Two years ago I gave a presentation at a scenario planning retreat on San Juan Island. The keynote speaker was Chantel IIbury from South Africa who wrote a book entitled 'mind of a fox'. I spoke quite a bit with Chantel over the weekend retreat, and learned to appreciate the kind of work she has been doing, mostly in the business community. The basic premise of her (and Cle Sunter's) book stems from an essay by Isaiah Berlin or perhaps earlier by the Greek poet Archilochus who wrote 'the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.' If we think about future conditions in multiple, the way scenario planners do, than it is not about adapting to a probable future condition, for example the downscaled impacts of a high emissions scenario, but rather to plausible future conditions (emphasis on the <s>). This alternative approach has been brought up frequently by several academics and practitioners alongside the challenges of decision making under uncertainty in response to climate change. Planners however, have historically been very good hedgehogs - in fact the entire concept of a master plan, or zoning regulations, are characteristically 'hedgehog-like'.
the question i have is how can planners train to be more 'fox-like'? I don't just mean what types of tools (i.e. adaptive management) are out there - I believe it is something deeper, its in how we think about the future. I am thinking of outlining a paper that follows the prescriptions of 'Susskind, Lawrence and Connie Ozawa (1984). Mediated Negotiation in the Public Sector: The Planner as Mediator. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 4(1). Pp. 5-15.' but instead focuses on The Planner as a Fox. and explores some of the implicit training of a planner and alternative models (in other disciplines) that are more geared towards 'improvisation'. And if you think this blog has something to do with Wheeler's coming to class to do - yes, I was re-inspired by Embracing Chaos. Though I must admit that this research idea was one of my earliest ideas coming into the program. I want to interview professors in different schools and ask them about how their discipline treats uncertainty. But I was thinking about this in the past as more theoretical, and now I actually think I want to focus on the curricula itself.
- what do you think, is this interesting to you?
This is super interesting to me, and I love how our ideas seem to flow in similar paths (synchronicity?!) I have been thinking about this a lot, both in relationship to how planners and decision-makers need a new (or at least different than they currently seem to have) tool kit that reflects many of the things we teach in MGA negotiations and CBA, such as active listening (to people, and to situations), awareness, adaptability, ability to create value, etc. I love the idea of modeling off of the Susskind and Ozawa "Planners as Mediators" idea to think about "Planners as foxes." While I think there are many situations in which being more of a hedgehog is preferable to being a fox (e.g., see Jim Collins' take on this in the book "Good to Great" about businesses), I totally agree that we need to train planners to be foxes, to do planning rather than plan. We will use the great quote that Wheeler uses in his book to that effect. Let's plan out this paper soon and plan to deploy this fall!!
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