Developing the future of Soft OR

A younger generation of soft OR practitioners and academics met at Lancaster University on 10-11^th April 2002 to explore how they could influence future developments in soft OR. This first of a series of network meetings was hosted by Mark Westcombe and was organised as part of the INCISM Network co-ordinated by Prof. Mike Pidd. Invited members joined us from as far afield as Canterbury in the south and Stirling in the north.

The meeting was split into four substantive activities.

We began by employing a new spin on an old soft OR technique: Oval Mapping. Dr. Duncan Shaw, from Aston University, facilitated the session where group members considered “What are the future issues which we (Soft OR) will need to address?”. This structured a fruitful discussion on the challenges which the younger generation will need to address if they are to develop the future employment of Soft OR methods. It was decided that the four main questions which we need to address are to: provide a solid basis to aid selling soft OR consultancy; establish links between soft and hard OR; ensure the transfer of the craft skills involved in soft OR; and establish the tangible and intangible outcomes of soft OR interventions and how they can be evaluated. The group decided that the output from this session will guide the themes of future meetings.

The second activity involved the group ‘putting on trial’ the issue of large group facilitation. The judge during the trial was Dr. Gilberto Montibeller, from Strathclyde University, who presided over the debate that “Soft OR cannot be applied to large groups”. During the debate the main argument from the prosecution was that while soft OR techniques might be employed when facilitating large groups, they are often executed without appropriate adaptation to the context of large groups. The main argument by the defence was that they have successfully employed soft OR techniques to facilitate interaction between participants in large groups. A number of examples were presented and the success, and potential for improvement, were analysed. It was generally agreed that while soft OR techniques might be employed to facilitate large group interventions, it might be that they fail to capitalise on the strengths of these techniques which have been developed primarily for small group interventions. Particularly, attention needs to be paid to the communication and aggregation of sub-group tasks to ensure an action plan is developed that will be enacted upon.

Dr. Brian Wilson, formerly of Lancaster University, was invited to give a guest presentation on “The development of Soft Systems Methodology”. He explored the history behind the development of SSM, shared his views on the nature of the methodology, and commented upon the future opportunities for further developments in the area. It was a great pleasure for the group to listen to such an influential figure in the development of SSM and soft OR.

The fourth activity was a chaired discussion by Ian Casey of the Inland Revenue on “How to sell soft OR”. Ian related to the group his experience of marketing soft OR as an internal consultant to an organisation which is increasing its commitment to problem structuring methods and systems thinking. The discussion which followed reflected on how important this issue was to all the attendees. It was decided that this would be the theme of the next meeting of the group. Of course the most energetic and heated discussions took place in hotel bar, over the Tex Mex meal and in the pub – but we needed a legitimate excuse for all of this!

You are welcome to attend the next meeting during the IFORS conference when consultant Jeff Conklin of Cognexus Institute, Washington DC will facilitate a Dialog Mapping workshop on 'acquiring the skills of soft-OR'. This is provisionally in Tuesday's session TD8, before we haed for the pub abd ceidilh. The next full network meeting will be hosted by Peter Harvey of QinetiQ on the 9^th and 10^th September 2002. Others are anticipated in London and Scotland, as well as at Aston University, Birmingham in December. The aim of the Modelling Strategic Problems Group is establish a community of members that will be employing soft OR methods over the next generation. If you would like more information on this group or the INCISM network please see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/incism/ or join us at IFORS.