The "What if?" exercise (Episode One)

This new series of posts will be based on some really interesting things I learned at one of the workshops during the WBD, “Future of Logistics 2025: Global Scenarios”… and as an original way of starting, I have an acknowledgement, a disclaimer and a confession.

Acknowledgement I’d like to specially thank Dr. Heiko A. von der Gracth, who was in charge of the workshop and kindly sent me a lot of material to share with you.
Disclaimer If you started reading this and you’re not very much into logistics don’t worry, because most of the things I’ll be writing about can be perfectly adapted to any other industry.
Confession I’m not that good for finance and economic forecasts, which is one of the main reasons why I love so much the techniques I’m about to share with you.

All that being said, let’s get started! Have you by any chance heard about uncertainty in these last months? I bet you did, and a lot. Leaving aside the reasons why the current financial crisis started and what are the best ways of fixing things, I prefer to concentrate on the most tangible aspects. Like, for example, the huge number of people losing their jobs, and the also huge number of people that are afraid of losing their source of income in the near future. For instance, we cannot tell until when companies will keep firing their employees; what are those people going to do from now on; until when they will prefer to save their money instead of consuming or traveling or investing or whatever. Let’s put it in a graphic way (since I’m terrible at drawing, I borrowed some of the images from the awesome people from The Value Web):

Some things are pretty obvious: although I depicted it in a very simplistic way, the point is that there’s the feeling that we’re in a descending spiral that needs to be broken as soon as possible. But let’s face it, it is very difficult to make decisions when you don’t have any clue about how the picture is going to look in the future. On the other hand, sitting and watching what happens next -and deciding in consequence- is not an option.

How companies cope with this sort uncertainty is a huge deal. The most sophisticated forecasts have been proved wrong or, at least, many companies have come to learn that making decisions based only in forecasts is not enough. We also have decision trees, but they can also be too structured and lead to partial approaches and therefore, to decisions that don't take some important factors into consideration.

So what if we could combine the “safety” feeling that numbers -undeniably- provide, along with the methodic, logical approach to problems we can follow when we develop decision trees, and add some “softer” factors, like social tendencies, expert opinions or human perceptions? That is an informal way of describing the scenario thinking, a technique that according to well renowned journals is absolutely in these days. Want to learn some more? Come back soon for the next posts!

Something old, something new, something borrowed... something green!

Today I started a seminar on Social Responsibility at my university... funny fact: the woman that is presenting the seminar opened the class with the video I shared with you in my Limits to Growth post, which was one of the very first ones here at The Integrated Challenge.

Anyway, we discussed some basic concepts like which areas are normally taken into consideration for CSR practices, and of course the environmental impact of companies was one of the mentioned. But companies are not the only actors in society: we as individuals and consumers also influence the changes in the environment depending on our habits. So she told us about a website that calculates our impact on the envirnonment based on the way we live, and that divides the famous footprint into four categories:

• Carbon emissions, which is related to the means of transport we use, how energy efficient the appliances at our houses are, and our energy-saving habits.
• Food, which basically has to do with how local the food we buy is (besides having a positive social impact, consuming goods that are grown or produced near your community eliminates transport), with the amount of packaging involved... and believe it or not, with how often we eat meat. The exact number depends on the source, but between 20% and 25% of greenhouse gas emissions is associated with the cows that become steaks!
• Goods and services, covering usage and recycling habits of the stuff we're surrounded by.
• Housing, for aspects like thermal insulation, building and furniture materials, eco-friendlyness of cleaning products, and water saving devices.

According to your answers, the quiz estimates the amount of land and ocean area required to sustain your consumption patterns and absorb your wastes on an annual basis. After giving the results, the site provides some tips for reducing the impact for all four categories. I checked it out and decided to "borrow" the URL and share it with you; if you have some time you can take the quiz as well and tell the rest of us about your results or thoughts regarding the questions asked, the info presented or any related issue. You can find it by going to

http://www.myfootprint.org/

I hope you learn and have fun!

Inverted commas

To all of the new people joining the blog: welcome! And to the ones that have been around before: welcome again, and thanks for coming back! I finally got to attend the 12th World Bunsiness Dialogue and let me tell you that it was amazing, way better than I could have ever imagined! I met wonderful people there, had the chance to exchange ideas and experiences and had tons and tons of fun! (Are there too many exclamation marks in this first paragraph? Can you tell how excited I still am?)

Anyway, I thought about keeping the blog alive for a while after the conference, specially for sharing some things we discussed there, and for linking these topics with some new articles I'm reading... and then I thought that a nice way of starting this new phase could be by presenting some quotes I remember from the Dialogue, and that impressed me for different reasons... let's get started!

"When the storm comes some build walls, the others build windmills."

Professor Dr. Herrman Simon shared this thought with us during his presentation on Quick Solutions for Beating the Crisis and everyone just loved it! I think I'll write at least one post about his keynote because I agreed to some of the things he said, was not so sure about others... but most of all he made me think, which for me is the whole point :)

"The Stone Age did not end due to a lack of stones, and the Oil Age will not end due to lack of oil."

I'm almost sure this was said by Christian Rast, the moderator for the Resources panel, although he's not the author. I found it very very interesting, even if I think that the shortage of oil will definietely accelerate the shift towards other technologies. Of course we can argue if there is an oil shortage in the first place, I've heard all sorts of opinions about this.

"Bill Gates wanted to go into the software for automotive companies segment... then he found out the required failure percentage for the industry!"

I don't remember the exact words, but Franz Fehrenbach -Chairman of the Board of Management at Bosch- made me laugh outloud with that story!

"Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come."

This quote from Victor Hugo is my personal favorite from the wonderful week in Cologne, and it was written on one of the walls at the DHL Innovation Center.

Now it's up to you: do you remember any particular quote that you'd like to share? Don't be shy and post a comment!