How can it be provided more cheaply?

How can it be provided more effectively?

Can the activity come from a non-state provider or by citizens, wholly or in partnership?

Can non-state providers be paid to carry it out according to the results they achieve?

Can local bodies, as opposed to central government, provide it?

NPC sought to answer these questions on behalf of a children's charity.  I wonder what responses we could offer.

Thanks for reading

Susan

Too big to fail?

During the banking crisis and its aftermath we have heard and read a great deal about those banks which are 'too big to fail' and about the resulting 'moral hazard'.  These debates and this interesting blog in the States http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/03/deliberately-unsustainable-business.html set me thinking about the impact of the cultural sector's great reluctance to allow 'failing organisations' to actually fail, leaving space (and funding) for the next big thing.  We embrace artistic risk taking (and the right to fail artistically) as essential but do not apply the same thinking to the 'business' that makes the 'art'. possible

A friend of mine was a senior venture capitalist (he has now retired to Italy the lucky devil!) and he made his company and himself a modest fortune investing in start ups and small companies with big ideas.  He reckoned that for every 5 investments he made, 1 or 2 would be stars, 1 or 2 would fail and he would lose everything he had invested and 2 would do moderately well.  I cannot imagine these kind of success rates being seen as acceptable within a public funding environment.

Do we really want organisations to thrive or are we really happier to have more just survive?  Are we willing to see more organisations fail as the price of more organisations being really successful?

I wonder.....

Thanks for reading

Susan

PS Thanks to Michael Noonan for the sending me the blogpost and for lots of other good ideas!

Welcome back!

It has been sometime since I sat at my computer to pen (type?) a new post - holidays and some unwelcome ill health have lead to more 'slippage' than I would have liked and for those of you eager for news of the report and the workshops, I am truly sorry for the delay.

I am completing the report at the moment and will let you have an update on timings as soon as possible.

Eight Business Models Prototypes for publishing a book from Business Model Generation http://yongfook.com/business-model-generation

In the meantime, I would like to commend 2 books to you, one has been around for a while and the other is brand new.  Re-imagine by Tom Peters (http://www.tompeters.com/reimagine/conversation.php) came out in 2003 and is sub-titled 'Business excellence in a disruptive age'.  Peters is a first division management guru, ex Harvard, ex McKinsey and the author of the work which re-wrote the corporate playbook in the early 1980s. This pedigree is not, however, why I am recommending the book - I am recommending it because (a) the guy knows his onions and (b) it is a truly innovative, visually exciting and inspiring book which will question your thinking, stimulate new ideas and be a fun read too.

The second is a new publication called Business Model Generation by Osterwalder and Pigneur - http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/.  It is fabulous, does not assume you have an MBA (or even like numbers) and offers the best framework for describing a business model I know.

Thanks for reading

Susan