Getting to
Strategic and Generative Governance: Tapping The Connection between Scenario
Thinking & Mental Models
We live in a time of profound change. Faced with shrinking
budgets, rapidly evolving community needs, a hostile political climate, and
ever more intense public scrutiny, nonprofits are finding that it’s not enough
to simply update a mission statement or patch over a list of outdated goals. In
order to meet the challenges of building long-term financial sustainability,
weighing strategic restructuring options, planning for leadership succession,
and more, boards need to think and act differently.
Some boards are already making the transition by applying
the lessons of the book, Governance as Leadership. This leadership model
challenges boards to engage in three modes of thinking and decision-making:
fiduciary, strategic and generative. While all three are important, the third,
generative thinking, is receiving the most attention. Thinking further into the
future about new possibilities through generative mode thinking, can lay the
groundwork for board leaders to develop breakthrough strategies that will assure
increased mission impact and sustainable growth in the future.
It has been my experience that once nonprofit leaders begin
to grasp the importance - and necessity - of strategic and generative
governance, they want to know more about it AND they want to know HOW to do it.
They ask: what tools and activities will help us begin to govern strategically
and generatively?
In preparation for a recent Board Of Directors Retreat, we
engaged in two activities that have been shown to increase the capacity of
board leaders for strategic and generative thinking. The results of these
activities fueled the move to increased strategic and generative governance on
the part of this board and others with whom we have worked
A Scenario Thinking Exercise, the purpose of which was to develop a set of alternative
scenarios reflecting multiple worldviews or perspectives on how the future
might unfold for this nonprofit. The purpose of scenario thinking was not to
predict or identify the most likely future, but to create a map of uncertainty
— to acknowledge and examine the visible and hidden forces that are driving us
toward the unknown future. In the scenario thinking exercise, scenarios are
created and used in sets of multiple stories that capture a range of
possibilities, good and bad, expected and surprising. They are designed to
stretch our thinking about emerging changes and the opportunities and threats
that the future might hold. They allow us to weigh our choices more carefully
when making short-term and long-term strategic decisions.
An Examination Of Mental Models held by board and staff leadership. Mental models are
deeply ingrained assumptions, beliefs or generalizations that influence how
leaders understand the world, define success for their organizations, and how
they take action. Mental models, especially when they have grown out of date,
are often the greatest barriers to implementing new ideas in organizations, but
they are also the area of organizational learning where organizations can make
the most significant impact.
Here's an example: In the past, one mental model
of library leadership might have been expressed as "A library is a
building with shelf space to house book collections; patrons come to the
library and check books out for reading elsewhere." With such a mental
model in place, library leadership initially had difficulty noticing,
understanding, and then acting upon implications of the Internet, and the rise
of social media use especially by young people, on future planning for
libraries. The new mental model of the library as "gateway to an expanding
world of information" changes how the libraries define success and how
they plan for the future, the professional development of new librarians, and
more. We can see what this new mental model has helped library leaders to
create in our communities.
We believe there is a close connection between scenario
thinking and surfacing mental models. Our mental models, beliefs and
assumptions can be expected to influence our efforts to think about the future
and develop alternative scenarios about how the future might unfold for us. At
the same time, scenario thinking can stretch our thinking about emerging
changes and opportunities that the future might hold for us, and in the
process, alter our beliefs and assumptions.
A recent article, Effects of Scenario Planning on
Participant Mental Models appearing in the European Journal of Training and
Development, by Margaret B, Glick, etal, provides evidence that, in fact,
scenario thinking and planning can change individual mental models.
They began their research with the understanding that
scenario thinking and planning, typically conducted in groups, naturally lends
itself to group dialogue, conversation and decision-making. They note that it
is well argued in a variety of scenario planning resources that one key outcome
of this activity is to change the way participants think about an issue or
problem and thus to change the participants mental models about it.
According to the authors, because scenario thinking provides
this opportunity for group interaction, participation in scenario thinking and
planning can also encourage the development of shared mental models, resulting
in leadership teams with a more cohesive, congruent view of the organization
and its potential futures. Further they suggest that the ability to shift
mental models may lead to more innovative and creative thinking which can drive
many organizational improvement initiatives. They conclude that scenario
planning offers a unique way to help leaders learn and thus change and improve
their mental models.
Interested in Enhancing The Capacity
Of Your Board For Strategic And Generative Governance?
We offer a number of training and consulting programs to
help you do this. These offerings will provide a practical introduction to
strategic and generative thinking and offer concrete ways to apply this
approach in your board. As a result of these programs, you will:
- Gain
knowledge of the Governance As Leadership framework with emphasis on
strategic and generative mode thinking;
- Grasp
the implications of strategic and generative thinking for the design and
conduct of future board, committee and staff meetings;
- Leave
with a toolkit of activities, methods, and practices for incorporating
strategic and generative thinking into the ongoing work of your board and
committee structure;
- Develop
an initial action plan to apply these tools in the coming year
Resources You Can Use Now:
In the meantime, here are some excellent resources on the
subjects of surfacing mental models and scenario thinking and planning in the
nonprofit sector:
