Our Objective...

To enable you to learn and implement a powerful and successful strategic planning technique to make your business less complex, more robust, more integrated and more profitable.

Fortunately, it's a simple way to pull all the threads together into a single picture so understanding can be shared, intelligent trade-offs made and performance optimised. Unfortunately, it has a rather frightening name - "management cybernetics".

Forget the daunting name and take a look at what "management cybernetics" is really about: Your home heating system is the same idea in action on a small scale. As the outside temperature changes the heating system responds to keep the house at an even temperature. Management cybernetics does the same for businesses, as the business environment changes the business adapts to stay profitable.

Your Situation...

• Information Overload: Technology has forced your board and senior management to confront information at ever greater levels of detail yet has failed to deliver relevant, accurate and timely insights and summaries.

• Accountability Overload: Society is demanding ever greater accountability from businesses and their managements.

• Commercial Overload: Competition is increasing and in 24x7x365 markets the velocity required for business decision taking is breathtakingly fast..

• Organisational Overload: Expectations get ever higher as resources get ever shorter.

• Complexity Overload: Stakeholders proliferate, their demands multiply and it's ever more difficult to balance the competing demands whilst managing the business.

Our Solution...

Our 1 day board and senior management team introduction workshop will cover the basics of what you need to know to enable you to understand what Management Cybernetics is all about and how to use its principles in your organisation.

Beyond the 1 day workshop we are able to offer an extended 5 day workshop programme to enable you to understand in detail what Management Cybernetics is all about, why it matters to your business and how to use it to gain valuable strategic, commercial and operational insights into the interactions between your business and your total operational environment.

By the end of day 1 you will understand you how to use Management Cybernetics to increase your corporate effectiveness and establish the real long-term and short-term tradeoffs between competing programs, strategies and investments.

By the end of day 3 you will have used our Top Mapping technique to develop a shared scenario model of your business and its total operating environment to guide your evaluation of alternative strategies in both the long-term and short-term.

By the end of day 5 you will have used a management cybernetics based dynamic computer model to "war game" the alternative strategies and scenarios developed by day 3 to simulate the future your business will face over a 5 year planning horizon.

Workshop Outline

The workshop is based around W. Ross Ashby's "Law of Requisite Variety" and Stafford Beer's "Managerial Cybernetics" but NO technical knowledge is required for the workshop which is focused on the straightforward, simple and practical application of the principles of management cybernetics.

The Top Mapping Technique...

To facilitate the workshop for a senior management / board level audience we use a consulting technique called Top Mapping. Top Mapping is a visual technique which makes these workshops, effective, relevant, fast and fun.

The technique ensures that:

• Participants are very clear about their business direction and requirements. This gives a firm basis for identifying needs in direct support of critical business initiatives.
• Hidden and contentious issues are brought to the surface in a productive way.
• Agreement and commitment to a course of action is reached in a very short time.
• The outcomes of a work session can be clearly and easily communicated to others. This helps link the planning and implementation phases of a change project.
• The same tool can be used in all parts of an organisation (from boardroom to shop floor). This makes it possible to link all activities to a shared vision and direction.
• The map building process allows you to observe group interactions and better understand your colleagues.

To find out more about the Top Mapping technique click here to watch a short video presentation from our Top Mapping materials provider,Wild Water International.

Once built, the Top Mapping framework allows rapid transfer of knowledge into a System Dynamics computer model which we build for you to use during the final 2 days of the workshop.

We recommend that the workshop is not taken as a single 5 day block but as three separate modules with a short break between each module to allow for reflection. In all cases the workshop works best when taken "offsite" to maximise focus and teamwork.

Workshop Outline...

 

Module 1 (1 day)

What Management Cybernetics is all about.

• Intended and unintended consequences of plans, programs and decisions.
• Cross impact analysis.
• Strategic cost/benefit analysis.
• Scenario planning and forecasting.
• Understanding and resolving tradeoffs and strategic irreconcilables.
• Management Cybernetics: putting it all together.

Why Management Cybernetics will change your business.

• Faster and earlier identification and resolution of planning incompatibilities.
• Better alignment between means and ends.
• Better integration between planning and execution.
• Greater synergy from investment.
• Better synergy between programs.

Module 2 (2 days)

Management Cybernetics Workshop 1 - Addressing YOUR issues.

• Introduction to Top Mapping.
• Issue identification.
• Issue cross-impact assessment.
• Issue prioritisation.
• Scenario planning to understand how your issues will evolve into the future.
• Building your business model.

Module 3 (2 days)

Management Cybernetics Workshop 2 - The "War Game".

• Introduction to Business Strategy Simulation - System Dynamics vs. Monte Carlo simulation.
• Transferring the Top Mapping workshop results into the "war game" dynamic model.
• Using the "war game" dynamic model to clarify issues.
• Using the "war game" dynamic model to gain insight into existing choices and evaluate consequences.
• Using the "war game" dynamic model to gain insight into future scenarios.
• Identifying synergies, dependencies and opportunities.
• Reviewing existing intentions in the light of the new insights.

What you should do next.

• Review and adapt existing plans and strategies.
• Review current planning processes.
• Adopt a regular cycle of scenario planning.

Contact us on +44 (0) 7948 308 686 for more information and prices

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