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By Root 3150 0

” in our chosen field of operation. For example, Sony didn’t sit on their Diskman® audio players or Trinitron® televisions after they stormed the market with them. They immediately began working on an MP3 player and a flat-screen video display. That’s being proactive. The second, and less obvious, feedback loop takes us through Step 1 again. This is likely to happen much less frequently than the other feedback loop. This particular loop implies that a complete re-examination (and perhaps redetermination) of goals, critical success factors, and the external environment is required. In other words, it’s possible that dramatic change in the external environment of such magnitude has precipitated a complete redesign of strategy. What kind of event might this be? How about an economic depression or some catastrophic event such as a world war? Take Toyota, for example (Holley, 1997). Originally (before World War II), it was a manufacturer of textile machines. By the end of that war, its surviving manufacturing base had been completely converted to automotive vehicles, at the insistence of the Japanese Imperial Army. That was a conversion forced on Toyota by circumstances. However, by 1997 Toyota was anticipating that within 100 years the automobile segment of their business would constitute no more than 10 percent of the total. The rest would be in low-cost prefabricated housing and information systems. These are strategic shifts—proactive ones.

The Role of the LTP in the CMM

How does the LTP fit in with the CMM? The preceding description of the CMM fairly begs for a structured tool to make Steps 1 through 5 happen. That tool is the LTP. Figure 19-10 shows how the LTP energizes the CMM.

The IO Map is used to establish the benchmark of expected or desired performance. For an organization that already understands that it’s not yet where it wants to be, the articulation of the goal and CSFs in the IO establish a “stake in the ground”—the destination marker that determines where the organization wants to be at the end of the strategy’s time horizon. Supporting necessary conditions represent the high-level functional milestones that must be achieved to reach the goal. Inherent in the development of the IO Map are research, observations, and information gathered about the external environment.

With the IO Map as the entering argument (desirable state), a CRT10 is constructed to depict the relationship between reality and the end results depicted in the IO Map. The resulting gaps are reflected as undesirable effects (UDEs). The construction of the body of the tree, down to the critical root causes, embodies the synthesis (or orientation) of newly acquired knowledge about the external environment with experience, expertise, custom, tradition, etc.—the existing paradigm, if you will. The CRT produces the logical causes of the gaps (UDEs), without regard to whether they are politically acceptable to consider changing.

Especially in the latter situation, the transformation created in Step 3 is facilitated by the use of Evaporating Clouds (ECs), which are specifically designed to resolve intractable dilemmas such as political feasibility. The output of the ECs, and the beginning of this transformation process, is one or more injections that represent breakthrough ideas. These ideas become initiatives, or new projects that will provide the impetus to move the organization from where it is to where it wants to be. Some of these initiatives (changes) will undoubtedly be externally focused. Others will be inwardly directed.

The Future Reality Tree (FRT) takes these initiatives, or ideas, and logically structures them to verify that, in fact, they will move the organization toward its ultimate goal. The reflection of that movement is in the narrowing, or complete closure, of the gaps identified in Step 2. This narrowing/closure is represented as a desired effect (DE) in the FRT. Besides logically verifying that the initiatives created will, in fact, advance the organization toward its ultimate goal, the FRT will include the “ferreting