Our services
Complex Problems
The nature of business problems today is different to problems of the past. They are more complex, they are linked to other problems, they involve more moving parts, their cause is not clear, and solutions are not obvious. There is often disagreement about how these problems should be approached and solved. And often the problems we are grappling with have significant implications for the future – impacting, for example, land use, environment, culture and community.
Complex problems are unresolvable and won’t go away.
These problems do not have simple or permanent solutions. It’s not just a matter of thinking harder or even smarter. Organisations need to have good processes in place for engaging with complex problems over the long term and solving and resolving problems as they emerge.
We do not solve complex problems by creating a “solution” but by helping you to see the problem in a new way. In this sense, problems are “dissolved” rather than “solved”.
Problem solving in this context is about a continuous process of understanding the problem as best you can, working well with others, identifying possibilities, conducting experiments, and monitoring progress.
We use these understandings to assist in analysing future risk and opportunities and the development of strategy. All our work aims to lead to clear and practical actions you can take today.
We help you develop your internal capability to engage with complex problems in areas such as:
- Problem definition and understanding – what the problem really is, why it is a problem, why it is a problem right now, and what might be done about it.
- Goal setting across the long term – bringing people together around a common but unspecified goal, considering multiple perspectives and positions, building consensus across difference, and setting a direction and adjusting rather than defining a specific outcome.
- Information gathering – listening to diverse perspectives, identifying what information is missing, and seeking out information that fills gaps and challenges current assumptions.
- Problem solving – understanding that there is no “silver bullet” solution, that the definition of the problem can change over time through conversation, and that problems are not “solved” but are evolved, dissolved and re-solved over time as new meanings and understandings emerge through dialogue.
- Option identification and testing – expanding the range of options considered, creating the conditions for new possibilities to arise, and embedding robust and transparent processes to test options.
- Decision making – ensuring decisions are aligned to shared goals and direction, avoiding decision traps (creating future problems with short term solutions), and developing comfort and proficiency in reconsidering decisions and changing course when necessary.
- Working together – using group processes and practices that support groups (including communities and stakeholders) to work well together and to stay at the table when times get tough.
Futures
With all the changes in the world, the ones you know of and the ones you are yet to know of, organisations are operating in an age of grand transitions – transitioning from now, what you know, to something new and as yet unknown, over long timelines.
This is a difficult space to develop a strategy for as you’re not quite sure what you’re aiming for or how to get there, and it is a difficult space for humans to work in as they are wired for certainty and tend to focus on the short-term.
We help you build your capability to plan over long-time horizons, to develop strategies that are flexible and creative, to adapt your strategy to the environment as it changes, and to adjust your goals and pursue opportunities and priorities as they emerge.
We use structured approaches to thinking about the future to mobilise human energy over long time horizons and to inform organisational strategy. Our futures processes and methodologies, such as visioning, horizon scanning and scenarios, help to align and motivate groups of people and to develop strategic actions for the present.
Purposeful and practical engagement with ideas about the future enables you to continue to work on and move through your current challenges, while at the same time considering the future and navigating the “messy middle” of transition.
We help you with the challenge of planning over long time horizons through:
- Developing a shared vision that provides a unifying direction of travel whilst allowing room for flexibility and adaptation as circumstances change over time.
- Designing a continuous environmental scanning system to understand the current context and notice weak signals of change.
- Using scenarios processes to understand multiple future worlds and their implications.
- Identifying emerging opportunities, options and alternatives for workable solutions.
- Identifying adaptive moves through the transition period.
- Developing a system to continuously monitor progress (and to course-correct as things change).
Risk & Opportunity
Not only is the nature of business problems different to times before, but the nature of material risks to your organisation is also changing. These risks are increasingly more likely to be due to external forces that are out of your direct control including future global politics, macro-economic changes, environmental regulation, state governance, social disruption, climate change, social ethics and community attitudes such as distrust.
Given these external forces are largely uncertain and unpredictable, it is increasingly helpful to incorporate futures thinking into risk management processes.
In this changing world, risk assessment needs to focus on:
- Traditional internally-focussed questions such as “what risk do we pose to others?” and “where we will be held accountable?”
- More externally-focussed questions such as “what are the risks and opportunities posed to us?” and “what are the risks and opportunities posed by others?"
Our detailed quantitative risk and opportunity process uses probabilistic methods to enable you to identify risks and opportunities and associated costs (including the cost of lost opportunity), understand benefit-cost-risk relationships, assess potential benefits and costs including intangibles under a range of plausible future scenarios, demonstrate due diligence, and develop targeted risk reduction strategies.
We help you to:
- Evaluate the degree to which your current strategy could be impacted by future developments.
- Identify potential changes to current plans and approaches to fit different circumstances.
- Assess the degree to which such changes could enhance opportunities and reduce risks.
