Exploring Organization Viability in
the Face of Economic Depression

The Need for a Prolonged Economic Depression Scenario

It is a sad fact that a vast majority of CEO's, senior managers and administrative heads of public institutions still do not understand the necessity for Multiple Scenario Planning. They still seem to believe that the future they most like to imagine is the one that must happen. A good recent example that is unfolding dramatically for us on the daily news channels is the Rumsfeld Iraq Invasion Plan.

He and his associates were relying on just one scenario only: Iraq would quickly fold up under the "Shock and Awe" bombs going off on television, the people of Iraq would be thrilled that Coalition forces have entered their country and would immediately overthrow their government and welcome the invading armies as "liberators". Consequently, since the supposedly successful invasion, conquest, occupation, awarding of contracts to favored American corporations and beginning an era of hated military occupation, we see not a people who want American style privitization and "democracy", but huge crowds demanding their own kind of Shi'ite theocracy and control of their own resources and public services under Islamic administration. Events show a distinct lack of scenario planning on the part of the would-be future controllers of Middle East Oil countries. Is it really what the Neocon World Order had in mind?

Any company that does not include a prolonged depression scenario is not looking realistically at the world situation. The Bush-Blair coalition of Neoconservative joint government is clearly willing to tube their own economies to feed their war-efforts, however unexpectedly prolonged, bloody and inhumane those efforts may become. There is also an increasing enforcement of an utterly corrupt mega-monopolies approach to economic theory--a Pseudo-Capitalism that does not promote healthy business competition, but monopolization through privatization.

The vicious economic stupidity of the Neoconservative Privateers is creating a definite trend toward a prolonged economic depression combined with deliberate attacks on small and medium-sized businesses to have them swallowed up by big American corporations. And what is life really like in these big corporations and various government and public agencies? It is increasingly authoritarian, dehumanizing and meaningless where real thinking and creativity are discouraged. This spells increasing inefficiency, waste and failure to provide anything of real value to customers or the citizenry, who are under increasing surveillance as potential "enemies of the state".

This entire gloomy and sickening trend is a tremendous threat to the viability of organizations all throughout our governmental, public and economic regions of the so-called "developed" countries. Anyone who is not worried enough to do Multiple Scenario Planning about this is either a corrupt Neoconservative or a gullible sheep. In either case, the future is a terrible, awesome shock.

Dynamic System Scenarios Must Be Simulated and Understood

If we have some decision-power of some kind over the future of our organization, we should seriously consider that our organization is facing a genuine twofold cognitive failure or learning disability that will increase the probability of future collapse of our organization, rendering it into a corrupted, fragmented, inefficient, dying or otherwise nonviable system. The two cognitive failure or learning disability areas are:

1- Key decision-makers in your organization, especially at the top, still live in the Dark Ages in terms of understanding causality. They still believe that causality is always linear and isolated as distinct, separate units of one cause for one effect. They cannot conceive that causality is always a complex, circular feedback process varying over time. They cannot yet grasp how interconnected causes create interconnected effects that in turn become interconnected causes feeding back and turning what were causes partially into effects. In Eastern metaphysics, this used to be called "The Law of Karma", which nowadays has become the saying, quite true, that "what goes around comes around."

As a result of this linear causal thinking, key decision-makers do not comprehend the urgent necessity to make adequate circular causal dynamics models of the World, of the internal dynamics of our organization of concern, or the complex dynamics happening between World and Organization.

2- Since Key decision-makers in your organization do not do the right kind of Scenario Planning (if they bother to try to do it at all) and do not understand circular causal System Dynamics, they will not see the crucial importance of doing System Dynamical Simulation Scenarios of the World, of their organization, and of the interface of their organization with the World.

There is a very real danger that key decision-makers in your organization will continue to make wrong, incompetent, blinkered one-dimensional and fragmentary decisions for complex and dynamical systems, such as the World or their own organization, that they do not in fact understand. Good results or outcomes cannot be expected from all this, for it only adds to the emergent economic and global catastrophe being stupidly promoted by the Neoconservative Coalition.

Need For Genuine Creative Thinking

Even if we can get a sufficient number of key decision-makers in your organization clued into System Dynamics and full-blown Scenario Planning, it will still not be enough to give full viability for your organization. Once the causal circularities and multiple scenario impacts are clear, there is still an immense creative challenge to develop new things and do old things in new ways. Without some devastatingly practical creative new products, services or ways of doing things, you continue down a path of diminishing viability. Not only that, but your organization will become an increasingly tense, boring and all-too-predictable situation. This wears down your management and employees, not to mention even the key decision-makers themselves when the inevitable results of their lack of creative thinking begin to be inexorably registered.

Key decision-makers in your organization desperately need visually facilitated brainstorming sessions with something at least somewhat like the Hexagons method of Tony Hodgson. Out of this should come several new creative options in crucial decision areas. Per the principles of creative brainstorming, no artificial, linear constraints should be put on what can be mentioned as new products, services or alternative ways of doing things. In fact, if something pretty far-out, unusual and new does not emerge for all of you in a least one crucial domain, then you are just not viable.

Remember: Genuine lateral or creative thinking is a serious practical necessity. It is not just a backroom hobby for some hired geniuses nobody listens to. If you have some geniuses on the premises somewhere, bring them to the table with your top management and do a joint exercise together. If you do not empower the genius in your organization, you are empowering stupidity and incompetence. As we can see in the present American and British governments, positions of power are no guarantee of goodwill, competence or creative intelligence. Still, there would be hope even for them if they would hire the right consultants and facilitators and really listen to such people and take heed of the right decision-exercises. Higher education and a change of heart are always possible for decision-makers under stress who begin to admit to themselves that they haven't been getting it right, though most prefer to go down in the end in a state of proud oblivion, never really comprehending what went wrong with their limited brain mentalities.

The Need to Question Strategic Assumptions From Time To Time

What usually happens in an organization is that the senior management or head administration will make some ill-conceived decisions or create ill-conceived policies that do not reflect understanding of System Dynamics or Scenario Planning, and almost invariably lack flexible and creative intelligence. These ill-conceived decisions or policies then become a set of strategic assumptions that the organization is then charged with making it all happen effectively. Strategic assumptions are NOT to be questioned, no matter how shallow or incompetent they may obviously be.

The saving grace for any top management or administration is to listen to feedback from their own best people and give the organization full scope from top to bottom to question any and all strategic assumptions. If you can arrange for key decision-makers in your own organization to question their strategic assumptions and learn Multiple Reality Thinking, there is real hope of organizational learning toward viability. The wider the perspectives and the greater the variety of worldviews that are drawn upon in decision-making, the greater the chances of a Consensus Reality that is truly realistic or comprised of a quasi-homomorphism or adequate approximation to unfolding facts as feedback information and results come back in from the total universe the organization is embedded in.

This can be learned by people of great responsibility if they want to learn it. In fact, it is actually irresponsible to refuse to learn it! Strategic assumptions can and must be questioned from time to time. Shock learning is too slow, too painful and too late. Innovative learning is regenerative for both the decision-maker and his or her organization. The only way a whole nation-state, for instance, can turn out to be led by a moron, a lying clown, a pompous phoney, a nasty weasel or a sadistic egomaniac is to have a lack of innovative learning in key decision-makers.

Prognosis

The present emerging trend of a deluded and incompetent Neoconservative New World Order faction leading us into prolonged wrong wars and economic deterioration (not to mention global warming, abuse of technology, a growing police state and privatization oppression of undeveloped countries) will either provoke your organization into creative renewal and learning the new thinking for viability, or you will have to sadly witness your top decision-makers leading it into an increasingly precarious, dubious and nonviable status.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. It is you yourself! Since you have the intelligence to understand and appreciate this article, it is now just a question of making your voice heard where you can indeed get it heard. Genuine intelligence is not alone on this planet. We are a growing network and a growing consensus that better governance and better management on all scales of life are always possible. Good Globalism is still possible beyond the present confused efforts of Bad Globalism and Anti-globalism.

Good thinking is innately political because all world problems are the results of bad thinking. This is also an observable fact within the politics, power-struggles and circles of influence within any given organization. This is also why the solution within any organization will always be to form networks and communities of strategic practice where genuine intelligence can be facilitated, exercised and make useful recommendations to those with too much power and too little understanding. When the king is mad, the good counsellors must help him through it. This will not come from public protests of the populace, but from intelligent and good-willed people within the hated and untrustworthy system. A cognitive revolution in management and administration is the grand key to the kingdom.