p.22 Learning begins with perception. Neither an individual nor a company will even begin
to learn without having seen something of interest in the environment. That is why surviving and thriving in a volatile world
requires, first of all, management that is sensitive to its company's environment... Only after seeing that something
is about to change (or has already begun to change)... will management be ready to deal with the effects of that change.
p.26 In the heat of restructuring and reengineering, it's often easy to lose sight of the purpose
of the change: to meet the changing pressures from the outside world.
p.27 Continuous, fundamental changes in the external world - a turbulent business environment - require
continuous management for change in the company. This means continuous fundamental changes in the internal structures of the
company.
p.28 Why do companies fail to see the signals of change ahead of time?
p.36 We will not perceive a signal from the outside world unless it is relevant to an option for
the future that we have already worked out in our imaginations. The more "memories of the future" we develop, the
more open and receptive we will be to signals from the outside world.
p.36 perception is not simply a matter of collecting information... Perception, to a human being, is an
active engagement with the world... Perception requires the deliberate effort by management groups... to "visit their
future" and develop time paths and options. Otherwise, the observations and data that one has collected will have no meaning.
p.38 By reverting to predictions as a standard way of thinking about the future, the corporate powers of
perception remain greatly reduced.
p.46 As Pierre Wack, the leader of the scenario team, never ceased to explain, "Scenarios must be
relevant." ...scenarios... are tools for foresight... whose purpose is not a prediction
or a plan, but a change in the mindset of the people who use them.
p.46 By telling stories about the future in the context of our own perceptions of the present, we open our
eyes for developments which in the normal course of daily life are indeed "unthinkable." Relevant scenarios... help the manager...
scout the lay of the land and see a wider scenery. Scenarios bring new views and ideas about the landscape into the
heads of managers.
p.47 Peter Schwartz... suggests that the budding futurist learn to look at the fringes. Talk to people "with
whom you disagree deeply, but can talk amicably." Read widely
p.48 In the big, wide world in which Shell (or any company) operates, there are
always many driving forces for change, interacting with each other in a bewildering blizzard of mutual causes and effects...
well-crafted scenarios typically combine a number of forces together into a story that seems simple, but is actually quite
sophisticated.
p.48 In the interaction among driving forces, there is always a range of possible outcomes.
p.50-51 Scenarios act as a signal-to-noise filter. The driving forces sharpen... Nearly always, if the scenario
development has been conducted well, the results will be disturbing.
p.53 Ironically enough, a deemphasis on prediction seems to lead to accuracy about the future.
p.55 Only gradually did it dawn on us that decision making itself could be a learning process.
p.57 Once attuned, I could easily see for myself that decision making was a learning process.
p.59 Every act of decision making is a learning process.
p.64 All three writers [British psychologist D.W. Winnicott, American teacher/writer John Holt, and the
Media Lab's Seymour Papert] had essentially the same theme: the essence of learning is discovery through play.
p.64 Play is experimenting with a toy that the player accepts as representing his or her reality.
This makes the toy a representation of the real world with which the learner can experiment without having to fear the consequences...
Underneath all the fun there is a very serious purpose: playing with one's reality allows one to understand more of the world
we live in. To play is to learn.
Winnicott called these toys "transitional objects," because they help the child to transit
from one phase in life to the next - from one understanding of the world to another.
p.65 We know extremely well in business that play is the best method of learning.
p.71 Clearly, the computer itself was getting in the way of our primary purpose: understanding the system.
p.73 I hope I have shown, in this chapter, how the decision-making process is in fact a learning process
in any company and that there are ways to improve the speed, if not the quality, of the decisions. The more in-depth
the simulation, and the more that "play" triggers the imagination and learning, the more effective the decision-making process
seems to be.
p.73 Decisions... need interaction, intuitive reflection, and the fostering of collaborative
mental models. They need play. They need learning.
p.73 "the best way to learn is through play,"
p.74 Ultimately, if companies do not embrace the hypothesis of "accelerated learning" and
the concept of "play," they will suffer the serious, long-term effect of learning more slowly than their competitors.
p.150 Successful companies, in short, were free to go against the grain because they had been cultivating,
within themselves, a wide variety of potential activities.
p.155 You do not navigate a company to a predefined destination. You take steps, one at a time,
into an unknowable future. There are no paths, no roads ahead of us. In the final analysis, it is the walking that
beats the path.
p.157 strategy is simply the development of the organization's ability to learn. The organization's
ability to learn faster (and possibly better) than the competition becomes its most sustainable competitive advantage.
p.158 if strategy is something you do, I have little doubt in my mind that this doing actually
constitutes learning, not steering.
p.176 William Stern had written... that the basic driving force of every living system is the development
of its inherent potential.
