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| future_fabulators:field_anomaly_relaxation [2014-02-19 06:43] – maja | future_fabulators:field_anomaly_relaxation [2014-03-04 07:14] (current) – maja |
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| ==== Field Anomaly Relaxation ==== | ==== Field Anomaly Relaxation ==== |
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| See also [[morphological analysis]] | Field Anomaly Relaxation (FAR) is a technique that maps a interactions of change drivers on a systemic scale, structuring them as 'sectors' and 'factors'. From the interactions between these complex interconnected tree of branching scenarios can be created. See also [[morphological analysis]]. |
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| <blockquote>[Scenarios] provide a relatively unbounded forum for creative thoughts and ideas regarding organisational renewal such that novel concepts and imperatives for change could be expressed within a broadened perspective of the future. * page 2 | <blockquote>[Scenarios] provide a relatively unbounded forum for creative thoughts and ideas regarding organisational renewal such that novel concepts and imperatives for change could be expressed within a broadened perspective of the future. |
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| | Many emergency response organisations: law enforcement, military, fire fighters, paramedics and disaster relief, to name just a few, use scenarios on almost a daily basis to sharpen their capacity to deal with the unexpected. Their common characteristic of being necessarily focussed on the short-term does not reduce the valuable use they make of scenarios and scenario thinking. Through a comprehensive set of 'what if' statements and structured events they are able to rapidly cycle themselves through a bewildering array of problem situations. The result of this focussed training and the associated flexibility of mind it demands is a highly agile team that can rapidly adapt structures, techniques and procedures to overcome situations in which indecision, hesitancy and lengthy planning are not options. Pilots undergo multiple repetitions of emergency situations in simulators to create this necessary rapidity of response and action in order to reduce problem-solving to an instinctive sequence of behaviours, in effect allowing the mind to remain clear and unencumbered to deal with those few unique contextual aspects that are outside the domain of previous simulations. |
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| Many emergency response organisations: law enforcement, military, fire fighters, paramedics and disaster relief, to name just a few, use scenarios on almost a daily basis to sharpen their capacity to deal with the unexpected. Their common characteristic of being necessarily focussed on the short-term does not reduce the valuable use they make of scenarios and scenario thinking. Through a comprehensive set of 'what if' statements and structured events they are able to rapidly cycle themselves through a bewildering array of problem situations. The result of this focussed training and the associated flexibility of mind it demands is a highly agile team that can rapidly adapt structures, techniques and procedures to overcome situations in which indecision, hesitancy and lengthy planning are not options. Pilots undergo multiple repetitions of emergency situations in simulators to create this necessary rapidity of response and action in order to reduce problem-solving to an instinctive sequence of behaviours, in effect allowing the mind to remain clear and unencumbered to deal with those few unique contextual aspects that are outside the domain of previous simulations. * page 2 | |
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| | These scenarios, and more importantly the use of them for long-term planning, are certainly not predictors of events, nor are they attempting to forecast the likelihood of particular situations they simply aid in the provocation of new ideas. |
| These scenarios, and more importantly the use of them for long-term planning, are certainly not predictors of events, nor are they attempting to forecast the likelihood of particular situations they simply aid in the provocation of new ideas. * page 2 | |
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| * Step 3: Eliminate those factor pairs that are illogical or cannot co-exist, forming a reduced set of whole field configurations. | * Step 3: Eliminate those factor pairs that are illogical or cannot co-exist, forming a reduced set of whole field configurations. |
| * Step 4: Position the surviving whole field configurations on a 'tree' whose branches represent possible future states and transitions from one configuration to the next. | * Step 4: Position the surviving whole field configurations on a 'tree' whose branches represent possible future states and transitions from one configuration to the next. |
| * page 3 | |
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| The process adopted involved: generating a large list of drivers, with the criteria being that they must be beyond the organisation's ability to influence; compressing this list of drivers into broadened 'themes' that embodied the main thought being presented as the driver; and then entering step 2. * page 4 | |
