Decision Making / 1 / 1.7

1.7 DYNAMIC AND COMPLEX BEYOND OUR INTUITION

Flood (1999) suggests the world is whole and the whole is complex. It is increasingly complex with more and more information, intense interdependency, and relentless change. We find this in many risk-management problems we have to face. They are self-organising: they are dynamic and complex. A characterisation of these problems is at Chapter 4. Flood argues that the complex nature of the world in which we find ourselves is unknowable to the human mind:

‘The world comprises many, many interrelationships. The dynamic is characterised by spontaneous re-organisation. Thus, it is only possible to get to grips with things that are local to us in space and time. Local in space means, ‘things that we are immediately involved with’. Local in time means ‘not very far into the future’. We therefore know of the unknowable, manage within the unmanageable, and organise within the unorganisable (Flood, 1999: 129).’

Kline (1995) makes a similar argument. This is not meant to deny fervent attempts to address dynamic complexity, but suggests we must take considerable care in setting the boundaries of the problem space and the potential solution space. Beer (1966) cites a number of examples of poor choices in definition of problems or selection of solution spaces we choose for detailed investigation. We might improve these choices through employment of scenario planning. Scenario planning can be a significant aid to developing mental agility.

Scenario planning (van der Heijden, 1996) involves contemplating what might happen in the widest range of possible future situations. These scenarios are documented and passed through a filtering process. Filtering eliminates those scenarios that describe future situations considered least likely to occur. The remaining scenarios are considered in considerably more detail. Potential strategies for dealing with those scenarios within the limitations of extant resources, for example, are then developed. These strategies are assigned priorities for actioning and, depending on the circumstances, some may be developed into courses of action for immediate implementation. Scenario planning is routinely used, for example, to inform development of Military Response Options (MRO) which Governments may compile as an intermediate stage in the building preparedness strategies. Scenario planning is a variant of the risk-management process.