As its name suggests, the future reality tree is a tool for visualizingand predicting the future.. The future reality tree is a tool that helps us do so, and has the important added bene
Trang 1a few meetings of the local IMA (Institute of Management Accountants)breakfast club, which was a special interest group studying activity-basedcosting.
I also used the transition tree as a learning tool for myself After thesession, I reviewed the tree and identified where I thought the presentationcould have been improved Either by cutting injections because the effectsthey were meant to cause had already existed, or by adding clarity toothers, to ensure smoother transitions This process has helped me do a
Figure 6.11
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better job when speaking, because I use each event and the transitiontree associated with it as a personal learning opportunity
Please note the direction of the arrows when you read this tree(Figure 6.12) The bottom of the tree is at the top of the page Get in thehabit of looking for the direction of the arrows rather than where entitiesare located physically on a page or computer screen
As you read through the tree, practice your use of the categories oflegitimate reservation Wherever you have a question with an entity orrelationship, make the changes that are necessary for the relationships to
be valid What assumptions must I have made, that perhaps aren’t ulated? What assumptions are you making when you find yourself indisagreement? What must have existed, that may not be spelled out clearly
artic-on the tree, that enabled the presentatiartic-on to be a success?
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Figure 6.12a
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Figure 6.12b
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Figure 6.12c
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Figure 6.12d
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Figure 6.12e
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Figure 6.13
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Future Reality Tree
You choose, you live the consequences Every yes, every no,maybe, creates the school you call your personal experience
Richard Bach, 1994Every single decision we make, every single action we take, will changesomething in the future It doesn’t matter whether that future is just amoment away or whether that future is years from now The change might
be small enough that it’s barely noticeable, or so large that an entirecivilization is affected
As its name suggests, the future reality tree is a tool for visualizingand predicting the future But, you may say, the future is unpredictable!True A butterfly flapping its wings in China may cause entire weatherpatterns to change in North America six months from now
Yet don’t we attempt to predict the future with some degree of accuracyevery day? You set your alarm clock before you go to bed at night,predicting that it will ring at the appointed time and predicting that as aresult, you will wake up in time to do whatever it is you will do thatday You decide to hire a particular job candidate because you predictthat she will fit into the company culture and perform the tasks of thejob with a high degree of proficiency You decide not to hire a particularjob candidate because you believe that bringing that person up to speed
on your technology will take an inordinate amount of time Your companydevelops a new marketing strategy, predicting that as the strategy isimplemented, market share will increase, along with profitability YouSL1019ch07frame Page 109 Friday, June 23, 2006 9:34 AM
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bring a gift home for your spouse, predicting that he or she will be happy
as a result You put your young child in “time out” for 10 minutes,predicting that as a result, she’ll stop the inappropriate behavior Professorspredict that students will learn as a result of implementing their lessonplans Sales professionals predict they will “close” business when theydeploy their sales skills and plans A manager is afraid to enforce a requirednew behavior in his plant, because he fears the workers will retaliate Achild is afraid to raise her hand in class because she thinks she’ll lookstupid and her friends will make fun of her
Yes, we are predicting the future all the time Sometimes, we do soquite inaccurately Always we do so quite incompletely All too often, ifwe’d have just thought about it a little bit, we could have pr edictedbetter — more accurately and more completely The future reality tree is
a tool that helps us do so, and has the important added benefit of helping
us learn more about our changing systems as we go
Future reality trees are sufficient cause diagrams that contain fourdistinctive parts, which are labeled in Figure 7.1
