This the second in our Q&A series and focuses more on planning, particularly for small organisations or where teams are smaller than they have been and are no longer co-located. As with yesterday we both offer our different insights.
Dawn
I want to start by being clear there is a big difference between imagining alternative scenarios and predicting the future. Here are few examples of how wrong we can get it:
The telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. 1876, Western Union internal memo
We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out. , 1962, Decca Recording Co rejecting the Beatles
Remote shopping, while entirely feasible, will flop – because [people] like to get out of the house, like to handle merchandise, like to be able to change their minds. TIME, 1966, writing off e-commerce long before anyone had ever heard of it.
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in [their] home. 1977, Ken Olsen, Digital Equipment Corporation
What I take from this is that it gives some comfort that we are not aiming to get it absolutely right, which would require us to have to have considered every possible alternative, it is about possibilities more than absolutes. The challenge with this is that it does feel like the options may be never ending and many of us don’t have our usual teams around us to bounce ideas off. There are a number of factors that can help you narrow things down:
- You have a set of finite resources – time, energy, money, people
- You have a set of organisational values that will guide your choices
- You know your organisational culture and what is likely to be a good fit
- You can approach the task with both rational/deliberative reasoning and intuition/creativity. Play to your strengths
The way to try and make this work is to think in terms of opportunities and not deficits, you will feel hampered if your reference point is ‘what I don’t have available.’ At the moment most of us are having to work with what we’ve got and make the best of it that we can – it doesn’t have to be perfect. I am an organisation of one and have to be able to navigate the environment as much as a large corporation, it is possible, but you have to be realistic. There are various tools that can be helpful dependent on what it is you are trying to address as a small organisation or with a reduced team:
- Is it diversity of perspectives?
- Having too many options?
- Worrying about making the wrong decision?
- Not being able to work collectively?
If it is diversity of thought you’re missing think about who else you might involve, it could be your governing body, volunteers, loyal customers, stakeholders or peers. It may take a little more time, but you can use online survey tools to help speed up responses. Or, you can use a tool like De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats that will force you to consider the options from different standpoints. It is something you can do on your own or with a small team.
If it is feeling you don’t have enough time or people to consider all the external factors let someone else do the work, look at what others think the drivers might be:
- Trendwatching: 10 trends for a post coronavirus world
- EY: four consumer behaviour trends emerge during the covid-19 pandemic
- nfpsynergy.net: charity sector changes 20 years
- NCVO: The Road Ahead
If it is feeling there are too many options and not knowing how to narrow down the options, I commonly use paired comparisonsand rated scales. This means I have to determine what the criteria are I’m making the decisions against. Paired comparison gives me a fast way of narrowing down the possibilities. It is also worth bearing in mind that while it may initially feel more overwhelming, research suggests we make better decisions if we consider numerous options at once rather than one at a time (Basu, S., & Savani, K., 2017). When we look at things one at a time, or sequentially, the chances are none of the options will have all the benefits we’re looking for, so we end up feeling we’ve made the best of a worst bunch. If we look at the options all together, we generally apply more in-depth appraisals.
Hopefully, some of the above give you things to work with either on your own or with a reduced team. In supporting furloughed staff, you can organise a shared online platform or a newsletter to keep them updated with developments. They won’t be able to contribute in the usual way, but it is a way of keeping them informed. People will be on furlough for different reasons, it may be voluntary or enforced, so they will be dealing with their own situation in different ways. You are not making the connection mandatory, but they can view content voluntarily if they choose. This may also help with reintegration as furlough comes to an end. Most people understand that everyone is doing the best they can at the moment and that the circumstances are challenging.
Susan
One aspect of this question which really struck me during our webinars was the question of ‘how much is enough’. I would start to answer the query by thinking about why scenario planning and options generation/analysis is worth doing. I would suggest that there are three reasons.
- The most obvious reason – to help map a viable and hopefully attractive future
- Helping to develop our ability to imagine alternative futures and our responses to them because one thing is certain in our Covid-19 world – none of our plans are going to turn out as we anticipated and we need to get good at adapting fast.
- Providing mechanisms to engage meaningfully with those whose support we need as fellow deliverers (staff, volunteers and partners) decision makers (trustees/board members) and funders because we need them to contribute and buy into our thinking as well as respond constructively when things go wrong, and they will.
So my first answer to the ‘how much’ question is ‘how much work do you need to do to meet these needs to an acceptable level?’.
My second answer is
‘Don’t fall in love with your first idea’ ‘
Learn from the double diamond design model so that you go through at least two rounds of idea generation and selection/refinement. The research evidence is clear that this produces a much better outcome and more than repays the additional investment.
And lastly, as Dawn says, inventory your resources. Use them all as well as you can in the time you have available. Then say ‘enough’ and move on.
Here are a few final tips from both of us:
- There is always a danger of feeling paralysed by the range of possibilities and scenarios. Given the constraints you have don’t try and cover every eventuality. Keep it as simple as possible and focus on your two main areas of uncertainty – that may be as straightforward as money and visitors
- Don’t feel you have to come up with one definitive scenario to build your approach on, work with combinations and think about the range of possible outcomes
- Usually when we work on environmental scanning and scenarios with organisations the focus is the long-term future, at the moment we’d suggest keeping it to six or even three months that will help narrow down the options and keep your planning contingent
Dawn & Susan
Reference
Basu, S., & Savani, K. (2017). Choosing one at a time? Presenting options simultaneously helps people make more optimal decisions than presenting options sequentially. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 139, 76-91.