p.44 since the level of uncertainty in turbulent environments is not predictable,
planned courses of action must be oriented towards values and ideals giving sense and coherence in a commonly agreed
upon direction.
p.51 Checkland also challenged the assumption that human activity is goal-seeking. Influenced by Geoffrey
Vickers's work, he adopted the premise that the maintenance and constant balancing of relationships in a system was
a more fruitful basis for examining problem-solving behaviour in organizations.
p.167 Scholars have begun to search for effective responses that organizations might mobilize to... remain
resilient. In short, resilience, along with agility, has become essential for absorbing and responding to disruptive change.
p.172 Complexity theory tells us that whole systems with dense connections among
the parts exhibit behaviours that cannot be predicted from understanding the parts and their direct interactions...
The tight connectivity of complex systems increases the likelihood that a disruption in one system or part of a system
may jump a system boundary and produce 'synchronous failure'... or a cascading series of
unexpected events
p.220 It is now almost 25 years since Pierre Wack (1985a,
1985b) wrote his two seminal articles reflecting on his experience of scenario planning. He was arguing that planning
should be based on an understanding of predetermined elements rather than best guesses. Wack's thinking was... based on...
a sound understanding of the reality that we cannot always see. The challenge is to make the hidden visible, and
the knowable known and understandable.
p.284-285 Scenarios can be considered a method with which to engage some aspect of reality... It appears
to us scenario methods, like other practitioners' crafts, lie largely outside the canons of classic or social science.
p.291 One day, complexity theory may teach us that the story of systems and/or fields at an actual
bifurcation point can only be told in retrospect - that strategizing around such a point prospectively is impossible.
Consider the role of scenarios at such a point: they might be able to take plausible bifurcations
into account in advance, but not be able to predict which road the system will actually take at the bifurcation since
this is irreducible uncertainty and therefore unknowable.
