Resources 7 - Systems Thinking with Peter Senge of The Fifth Discipline

A rare and yet an indepth interview with author Peter Senge of The Fifth Discipline while he was in Manila in April 2011. Dr. Peter Senge talks to host Raju Mandhyan about how he came about to be the world's top ten management guru. he also, briefly covers the five disciplines of...Mental Models, Personal Mastery, Shared Visions, Team Learning and Systems Thinking.

 

Resources 6 - The Importance of Learning in Organizations

An interview with David Garvin and Amy Edmondson, Professors, Harvard Business School. Learning organizations generate and act on new knowledge. The ability to do this enables companies to stay ahead of change and the competition.

Resources 5 - Peter Senge - Organizational Learning Expert

Peter Senge is a Senior Lecturer at M.I.T., and Chairperson of the Society for Organizational Learning. He is the author of the widely acclaimed book, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of The Learning Organization, which was identified by the Harvard Business Review as one of the seminal management books of the past 75 years. Dr. Senge has lectured extensively throughout the world, translating the abstract ideas of systems theory into tools for better understanding of economic and organizational change.

Activity 7 - Martin

Develop ideas of where you could incorporate the use of scenario planning in an organization

A good organization should have a workable and clear scenario plan. I choose the stepping guide from JISC InfoNet (Ref: http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/tools/scenario-planning/steps) to implement our scenario planning.

 

Step 1: Scoping

Currently our library is providing a service for student to come and borrow our private room for study. Many students love this service and our rooms are always full. The 334 curriculum is coming and we are facing a very serious problem, so many students but not enough rooms.

Step 2: Trend Analysis

Now this room rental services is base on first come first serve. Everyday we will see a line of students who standing before the entrance of our library before we are open. They are all wait for getting the key to get into a room once our door opened. However we found there are so many people who take the key of the room, leaving their belonging in it, and then leave this room. Sometimes they just leave it for several hours, or even pass the key to their friends. Some students they can never get a room just because they have morning class before library opening time. As a result it makes our rooms not be fully utilized. We are starting to think of solution.

Step 3: Building Scenarios

We plan to provide an online booking system which needed student unique ID to login. Therefore students can go to reserve their room at anytime through internet. All the rooms have locks and can only using their student library card to open. This student library card contains their unique ID and they should put their card on the electronic reader to verify. This electronic reader should check with the reservation table in database and the student ID should match with this student library card ID, and then open the door lock if it matches.

Step 4: Generate Options

This plan involve IT skills to develop a reliable web site, door control system and smart card reader. We will find our university IT department to ask for consultancy because they have implemented similar project before.

Step 5: Test Options

We plan we will have a testing period after this system is launched. It needs time for this system to running smooth, need time to fixing minor and hidden software bugs, and need time for user to get use this new system.

Step 6: Action Plan

After consult with university IT department, we should write a tender for bidding from outsiders.

 

Activity 7 - Tammy

 Develop ideas of where you could incorporate the use of Scenario Planning in your organization.

There are five different uses for scenarios including sensitivity/risk assessment, strategy evaluation, strategy development "planning foucs", strategy development without "planning focus" and skills.  And I am going to use strategic development (without planning focus) to illustrate how my organization linking scenarios to strategic planning.

The advantage of using this strategy is taking all the possible scenarios into consideration.  The approach is to develop a "resilience" strategy to deal with all the possible scenarios.

1. Identify focal issue

    I am working in an education institution.   Our college heads has to think about how we can survivor in the future and what kinds of programmes we need to offer.

2.  Search for driving forces & 3. Finding uncertainties

     Geographic scope - scenario 1

     Many local students prefer to study in Japan to learn Japanese, however, there was a Tsunami happen in 2011 and parents still worry the Tsunami will happen again.

     Besides, parents also worry radiation will bring harmful effect to their children.

      Market threat - scenario 2
      There was a global financial crisis happen in 2008 because of the Lehman Brothers.  Many people lost their savings in this matter and lack of confidence to invest in financial market since they are afraid smiliar case will happen again.


4. Formulate scenario logic
    
    Scenario 1
    - Create a Japan community college
    - Employ lecturers from Japan to work and stay in Hong Kong
    - Offer programmes in Japan languages


    Scenario 2
    - Offer professional seminars in assessing current financial market and predicting future financial market.
    - Invite famous market analysts or CEOs from financial institution to hold some talks.
    - Launch new programmes which are cooperate with the financial institution such as Hong Kong Economic Jouranl


5. Strategic analysis
   
    Scenario 1
    - Is it possible to get funding from the schools?
    - Is it easy to employ lecturers from Japan?  How much salary has to pay for?

    - How many competitors are offering programmes in Japan languages?  

      Can our schools fight against them?

    - How much course fee should be charged?

    Scenario 2
    - How can we attract the target group to attend our seminars?
    - What are the concerns of the target group towards the financial market?
    - What types of financial issues need to address in new programme?
    - Is it easy to find financial institution to cooperate with us?