Scenario planning - Ben

Scenario planning is a strategic planning tool used to make flexible long-term plans. It is a method for learning about the future by understanding the nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces affecting our world.
 

Scenario planning works best if participants are able to ‘think outside the box’, to coin a phrase. In our everyday working environments this can be difficult to achieve, so it is a good idea to run our activities in a different setting – somewhere away from the everyday grind, perhaps even a little unusual. (Northumbria University 2013)

Refer to my company – Chopard. I am not sure if we got any Scenario Planning since it should be discussed during our management meeting. No matter we got it or not, but one idea within Scenario planning is interesting – Thinking dothe unthinkable. Brainstorming activities and stories telling can be made so as to bring out more idea and inspiration for our organization. I think this can lead our company to becoming a popular learning organization as well.

Besides, action plan about what should we do (or not do) is also important. We have to always bear in mind that scenarios do not represent truths – they are based on what we know about what is happening and the application of imagination in order to predict what might happen in the future.

References:
Northumbria University 2013. Scenario Planning. Retrived from :
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/scenario-planning/

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Week 7:Scenario planning -----Sophie

My organization is an Events company in shanghai named as MMI. Although I am not very familiar with its scenario plans, but I could recognize that people in the company are not eager to offer new ideas but tend to follow the current rules. Moreover, the survey results in Week 4 also indicate that the company did not do well in encouraging new ideas. In this case, I think my companies could use scenario planning to help motivating people to offer new ideas for work. 

Scenario Planning Implementation Process:

1.     Indentify Focal Issue:
The company is in a low level of opening to new ideas, employees are not motivated to make innovations and promote new opinions.

2.     Search for Driving Forces (take an outside-in perspective):
Porter five forces analysis:

• Threat of new entrants: The event industry in Shanghai is increasing greatly
• Threat of substitute products or services:no much distinction for choosing different event companies to hold events 
• Bargaining power of customers (buyers): attendants like “interesting “events
• Bargaining power of suppliers: suppliers hope to give special experience and impact on attendants  
• Intensity of competitive rivalry: The competition is increasingly intensive and more companies hope to use events to make promotions.

Working environment:
Low motivation for people always follows rules.
People are full of new ideas but no way for promoting. 

3.     Find uncertainties:

The increasing popularity of holding events to promote companies. 

4.     Formulate scenario logic:
Scenario planning can be divided into two parts:
       a. changing the organizational culture  
The company is now just following past rules and lazy to make changes. The culture is need to be altered firstly.
       b. encourage innovation of employees
Employees should be offered with space and ways to express their new ideas to motivate them to innovate. Moreover, rewards could be utilized to help motivations

5.     Strategic Analysis:
The current leadership style of the CEO is bureaucratic, which could also prohibit the development of promoting innovation. 
The potter’s 5 forces model and SWOT could be used to help analyze.

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Week 7: Scenario Planning---Lisa

As the adaptation and generalization of classic methods used by military intelligence, scenario planning is a strategic planning method that some organizations use to make flexible long-term plans. (Wikipedia) By staying in HSBC as an intern for only two months, I really didn't know much things about the management strategies inside the company. However, as an international famous bank, HSBC inevitably has corresponding strategies to meet with the severe competitions in the market. For example, to reduce input costs and simultaneously maintain the quality of client services, including data analysis and call center services, a operation center of HSBC has been established in Mainland China to replace that of Hong Kong.

From my own observations during that period of time, such an international bank does need to do some scenario planning to seek for continuous development and meet with any potential challenges in the future. There are two major objectives that all of the departments can take into considerations: to enable the employees to be competitive internationally and to manage the knowledge base effectively. Only in that way can the company achieve better development when unpredicted resignation and critical incident occur.

As for the process of scenario planning, it can be described into six steps.

1. Identify focal Issue
  To identify the number of people, relationships, technology, leadership style that will be involved in the scenario planning.

2. Driving forces
   To identify the necessities and reasons of such scenario planning, including the further development of employees, the prevention of potential problems.

3. Find uncertainties
   Uncertainties may occur in the application procedures.

4. Formulate scenario logic
    Scenario planning can be divided into two parts:
       a. Competitiveness improvement of employees
           Organizational online forum dealing with the specific problems all over the world as well as offline training course/workshops can be established.
       b. Knowledge Base Management
           A knowledge management center may be set up to store the existed explicit knowledge and codify tacit knowledge from talented people or good solutions.

5.Strategic Analysis
      SWOT method can be adopted to evaluate the strategies.


Source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scenario_planning

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Scenario of planning- Cindy

Scenario of planning can be seen as a long-term strategy that the corporation needs to take into account.

As I was just an intern in HSBC, I am not familiar with its scenario of planning. However, I can think of a situation under which HSBC could probably formulate some strategies.

The branch where I worked is located in the city of Xi'an, because HSBC is a British-funded corporation, if anti-British sentiment occurs one day, I think some strategies can be implemented by HSBC.

Scenario Planning Implementation Process:

1. Identify focal issue

2. Driving forces

3. Find uncertainties

4. Formulate scenario logic

5. Strategic Analysis

Identify focal issue:

The focal issue is the rise of anti-British sentiment; clients of HSBC want to withdraw all the money from the bank.

Search for driving forces:

1)    Political: Chinese government and British government has some serious conflicts during that time and neither party would like to compromise.

2)    Economic: The economy situation of British gets better and better, poses a threat to China

3)    Social: Some British-funded companies in Xi’an loose their reputation; sell unqualified products, bad attitudes of after sell-services, even offensive words to locals.

Find uncertainties:

HSBC is not sure how long the demonstration will last, temporary or several days or even longer. And they can’t make sure that people say they want to withdraw money to demonstrate their discontentment or they really mean it seriously

Formulate scenario logic:

1)    Collect more related information and inform the public

2)    Prepare enough cash to guarantee that people can withdraw money any time they want and appease the customers at the same time

3)    Ask for help from relevant units. For example, ask the police force to send policemen to maintain the scene order to ensure security of all the people on the spot.

4)    Request cooperation of related organizations. For instance, if HSBC don’t have so many cash in hand, they may ask some other banks for help

Strategic Analysis: For each of the five steps, HSBC need to come up with more ideas or solutions that could lead to the best result. We can see the importance of scenario planning, if something happens suddenly and HSBC doesn’t make preparations, HSBC would get into a very bad situation. 

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Week 7: Scenario Planning----Clovis

Scenario planning, originally used by military intelligence, is increasingly adopted by today’s organisations to make flexible long-term plans (Wikipedia). It is a good way to prepare the minds of both the management and employees for unanticipated futures. In the current business world where uncertainties prevail, the ability to anticipate various possible futures is of great importance to manage change in organisation.

In my organisation I do not know anything the management have done regarding scenario planning during the past several years because I am just a part-time trainer there. But as far as I know, this foreign language training institution is considering setting up some new branches in Shanghai, which will have a great impact on the future development of the whole organsation. I think our organisation can incorporate the use of scenario planning in deciding where to set up new branches.

Scenario Planning Implementation Process:

1.     Indentify Focal Issue:

The focal issue for our organisation is pretty obvious. This IELTS training institution would like to set up some new branches in Shanghai.

2.     Search for Driving Forces (take an outside-in perspective):

Contextual environment (PEST analysis method):

Political: The government supports the development of English education and encourages young talents to go abroad to further their studies，which provides our organisation a good opportunities to expand our business. In addition, the relationships between China and UK, Australia, USA, etc. are good.

Economic: CNY is climbing against USD during these years; citizens in China can afford studying overseas; many multinational companies set up branches in Shanghai.

Social: an increasing number of students who would like to study oveaseas; the increasing popularity of western culture in Shanghai.

Technological: Many online language course providers may pose a threat to our new branches; studnets may prefer online courses because of their convenience.