A Injections are always entry points to the tree (see Chapter 4).Injections are entities that do not exist in the system’s currentreality, and are distinguished from other entities by their squaredcorners Why the term injection? Think of getting a shot in thearm The idea is that once you’ve received that injection, the illnesswill be cured, and the ugly symptoms will disappear Once aninjection (idea) is implemented in reality, the effects predictedshould emerge as a result
B Entities that do currently exist in the system’s reality In a futurereality tree, this type of entity will usually be entry points and istypically not found in the body of the tree
C Entities that do not yet exist in the system When entities thatcurrently exist (B) are combined with injections (A), the (C) entitieswill (at least they’re predicted to) exist in the future
D Reinforcing loops are often placed in future reality trees, as a means
to create patterns of sustained and continuous improvement
• The key to creating the desired future reality is implementingthe injections
When to Use the Future Reality Tree
Any time it’s important to put some thought into the web ofeffect–cause–effect connections among one or more ideas and the predictableSL1019ch07frame Page 110 Friday, June 23, 2006 9:34 AM
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inevitable consequences (effects) of those ideas, it’s time to reach for thefuture reality tree tool Some general applications of the future reality treeinclude:
• When you haven’t yet decided what to implement, in order tocreate a change
• When you want to explore the potential effects of an idea, beforeimplementing it
Figure 7.1
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• When you want to see if, in fact, your idea can actually achievewhat it’s meant to achieve
• When you want to see what else to implement, in addition to aninitial idea, in order for all objectives to be achieved
• When you think that an idea might have undesirable effects tended, problematic consequences)
(unin-More specifically, future reality trees are useful when applied in ations such as:
situ-• When a policy decision is going to be made in one department,
it might be a good idea to try to understand what the effects ofthat decision will be on that department, other departments, cus-tomers, employees, suppliers, stockholders, and other stakeholders
• When that which you want to implement has the likelihood ofrequiring the organization’s resources, such as money, people,time, or technology
• When a government wants to add, change, or remove a law, andthe possibility exists that the law could have effects on other aspects
The Process
The future reality tree process consists of three main steps
1 Define the basis for the tree
a Identify an injection (idea)
b List the objectives (pro’s) of the injection
c List potential undesirable consequences (con’s) of the injection
2 Describe the effect–cause–effect relationships
a Using sufficient cause thinking, connect the injection to theobjectives
b Using sufficient cause thinking, seek and block potential sirable consequences of the injection
unde-3 Enhance the solution
a Predict additional effects
b Add reinforcing loops
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After I go through each of these steps in detail, I will provide someexamples of real people’s real future reality trees
Do you have any ideas that you’re contemplating right now? Pick one,and do the tree while we go through the steps that follow
1 Defi ne the basis for the tr ee Every future reality tree beginswith the following three elements The three elements combinedanswer the question, So what’s the big idea, and what do I/weexpect it will accomplish? The order in which you establish themdepends on the situation It’s OK for any of the three to be yourstarting point, but don’t move to step two until you’ve defined allthree elements that comprise the basis for the tree
I often find it helpful to give myself the opportunity to “tell thestory” before I worry about specifically articulating the entities thatcomprise the basis for the tree Once I’ve scratched out a paragraph
or two that describes what I’m expecting, I then move on to thediscipline prescribed by the process This allows me the freedom
to derive the benefits from both free-form thinking and technicalcorrectness
a Identify an initial injection (idea) What is it that you aregoing to consider implementing? Remember that the injection is
an entity and should be written as a complete sentence Writingthe injection in the present tense helps you mentally projectyourself into that future state As you progress with the tree,using the present tense makes the process of testing assumptions(with the categories of legitimate reservation) easier Initial injec-tions may come from several potential sources, depending onwhat led you to creating the tree in the first place:
• The evaporating cloud process
• A brainstorming session
• An idea that a colleague has presented to you
• An idea that just comes into your head (have you ever had
a fantastic idea in the middle of the night, or while in theshower?)
