The Choice Trilogy

Like the QWERTY keyboard which refuses to go away, SWOT analysis as a way of analyzing your readiness for engaging with the future, has also become very persistent and pervasive.

For some of us who work in the world of personal and organizational change, we know that a focus on the negative merely reinforces past patterns of activity, and so we try to analyze situations in a more positive or dynamic way that generates forward movement, generates enthusiasm and taps into passions.

In the world of Appreciative Inquiry,  SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) has been recast with a positive spin with SOAR - stories of success, opportunities available to us, aspirations for the future and resources available and needed to attain our aspirations.

In our world of the complex adaptive systems, we have developed the Choice Trilogy, to take into account the fact that every so often, our socio-technological system undergoes huge upheavals, and some aspects of our lives need to be shed before we can move forward. At these turning points, which we as major societal shifts, such as the current transition from the Knowledge Economy to the Wisdom Economy, we reinvent not only our products and services, but the way we make them, the skills we need, and our more complex roles.

The Choice Trilogy has a dynamic forward motion, that includes a step of reinvention. It helps us think about what's working well that we want to KEEP as a firm foundation, what's getting in the way we need to ABANDON, and what we could do differently that we should REINVENT.

We use the question as part of a series of questions. We begin by developing a shared model of the major changes that are taking places in the world, and within this context, explore what we have to now do to be successful. 

So why not give the process a try::

1. Trends: Describe the major trends that are impacting on your world. Social, economic, political, environmental, cultural etc.

2. Choice Trilogy: Thinking about your most recent projects or programs, what aspects of the project worked well that you want to KEEP? What do you want to ABANDON that was a barrier to your success? What do you feel drawn to REINVENT that shows potential? Respond like this KEEP: (25 word descriptions of what worked well).

3. Project: Describe a project you would like to start to day that will make a big difference to the future. Respond like this. Name of project (5 word title), 25-word description, and the results we want to achieve: (time, savings, and deliverables  Say why it will be a success?

Everything is a major project

Once upon a time, we thought of major projects as space exploration, new warships, armored vehicles or fighter planes, and infrastructure investments in roads, electricity and telecommunications.

Now we must add to that list just about everything we do. Any project or program that involves multiple suppliers and distributors of products and services that work like an integrated web has become a complex major project. Think of how we get the thousands of fresh foodstuffs that are available to us into stores, set up the systems to sell books, hotel and airline seats over the internet, treat the huge variety of diseases we can now diagnose and deal with, provide a seamless integrated public transport ticketing system for a large city or launch a new product or service everywhere around the world.

Many major projects fail to live up to expectations, and they do so for a variety of reasons: underestimating the cost in order to win support, requirements creep or the use of unproven technology or technological change during the course of the project. A tremendous amount of effort goes  into dealing with technical risk, specifying the requirements and tightly defining contract terms, as if these entirely logical measures will solve all the problems.

But now, projects  increasingly fail due to human factors: the absence of leadership, stakeholder battles, cross-disciplines communication gaps, abrupt changes in the political environment and seemingly unpredictable social shifts in parallel with technological shifts, which we do not see coming.

We live in a world of rich professional and cultural diversity, all of which is required to maintain the infrastructures on which we have come to rely. Also required is consistent, ever-developing creativity, so we can continue to invent better ways of doing things. The educators, the technicians, the builders, the designers, the financiers, the shippers, the carers, the repairers, and the nurturers are all necessary to get it done.

Until now, we have focused, and placed high value, on technological skills at the expense of the so-called soft skills, many of which are critical to successful management of major projects in today’s complex and rapidly changing world.  Most project managers have the traditional technical skills; but only one in 20 has the high level leadership, facilitation and knowledge integration skills needed to navigate the rapidly evolving terrain.

To develop and run these systems we need people who have both the technical competence for efficiency and certainty at both the micro and the macro level AND the flexible leadership and communication skills to work well with many people in multiple locations as if each were a close personal relationship.

Project managers must support their people in playing to their strengths, being creative and delivering high level results while facilitating the integration of  different opinions, cultures, capabilities and viewpoints so that the new systems or programs are developed and operate in ways that serve everyone's interests.

So here is a workshop you might like to consider :

1. Thinking about the activities of your organization, what activities could you consider to be a major complex project e.g. IT system roll-out?
2. What are some of the major issues you encounter in trying to design, develop, commission and operate complex projects or programs?
3. How does your organization go about resolving differences or integrating the interests of the suppliers and professionals who develop or maintain the systems and the stakeholders who have an interest in a project or program?
4. What skills are now needed to be able to successfully develop a complex project or program, especially to deal with stakeholder interests integration, conflict resolution and relationship management.

The bigBang of Social Innovation

What does it take to be a leader or entrepreneur in the social innovation field? To find  the secret to such success, 200+ people came together at the bigBang! event in Cleveland, Ohio on October 28.

The event was hosted by Cleveland Social Venture Partners, and headlined by leadership and systems thinking guru, Peter Senge, with support from Mobile Innovation Lab, a Cleveland-based Design Thinking consultancy.

The event was live-streamed over the Internet into schools and businesses by the Uncomn.tv network.

You can see the founders of Mobile Innovation Lab Ken Chapin and Abby Straus (also a partner in M&B) facilitate the 90 minute brainstorming session that led into Peter Senge's world cafe activity. Click here to watch the video.

You can also download a copy of what everyone had to say. Click here.

For those who are interested in undertaking a similar activity, here's a workshop you might like to try with your own social entrepreneurship community:

1. What are the big societal and technological changes/trends that we’re responding to in Social Innovation?

2. What’s working really well in the world of Social Innovation? What do we want to KEEP? ABANDON? RE-INVENT?

3. What leadership qualities are essential for success in Social Innovation? Think about great leaders you admire and your own strengths and successes as a leader?

4. You have been asked to design a leadership development program. Thinking about the qualities/skills required (from question 3), what are some activities that might help develop/practice those skills.

5. Describe a social innovation project you might like to lead today. 5 word title, 25 word description and how will it benefit society/the world?