Working environment:

Good reputation of our institution in Shanghai;

Other comparable institutions have successfully set up more branches;

Trainers in our institution are willing to teach in more branches.

3.     Find uncertainties:

a.     The organization cannot find appropriate locations for new branches.

b.     The increasing popularity of online courses may threaten traditional courses in the future. Also, universities and secondary schools may provide foreign language courses to train their own students in the future.

4.     Formulate scenario logic:

Four situations:

a.     appropriate locations + courses from competitors

b.     appropriate locations + no courses from competitors

c.      no appropriate locations + courses from competitors

d.     no appropriate locations + no courses from competitors

5.     Strategic Analysis:

According to the possible situations to be happened in the future, our organisation should deeply analyse these situations and propose solutions to each of these situation. Every situation is equally important when we do the scenario planning. If our institution could find all the possible uncertainties and make corresponding action plans, we can definitely set up some successful new branches.

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Week 6 : Storytelling – Sophie

This is a true story happened in the marketing department of MMI. In the marketing department, one part of the responsibilities of employees and interns in this department is contracting potential customers or attendants for the coming events, that is, making introductions to them and then persuading them to come.

One day, one of the supervisors of MMI added his name and numbers to the contact list and thus got called by one of the marketing employees. He tried to test the communicating skills of the employee and pretended to be not very interested to the events. To his surprise, the marketing people quickly apologized and thus ringed off the phone, without much promoting the events. The supervisor then reported back to the marketing department and criticized the performance of that employee for his passionless of treating potential customers.

After that, there are a lot more managers add their names to the contract list to test the attitude of their employees in treating customers and the employees try to be careful with everyone they contract. All in all, the performance improved greatly after this event.

  

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Story of Chopard - Ben

Story of Chopard

The story which I would like to tell is a true one which delivered by our trainer during the orientation training.  At the lesson which calls ABOUT CHOPARD for new joining staff, there are a section to talk about the Company history, background, passion and especially an introduction of our BOSS.

Trainer would teach all of us to pronounce his name correctly. Since the name is in German, and it’s a bit difficult for us to pronounce, however, our trainer need us to pronounce it correctly before we leave the training room. It’s because……..

Several years before, when our Boss went to one subsidiary office for site visit and he met a colleague at toilet. Here are their conversations:

: Hello (He don’t know the one besides him is our Boss)

: Hello

: Are you new from here, I never see you before.
 

 

: Oh……yes, I am new here

: I am Joe, what’s your name?

: I am Karl, Karl Scheufele.

: Car Schefala?
 

: No, it's Karl Scheufele.

: Car....Oh, anyway, nice to meet you Car.

: Me too, Joe.

After that, no one knows the end of Joe, but the training module ABOUT CHOPARD created.

Through this story, our company learnt that the importance of training to new staff, instead of company background and information, staffs are required to attend the lesson of Watch Making and Gemology, which is the two core value of our company. We believed that staff should know what business our company is running and why our band is one of the famous leader s at luxury.

Meanwhile, staff’s morale and loyally were built and we know what to answer if someone ask me what’s our company about and what's our company business, especially the value of our watches and jewelries.

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Week 6: Storytelling

Fan Jiajun, Clovis

One day, a high school student, together with her parents, came to our IELTS training institution and had a conversation with our receptionist They said that they came from a less-developed city in China, where there was no formal IELTS training institution like our company. But the girl dreamt of going to a British university next year to pursue her bachelor and master’s degrees. The parents of the girl were told that some of the teachers in our institution are the top trainers in the field of IELTS, so they wanted their daughter to study IELTS here to get a high score. The problem was that the girl had to continue learning in the high school in her hometown and had no time to attend classes in our institution. Besides the girl, many other students from different cities often called our centre to ask whether there were any courses for them. The receptionist told her manager the story.