• A suggestion from your boss
• A suggestion from a family member
• Thin airHere are some examples, along with the ways in which they’d
be verbalized and drawn as initial injections All thr ee areexamples of injections — ideas that somebody wanted to makehappen Most often, the idea — the injection (whether it’s yours,SL1019ch07frame Page 113 Friday, June 23, 2006 9:34 AM
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a colleague’s, or someone else’s idea that has culminated in anopinion from you) — is the cognitive starting point of the futurereality tree
• In an attempt to stun the competition,
cap-ture a larger market share, and increase itsprofits, a firm that manufactures printedcircuit boards decides to offer a three-daylead time for prototype jobs
• A candidate in the 1996 presidential
elec-tion campaign suggests that an board, flat tax should replace the currentincome tax structure in the United States
across-the-• You think it would be a great idea to go
on a Caribbean cruise with your spouse
You both have been working hard, and justthe thought of sun, fun, and ocean arealready making you feel good
b.List the objectives (pr o’s) of the
injec-tion People come up with new ideas andthen believe in them because they trust thatgood things will happen once their ideasturn into reality What are the predictedpositive effects of the injection? What doesthe person (or group) who has the ideabelieve will happen as a result of having the idea implemented?Even if you believe your colleague’s idea is a lousy one, andall you can think of initially are the reasons the idea shouldn’t
be implemented, it is important that you take a few moments
to contemplate why they believe it’s a good idea Remember —it’s all in the assumptions, and you are making them, too! Stateeach objective as an entity and verbalize in pr esent tenseter ms
• The printed circuit board company was already a valuedsource of supply for high-volume orders However, they knewthat their customers also often went through a somewhatpainful and costly process when launching new designs andproducts There are many small shops that specialize inturning around prototypes of new product designs quickly,and they command high prices for doing so This manufac-turer believed that by offering a three-day lead time for thesehigher-priced prototype jobs, it would increase its profitability
It also believed it would increase customer loyalty and capture
Figure 7.2
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a larger share of the market, because it would be offeringone-stop shopping to those clients, who would choose tokeep their business with the company that worked with them
to perfect the design The management team may have balized the objectives as follows:
ver-• Customers are gladly paying X% over “standard price” forthree-day turnaround products
• We are enjoying significantly higher profits
• We own a larger share of the market
• They may verbalize the above more definitively by statingsomething like, “We own 80% of the market for prototypework in northern California.”
• The presidential candidate suggests that the across-the-board,flat tax he is promoting would be more fair than the currentstructure, would generate more income for the country, needmuch less administration on the part of the IRS, and thussave money by vastly downsizing the IRS If he had prepared
a future reality tree, he may have stated the objectives of hisidea as follows:
• The country enjoys a fair tax structure
• The flat tax system is easy to administer
• The IRS has X number of employees
• The country is spending $X on administering its incometax system
• Can you think of the reasons why a couple might want to
go on a Caribbean cruise? List those reasons here, and thenturn them into entity statements
Another situation that falls into this category is when youfollow a current reality tree with a future reality tree (See
Chapter 8 for a complete discussion of the Current Reality Tree.)When you have used the current reality tree to identify a coreproblem, you have created a model of the interrelated, unde-sirable aspects of a system The current reality tree is describingthe system (or at least the part of the system) that you wouldrather live without The future reality tree is used to describethe system that you do want So, you must verbalize the entitiesthat will, in the future reality, replace the undesirable entities
of the current reality One way to go about defining these entitiesSL1019ch07frame Page 115 Friday, June 23, 2006 9:34 AM
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is to ask, for each of the pertinent (r eselected) undesirableentities, What is its opposite? What would I rather see in itsplace?
For instance, let’s say that you are a university professor andyou have prepared a current reality tree to determine the coreproblem of your classes One of the reselected undesirableentities is, On average, my classes suffer from a 40% dr opoutrate within the first month You would ask yourself specifically,what would you rather be experiencing in the future? Whatwould you consider to be its opposite? You might decide thatthe entity of the future will be, My classes enjoy a 0% dropoutrate You might decide to verbalize the entity of the future as,
On average, my classes have a 5% or lower dropout rate Or youmight decide that it should be, The dropout rate of my classes
is steadily improving The right answer is the entity you decideyou want to create in your future
A list of objectives may be the starting point of a future reality,rather than an injection You may know the good things you’dlike to see in the future, but haven’t yet turned that list of goodthings into any sort of interconnected vision As I write, I am
in the first step of defining, with one of our clients, the type ofrelationship our firms will have in the future In order to createour vision and then reach agreement on what the relationshipwill actually be, we are beginning with a future reality tree Bothparties are submitting five objectives that they want to see as aresult of the relationship
Do not compr omise your objectives! People often lowertheir sights because they assume, before they even allow them-selves to explore a little further, that they won’t be able toachieve what they’d really like to achieve Don’t let your “can’tdo” preconceptions block you from envisioning great things.Use the future reality tree to create the vision to which youaspire Address the obstacles with the prerequisite tree, andyou’ll see it’s much easier than you think to r each for andactually capture the stars!
c List potential undesirable consequences (con’s) of theinjection Now comes the part of the process in which most
of us really excel, especially when the injection is someone else’sidea Our task here is to identify everything that might go wrong
as a result of implementing the injection The famous, “Yes,but…” I know you’ve heard those two dreaded words, and it’sSL1019ch07frame Page 116 Friday, June 23, 2006 9:34 AM