Discovery-led decision-making webinar Thursday 11 October 2018 Speaker: Dr Ben Shenoy The link to the write up page and resources of this webinar: https://www.apm.org.uk/news/discovery-led-decision-making-webinar/

1. Discovery-Led Decision-Making
Ben Shenoy
11th October 2018

2. How do we make decisions under
conditions of uncertainty?


3. If you are in the car industry…
what do you need to be thinking about?


4. If you are in the car industry…
what do you need to be thinking about?

5. If you are in the infrastructure sector…
what do you need to be thinking about?


6. If you are in the infrastructure sector…
what do you need to be thinking about?

7. Who would be interested in this app?

8. Who would be interested in this app?

9. When do we make the biggest decisions
during any initiative?


10. Classic managerial decision-making
& the planning dilemma
We take the most important decisions
when we know the least

12. How should we act when we know how to do something?
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS


13. ‘Business
as Usual’
How should we act when we know how to do something?
How do we do more
of what works?
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS

14. How should we act when we know how to do something?
How do we do more
of what works?
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
SCALE

19. How should we act when we don’t know much?
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
SCALE


20. How should we act when we don’t know much?
EXPERI-
MENT
How do we learn
what we need to know?
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
SCALE

21. What do these firms have in common?
Levi Strauss AT&T Kirin
Kodak Marks & Spencer Boeing
SSIH/Asaug Bausch & Lomb Philips
GM Ciba-Geigy U.S. Steel
DEC Nike Polaroid
Siebel Nokia IBM
Xerox PanAm Ogilvy & Mather


22. The Tyranny of Success
EXPERI-
MENT
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
SCALE

23. Who has come across the term VUCA?
VUCA


24. VUCA: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex & Ambiguous
VUCA
EMERGING
TECHNOLOGIES
PEOPLE &
PLANET
OPEN VS.
CLOSED
Not just digital technology:
• Physical sciences (e.g. materials)
• Medical sciences (e.g. treatment
vs. prevention)
• Social sciences
Socioeconomic
boundaries:
• Globalization & its
consequences (e.g.
migration)
• Contest between
nation-states and:
• multinational
corporations
• cross-national
organizations
(e.g. EU, NATO)
• At a microeconomic
level, blurring of
enterprise
boundaries (e.g.
open innovation,
open intellectual
property, hybrid
organizations)
• Energy (e.g. Peak Oil)
• Demography (e.g.
consequences of China’s One
Child Policy)
• Climate change

25. How should we act in a VUCA environment?
EXPERI-
MENT
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
SCALE


26. How should we act in a VUCA environment?
FRAME
What’s
the right
problem
to solve?
SCALE
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
EXPERI-
MENT

27. Knowing & Not Knowing
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
Mark Twain

28. Barbie and Bratz

29. Potato crisps

30. Knowing & Not Knowing: reprise
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen,
and thinking what nobody has thought.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

31. Discovery-Led Decision-Making
FRAME
SCALE
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
KNOWNS
UNKNOWNS &
ASSUMPTIONS
EXPERI-
MENT VARIATIONADAPTATION
SELECTION