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| Rhyne (1981, p. 349) has identified the importance of doing something useful with the results (purposeful action is the neat term that Checkland has provided us with) of futures thinking that engages a wider body of thought about change "...the payoff from projections of this kind [FAR] usually dribbles away unless solid uses for them are visualised from the start and pursued * page 4 | The process adopted involved: generating a large list of drivers, with the criteria being that they must be beyond the organisation's ability to influence; compressing this list of drivers into broadened 'themes' that embodied the main thought being presented as the driver; and then entering step 2. |
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| The first step was to identify the drivers that would be most influential in shaping events. As stated earlier these drivers need to be beyond the planner's ability to influence, the only acceptable response being adaptation. (…) These (…) drivers were then collapsed using affinity diagrams to reveal the major forces at work.* page 5 | Rhyne (1981, p. 349) has identified the importance of doing something useful with the results (purposeful action is the neat term that Checkland has provided us with) of futures thinking that engages a wider body of thought about change "...the payoff from projections of this kind [FAR] usually dribbles away unless solid uses for them are visualised from the start and pursued |
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| To make the future believable it is necessary to string the transitions into a plausible history that marks out how a future world could evolve from the present. * page 8 | The first step was to identify the drivers that would be most influential in shaping events. As stated earlier these drivers need to be beyond the planner's ability to influence, the only acceptable response being adaptation. (…) These (…) drivers were then collapsed using affinity diagrams to reveal the major forces at work. |
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| | To make the future believable it is necessary to string the transitions into a plausible history that marks out how a future world could evolve from the present. |
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| Having constructed the Faustian tree and, thereby, creating a series of pathways through which the single future trajectory may travel, a set of rich narratives are called for. These narratives link the present to the future in a manner that adds substance, depth and most importantly breadth, effectively putting 'flesh on the bones' of the earlier, more structured thinking stages. * page 9</blockquote> | Having constructed the Faustian tree and, thereby, creating a series of pathways through which the single future trajectory may travel, a set of rich narratives are called for. These narratives link the present to the future in a manner that adds substance, depth and most importantly breadth, effectively putting 'flesh on the bones' of the earlier, more structured thinking stages. * page 9</blockquote> |
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| -Guy A. Duczynski | -Guy A. Duczynski |
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| <blockquote>The starting point of Field Anomaly Relaxation (FAR) is Lewin’s social field theory to the effect that we all live within ‘fields’ of interactions with other people and events. (…) This notion is used in morphological forecasting (see [[morphological analysis]], morphology meaning ‘the form and structure of anything’. The method was invented and named by Zwicky before World War II (Zwicky, 1969). It uses a formal description, called a Zwicky Box (renamed a Sector/Factor array in FAR) to explore, for example, all conceivable forms of aircraft propulsion. (…) FAR exploits that idea to explore the imaginable patterns within social fields, eliminating any which do not satisfy a gestalt, whole-pattern, assessment of internal coherence. The remaining, internally consistent, patterns are then used as stepping stones to create paths into the future. The steps across the stones enable FAR to generate story scenarios, not just end- state pictures. (…) Each of the components of the field must have several conceivable conditions; economic growth may be high, low, stagnant and so on, differing in kind as well as in degree. The idea is to create ‘filing space’ for all plausible possibilities. | <blockquote>The starting point of Field Anomaly Relaxation (FAR) is Lewin’s social field theory to the effect that we all live within ‘fields’ of interactions with other people and events. (…) This notion is used in morphological forecasting (see [[morphological analysis]]), morphology meaning ‘the form and structure of anything’. The method was invented and named by Zwicky before World War II (Zwicky, 1969). It uses a formal description, called a Zwicky Box (renamed a Sector/Factor array in FAR) to explore, for example, all conceivable forms of aircraft propulsion. (…) FAR exploits that idea to explore the imaginable patterns within social fields, eliminating any which do not satisfy a gestalt, whole-pattern, assessment of internal coherence. The remaining, internally consistent, patterns are then used as stepping stones to create paths into the future. The steps across the stones enable FAR to generate story scenarios, not just end- state pictures. (…) Each of the components of the field must have several conceivable conditions; economic growth may be high, low, stagnant and so on, differing in kind as well as in degree. The idea is to create ‘filing space’ for all plausible possibilities. |
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| FAR is a four-stage process: | FAR is a four-stage process: |
maja