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Discussion questions 373
frame analysis worksheet has the components to prompt awareness of
alternative framings of a decision problem but its efficacy in business
decision making is, as yet, unproven. Clearly, techniques to promote creativity
in the generation of decision options – beyond the familiar – are
not well developed.
However, the practice of scenario planning, which we will detail in
the next chapter, can, we believe, act as a means of overcoming strategic
inertia, since it implicitly accepts that managers’ ‘best guesses’ about the
course of future events and about the appropriateness of strategic choice
may be mistaken. Essentially, scenario planning interventions in organizations
construct multiple frames of the future states of the external
world, only some of which may be well aligned with current strategy.
This construction process is systematic and structured and, as such,
complements other techniques, such as the frame analysis worksheet.
Advocates of scenario planning also argue that its process methodology
can counter groupthink by allowing minority opinions about the future
to have ‘airtime’, relative to majority opinion. Essentially, the process of
scenario planning provides conditions under which the appropriateness
of the continuation or escalation of a particular strategy can be falsified
– since the degree of alignment between a strategy and a range of
plausible futures is the focus of attention.
Discussion questions
(1) Does following a previously successful way of solving a problem
have advantages as well as disadvantages?
(2) What business situations are likely to enhance any organizational
tendency towards strategic inertia?
(3) Does your own organization suffer from any form of frame-blindness
or strategic inertia? If so, why are others in your organization
unable to recognize and deal with this? What methods would you
recommend using to overcome such limited perceptions?
(4) Apply the questions in the frame analysis worksheet to a major
decision that you, or your organization, are currently facing. To
what extent are new decision options created, or previously ignored
options given renewed attention?