Week 7 – Scenario Planning

Develop ideas of where I could incorporate the use of scenario planning in my

organization.

According to Scenario planning is a method for learning about the future by understanding the nature and impact of the most uncertain and important driving forces affecting our world. It is a group process which encourages knowledge exchange and development of mutual deeper understanding of central issues important to the future of your business. (Martin Börjessm, 2007)

We share and envision scenarios in our working organization.  The ability to envision and anticipate different future possibilities seems to be a key capability for managing uncertainty.  Uncertainty refers to a state that we have limited knowledge and it is impossible to exactly describe the existing state or a future outcome.

As our organization is a community college of a local university, we face the challenge of our college’ marketing plan and students intake at 2012.  

The 2012 double cohort year presents an admission challenge for our organization with two cohorts of about HKALE 31,000 candidates and about 71,000 HKDSE candidates.  The HKSAR government has recently launched an E-application platform for current year secondary students to submit applications between February and May 2012 to meet the challenge event.  Our organization is one of the major supporters of this service and top management do expect the stage of a further new building being completed in August.  I would like to share my ideas developed regarding the scenario planning steps as follows:

Scenario planning steps

1.        Identify focal issue

Our college has to face the uncertainty of our new academic building ready to be used at coming semester A of 2012.  Does our college have enough space and facilities to accommodate for the new intake and old intake CCCU students at current year 2012. Our marketing campaign and admission arrangements will be adjusted to tie in with this development.

2.  Search for driving forces &  3. Find uncertainties

The four driving forces are stated as follows:

n   Political forces

n   Demographic forces

n   Cultural forces

n   Technological forces

I would like to select three drivers out of four that are both important and the most uncertain in our case:

(1)  Political forces

Due to the successful case of Shue Yan college being recognized as private university status by government, more new private universities will be set up in new coming years.  The new elected Chief Executive may have his own idea about the education policy.  It will lead to a change of education policy on sub-degree and degree programmes.

(2)     Demographic forces

Due to the open door policy adopted by HK government, many mainland Chinese would like to stay in Hong Kong for further study and job finding.  They may be interested to take the associate degree or higher diploma programs to upgrade their academic qualification.

(3)       Cultural Forces

Mainland Chinese and Hong Kong students may have variance in their cultural problems like language, learning style, living style and point of view.

(4)       Technological forces

Web-based learning or e-learning programs will be popular and common at sub-degree and degree programs.  This will attract more students either new and old cohort students to enroll those programs.

4. Formulate scenario logic

l   Demand of enough venue spaces for two cohorts students;

l   Demand of teaching and facilities resources;

l   Demand of extra places for associate degree and degree programs.

5.  Strategic analysis

(a)  Review last year’s results.

(b)  Update the teaching and administrative staff on our latest efforts in reinforcing our college brand. 

(c)  The flow of admission process will be discussed at the staff briefing.
(d)  Discuss the added features in the college’s computer system.

(e)  Checking of applicants’ English language qualifications and other academic qualifications. 

Our top management does plan and expect the new academic building to be ready for use at coming new semester in September.  However, they do have alternative plan to rent other colleges’ buildings for the temporary use of lectures or tutorial rooms for the new and old intake students.

Week 7 - Scenario Planning

Develop ideas of where you could incorporate the use of Scenario Planning in your organization.

Recently one of the hottest topics is the rapidly increased of amount of children with non-local parents are both not the citizen of HK. It brings a great impact to educational system due to the different background, culture and needs from them to children with local parents. Therefore, my school has to figure out the change and prepare well for the impact.

1. Identify focal issue

The focal issue is the amount of children with non-local parents is increasing while the amount of children with local parents is decreasing. The culture, mother language, family support, pre-school education level, etc, are different, so that the schools must prepare for the change of needs of their students.

2. Search for driving force

Here I try to take an outside-in perspective method to forecast the change of my school. For the contextual environment, most of the children with non-local parents have characteristics below:

• Their mother languages are Putonghua;
• Most of them are not grow in HK, they will live with their parents before they go to primary school or even secondary school. That mean their culture is different from children grow in HK.
• Their pre-school education level is low.
• Their English level is low.
• Their family support is low when they study in HK, most of them are guardian by the relatives or even domestic workers.
• Most of their families are grass-root level. It is because the rich families can send their children by investment immigration afterward.

However, the curriculum and school supporting resources is mainly design for children with local parents in most schools. Furthermore, the change also leads to increased of learning divergence in classroom and thus affects the education quality.

For the secondary school education, the impact will come in 6 years (and this year in primary school). That mean we have 6 years for preparation.

My school is a Band 2 Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) Secondary School in Hong Kong Island. My students need to pay school fees so that it is expected that the ratio of children with non-local parents to local parents with not increased rapidly. In addition, the students with non-local parents in my school are usually rich and with good education level. Their characteristics are:

• Their mother languages are Putonghua;
• Most of them are not grow in HK, that mean they have different culture with HK students.
• Their English level is low.
• Their family support in HK is low. Most of them are guardian by the relatives or even domestic workers.

3. Find uncertainties

The main uncertainty in this issue in my school is only the growth rate of amount of children with non-local parents. It is difficult to predict that how many students from mainland China will come to HK by investment immigration; especially people in mainland China are become richer and richer. I predicted that there are about 1/3 of students are come from mainland China, but the worst case is more than 2/3. Therefore the required resources and policy needs are quite different in the worst cases.

