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Ethos Issue 7, Jan 2010
Thinking About the Future:
What the Public Service Can Do
Peter Ho
The challenge for us is how we can
find a better approach to anticipating
strategic surprises. Let me outline five
key ideas for our Public Service. First, we need to acknowledge that
we will always face limitations in
anticipating strategic surprises. Even in
the most forward-looking government,
leaders and officials will have their own
mental models and cognitive biases,
and seek confirmation for them. Being
aware that we have biases is already a
step forward. When we started scenario
planning nearly two decades ago, we
were not as sensitised to cognitive
biases as we are today. Knowing what
we know today, we can take a number
of deliberate steps to compensate for our
consistency biases.
We should take steps to inject much
more real diversity into our strategic
conversations. In the United States, the
Defense Science Board is commissioned
by the Department of Defense to consider
strategic issues. Besides bringing experts,
academics and professionals to the
table, the Board sometimes includes in
its discussions people with no defence
background at all—artists, actors,
musicians. But there is method in
this seeming madness. By gathering
a diverse group of people, the Board
hopes to garner insights that would not
be achievable from a team comprising
only professionals and experts with
similar backgrounds.
In Singapore, we probably have more
think-tanks per capita than anywhere
else in the world. They ought to be tapped
more systematically, because they can
be a rich source of fresh insights that
can better inform policymaking and
planning. Conversing with think-tanks,
like engaging in public consultation,
should be seen as part of the effort to
operate in a complex, inter-connected
and non-linear world, in which insight
and good ideas are not the monopoly
of government.
Networked government does not just
mean networking among government
agencies. It means networking with
individuals and organisations outside
government as well, locally and
internationally. It is through such ways
that we can avoid the trap of groupthink.
We should actively organise our strategic
conversations to keep an open mind,
by encouraging a range of perspectives
that do not conform to our own mental
models, and by challenging our thinking
with contrarian and diverse views. This
does not mean we must agree with every
view. But we should give each a hearing
so as to honestly and objectively test our
own ideas.
Second, we should recognise that
the cost of responding to some strategic
surprises can be just too high politically,
especially if governments will be
perceived to be allocating an inordinate
amount of resources to prepare for
eventualities that may never happen.
For instance, there is a possibility of the
earth being destroyed by a planet-killing
asteroid, but this is probably not a risk
that we (in Singapore) can meaningfully
prepare for, given the prohibitive costs
today. We cannot eliminate every risk,
but we need to manage them in such a
way that strategies and their premiums
are not front-loaded.
Third, we have to calibrate strategic
thinking processes around the
psychological and practical challenges
of policy implementation. In addressing
these "downstream" issues, methods
matter, but psychology matters as well.
We will have to harness the relative
strengths of the scenario planning and
RAHS to mitigate issues of cognitive
dissonance and consistency biases.
Fourth, it is important to engage and
communicate with decision-makers.
Their support and active involvement
are crucial in achieving better decisions
and strategic outcomes. For a message
to resonate strongly with decision-makers,
the work should be presented
in distilled forms, with sufficient
detail, using creative expressions and
relevant, compelling graphics or visual
aids. In addition, complex scenarios
and strategies can be broken down into
smaller "bite-sized" pieces. These are
more easily digested by decision-makers
who, in turn, are more likely to recall
and apply these insights.
Fifth, we have to recognise that even
as we endeavour to avoid being surprised,
we should still expect to be surprised.
To mitigate this, governments should
build some resilience into the system.
Among other things, resilience is the
ability to address issues with multiple
possible trajectories. It is also the ability
to adjust to rapid and turbulent change.
It is going about our daily business while
operating in an environment of near-continuous
flux.
Resilience will be an increasingly important driver of competitive advantage in the future. In a world of growing volatility and uncertainty, our approach to policymaking needs to go beyond an emphasis on efficiency, towards building resilience. Indeed, lean systems that are purely focused on only efficiency are unlikely to have sufficient resources to deal with shocks. Of course, this is not an argument for establishing bloated and sluggish bureaucracies. If there is to be "fat", it must be directed to specific purposes.
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