Having been told the story, the management realized the huge potential of the market in less-developed cities. After several times of comprehensive market research, the centre decided to open up three more branches in different cities in China and later provided online courses to student who could not come to the centre for class. This story made the management discover the urge demand of IELTS learners and expand our business successfully. An incident can lead an organization to a big change.

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Week 6: Storytelling- Lisa

Liu Meng, Lisa


It is a story about compliance. Last summer, at the begining of my internship experience in HSBC, I took the training class on the topic of compliance. The tutor told us a story.

One day a information analyst left his desk to get a cup of water without locking his computer screen, and the information displayed on the screen was the detailed profile of some big customers, which was very confidential.  His collegue accidently noticed it and copied such information secretly. It didn't take much time that this collegue jumped to one of the rival banks. Ultimately, the confidential data were divulged and the big customers were no longer satisfied with HSBC. The company went through an unexpected economic loss and the information analyst was therefore fired.

To prevent divulgence of confidential information in the future, I was told to strictly obey the regulations in organization. Later on , I acknowledged that such training classes were indispensable for new comers in each department of HSBC all over the world. Until the end of my internship, other interns and I didn's make any mistakes in this aspect, all of us regarded the training class on compliance very important and impressive.

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Storytelling- Cindy

A  story from my company- Dai Xiaoxiao, Cindy

During my internship in HSBC, another intern didn't know we couldn't use our USB drive in the computers in the office. One day, she wanted to print some materials from her USB drive, so she plugged in the USB. This behavior led to a system crash of all the computers during the whole afternoon.

I think a systemic training is needed for the newcomers. Although the online courses cover a lot of aspects, there is something that being not included. Storytelling could be very useful in many cases.

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Week 5: Comparison of Harvard Survey Results

Ben's comment

Use the Harvard Review Survey results of your institution to help analyze the extent of LO in your workplace
The above table shows that my organization can score a high mark for “Education and Training”, in which employees can learn both practical skills and knowledge through our training programs and be able to have a professional development at work. Other than that, my organization can also obtain a mark with the third quartile in “Time for Reflection” as enough time was provided to our colleagues in digesting new knowledge. However, relatively low marks were granted for the remaining. Like “Openness to New ideas” and “Appreciation of Differences” categories, I think it can reflect the general situation in Hong Kong business organizations that the management does not want to have a change while they are focusing on making more money. The lower marks at “Experimentation” as well as “Information Collection” show that we have to spend some more time on learning from mistakes and comparing our current situations with our competitors in order to become a Learning Organization.

Review group workplace cases: compare similarities and differences and develop a table evidencing this
When comparing the similarities with other organizations, we can see that all of our organizations are not focusing on the part of “Learning Processes Composite” as neither one of our organizations can get a high mark in this category. However, the table shows that all the organizations provided good education and training to their employees, and it can be concluded that although the platform of training is enough, a company still have to pay more attention on the follow-up activities and build up a healthy education atmosphere within the organization.
Regarding the differences of scores among different organizations, “Experimentation” is the most extreme one - Clovis’s company obtains a high mark of 85.7 while mine only got 50; there are 35.7 marks of differences. Other companies like HSBC from Cindy and Lisa also got 64 and 78 respectively. I think this might be due to the differences of organizations’ structure and focuses, where organizations like schools might have more activities on experimentation than others.

What can be learnt from this comparison to help complete Assignment Task One
I think this is an interesting survey which can let us understand more about the current learning situation of the organizations.  The survey quantifies the comparison by setting relevant questions for various categories in relation to the encouragement development, change and innovation.  Such an approach can provide an objective comparison among organizations and can also give a simple but clear picture of organizations’ achievement in different areas.  And of course it’s more meaningful for us to see what others have done while comparing our organizations with each other.






Dai Xiaoxiao, Cindy


Use the Harvard Review Survey results to help analyze the extent of LO in your workplace.