Another uncertainty is the quality of students from mainland China. At now the quality of them is a little bit better than the local students in my school. But it will become better or worse later.

4. Formulate scenario logic and 5. Strategic analysis

Among the uncertainty above, the scenario and the strategies require can be express as the graph below:

Week 7 - Scenario Planning

Scenario Planning Activity

-   Develop ideas of where you could incorporate the use of Scenario Planning in your organization

Scenario Planning is the part of strategic planning that relates to the tools and technologies for managing the uncertainties and discontinuities of change in the future (Ringland, 2006).

To my understanding, the uncertainties do not like risk in which we can “calculate” the chance of occurrence of a particular event. The uncertainties mean we know nothing about the outcomes and consequences.

As I am teaching associate degree programs at community college, I think I’m interested much about the “survival” of associate degree programs in future due to different driving forces in the environment. May I share herewith my ideas developed according to the five steps Scenario Planning Process as below.

1. Identify focal issue

·   my organization has to think the uncertainties about the demand of associate degree programs in Hong Kong and how this will impact on our organization.

2. Search for driving forces / 3. Find uncertainties

·     Political Forces - you may know the new Chief Executive of HK will be on board in July 2012.  This may indicate to us that the education policy may undergo a change again. Currently, the demand of associate degree programs is high because of the double cohorts of students from DSE and HKAL. But this may no longer be true in the future. The government always encourages the establishment of new private universities. This also impacts on the “survival” of associate degree programs.

·  Demographic Forces - now more and more Mainland China students are interested in studying in Hong Kong.  So associate degree programs may be their choice.

·    Cultural Forces - although Mainland China students are interested in associate degree programs, we have to manage the cultural difference problems, like language, learning style and ability.

·    Technological Forces - with the advanced technology, more and more distance learning programs will open as they become more suited to students’ learning style, e.g. providing convenience to students. 

·  Competition - it’s expected that more and more private universities will be established soon.  This definitely puts associate degree program in a less favourable position.

4. Formulate scenario logic

• Demand of associate degree program increases because of change in government policy on education
• demand of associate degree program drops sharply
• demand of associate degree program remains stable, due to the intake of Mainland China students
• associate degree programs shut down at all

  

5. Strategic analysis

Possible course of actions to address the scenarios:

• lobbing government in respect of education policy
• proactively doing promotion in Mainland China
• “transform” college into private university
• open new part-time programs
• collaboration with overseas universities for top degree programs
• teaching staff may be made redundant in case the demand of associate degree programs drops

You may find interested in watching the 9-phases for proper scenario planning analysis.

Or else, you may look at the "full version" of "Executive Education - Scenario Planning and Decision Making by Dr. Paul Shoemaker".

Week 7 - Scenario Planning

In this week, I will be looking into education, specifically into my organization using scenario planning approach. Despite the imaginative nature of scenario planning, there are systematic ways in carrying out the process. Below is one of the approaches to accomplish the process.

(Source: http://www.gbn.com/images/scenario_thinking_process.gif)

Focus

I am looking into the development of my organization in the next 10 years.

Dynamics

Contextual environment

• Changing of government official
  The current session of government will end its service this year. The new Chief Executive as well as the composition of government officials are yet to be decided. The vision and the direction in education could be changing dramatically.
• Increasing number of children with non-local parents
  With an increasing birth rate of children with non-local parents, the composition of student population will be changing. There could be more Mandarin-speaking students in Hong Kong, and the culture of students could vary a lot.

Working environment

• Advance of technology in e-Books and e-Resources
  e-Learning has been proposed for some years. The evolution of new products and new technologies can change the habitat in education a lot. Students may be able to afford an e-Book by their own, enabling them to learn from multimedia elements and taking notes in electronic format.

My organization

• Changing of principal and vice-principals
  Our vice-principal will retire next year, and our principal will be retiring in 3 years. With the change in head personnel in my school, the vision and direction could be changing. Moreover, even though new management may be in place in the next few years, they might not be very much familiar with our work now. More jobs will be taken over by middle managers to avoid problems during handover.
• Opting out from the through-train mode
  Under the through-train mode, our school is required to admit all students from our affiliated primary school who are intended to come. The intake of students has become worse, as the more capable ones are always looking for better schools, while the less capable ones tend to take our school as a shelter. Last year, we decided to opt out from the through-train mode, and the primary 1 students of this session will be the last batch of through-train students. In 10 years, our school will be able to admit outsiders again.

Scenario Framework

Among those uncertainties above, I would be taking the increasing number of children with non-local parent and the opting out from the through-train mode to be the dynamics to be studied in this section.

When looking into the increase in birth rate of children with non-local parents, it brings impacts to education in Hong Kong. These children may be admitting to local schools or having their education in mainland China. If they decide to study in mainland China, the number of students may drop, and there may be school closing down due to insufficient number of students. On the other hand, if they decide to study in Hong Kong, more social benefits should be imposed in school. Moreover, the language and cultural background may change.

At the same time, we have terminate the through-train mode with our affiliated primary school. It could be positive as we can control the quality of the student intake. However, we do not have a guarantee number of students for each session. We need to work harder in order to raise the school's reputation, so as to minimize the negative effects from this change.

Insight and Foresight

In view of the above study, it is likely that the student intake will drop in both quality and quantity in the next 10 years. We may need to plan ahead for the change.

More References:

IEA Training Manual - Module 6

http://www.unep.org/ieacp/iea/training/manual/module6/1255.aspx

How Scenario planning is good

http://www.scenarioselling.com/?page_id=59