In this survey, in terms of learning environment composite, HSBC is in the second place with the score of 70.4, when it comes to learning process composite, it does not reach the average score, because I think HSBC should also provide the interns with systemic training besides online e-learning course. In terms of leadership that reinforces learning, HSBC ranks the first, as I mentioned previously, the branch manager arranged two meetings everyday, I think it is quite nice to encourage employees to share their opinions everyday.





FAN Jiajun, Clovis


1. Use the Harvard Review Survey results of your institution to help analyse the extent of LO in your workplace.

This survey provides a useful assessment tool for organizations to evaluate the level of LO they have achieved and to identify areas of excellence and opportunities for improvement in LO. According to the survey results of my institution, this IELTS training centre has achieved a relatively high level in becoming a learning organization.

In terms of the learning environment, the centre offers enough time for reflection, which allows us to review our teaching effect and draw on previous successful experience. But my organization needs much improvement in areas like providing employees with psychological safety and becoming more open to new ideas, which can facilitate the innovative process. Regarding the learning processes and practices, generally speaking, my centre obtains high scores in all of the five areas, which means that this centre has a comprehensive and systematic set of methods to utilize its information and knowledge for learning purpose. And the leadership of my institution is quite strong in reinforcing organizational learning.

To summarise, my IELTS training centre has paid much attention in establishing a learning environment, facilitating learning processes and practices, as well as cultivating leadership that reinforces learning. It will be a typical learning organization in the future, where all employees take an active part in learning and sharing knowledge.

2. Review group workplace cases: compare similarities and differences and develop a table evidencing this.

From the table we can see that there exist both similarities and differences in the areas of LO in our five organizations.

Regarding the similarities, we are all given much time for reflection and review while we all lack certain level of psychological safety, appreciation of differences and openness to new ideas, which indicates that all of our companies should strive to build a supportive environment for organizational learning. Also, all of the five organizations obtain high scores in the area of education and training, demonstrating that currently most, if not all, companies have realised the great significance of training both new and existing employees.

As to differences, our organisations are now in different levels in the areas of experimenting new ideas or products, collecting information from both inside and outside organisation, analysing and discussing, information transfer, as well as leadership. This is due to the fact that our organisations belong to different industries and have different focuses and leadership styles, and even different branches of HSBC, which are the target organisations of two group members, achieve different levels of LO. Each of our companies has strengths and weaknesses in areas of LO. So we can exchange our ideas and draw on the strengths of other organizations to help our own company to develop into a learning organization.

3. What can be learnt from this comparison to help complete Assignment Task One?

This comparison offers me a guideline to assess whether my organisation has become a real learning organisation and the survey provides me with a set of criteria to see whether the strategies my company has utilised have a positive impact on learning organisation. The three blocks----learning environment, learning processes, and leadership that reinforces learning, help me relate the corporate strategies to organisational learning and learning organisation, which can be used in the Assignment Task One.




Liu Meng - Lisa


According to the Harvard Review Survey Results, it is apparently that all of our workplaces are similar in most of the aspects. To be more specific, all of the five organizations perform very well in the following two areas: time for reflection; education and training, which means that they attach great importance on organizational learning opportunities and efficiency. However, survey results range from the bottom quartile to the highest level in experimentation, information transfer and leadership.

A conclusion can be easily drawn that all of our workplaces provide fairly good supportive learning environment and can enhance the education and training opportunities to a large extent, while slightly differences also exist in learning processes and leadership due to the different job functions and features.

Yang Lujia -Sophie

Use the Harvard Review Survey results of your institution to help analyze the extent of LO in your workplace

As is displayed in the table, my organization is doing best in “education and training”, which refers that the new employees could usually receive good training in the company.  However, it worst in “opening to new ideas” and “attention to difference”, which indicate that the organizations do not values individuals much, neither their different ideas. Thus, it could be seen that the staff in my company is not very motivated only if my company starts to encourage creativity and participation. Part of the reasons contribute could be that EVENTS industry has many existing rules on how to managing people and facilitates, thus the companies better chose to follow rather than come up with new ones. However, besides that, companies should still try to encourage new ideas and explore the human asset

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