AFIA Supported Event

The Foresight Beer Game: an invitation to a workshop on the art and science of Causal Loop Mapping

Facilitators: Josh Floyd & Chris Stewart

Date & time: Saturday 25 June 2005 12.00pm till early evening at the latest, Venue TBA

Attendance cost: We are asking participants to share costs for the workshop. We will endeavour to keep these to a bare minimum, and anticipate no more than $10 per person. Final cost to be determined closer to the day.

Attendance incentive: It’s the beer game - there will be beer involved

Social program: Dinner together afterwards, venue to be decided by the group

Open to all AFI students and alumni

Background

Systems thinking and practice plays an important role in futures studies and strategic foresight. In fact, in the Master of Science in Strategic Foresight, it is one of the four key foci: Strategy, Sustainability, Spirituality and Systems Thinking (some of you may not have seen this before – it was introduced to the 2004 Dimensions of Global Change class).

Methodologies for exploring the systems perspective have been introduced in Foresight Methodologies 1 and 2. Based on observations in the classroom, discussions with Peter Hayward and casual conversations with fellow students, it seems fair to say that the classroom experience has at best produced mixed understanding of and confidence in applying these methodologies. For some of us, this has been reinforced by personal experience with attempts to implement systems interventions (particularly Causal Loop Mapping exercises) in client workshops.

Despite difficulties in applying these methodologies, it is clear that they stand to be of great benefit to us as practitioners, both personally and in helping clients to come to terms with complex problems. In particular, we have found Causal Loop Mapping (CLM) to be very effective in deepening understanding of problems, when it is applied appropriately. We believe that there is great value to be gained by the AFI Alumni group in further developing our CLM understanding and application skills.

The workshop

To this end, we are proposing to run a half-day workshop to develop our skills in this area. The workshop will be in two parts. Part one will involve the group playing the Beer Game from Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline. Once the game is concluded, or has provided sufficient first-hand experience of “the Beer Game system”, we will conduct a group-based CLM exercise to depict the system as we experienced it. Part two will conclude by considering how we might modify this map to improve the performance of the system against appropriate performance indicators.
At the conclusion of part one and during part two, we will all drink beer together (or your beverage of choice). Afterwards, everyone who can stick around has dinner together and laughs about our experiences during the day (we hope!). Simple really.

We will need a minimum of nine participants to make the game rich and interesting. We could accommodate up to about twelve participants. If you are interested in attending, we would ask that you make a firm commitment, as the value of the exercise will be dependent on having sufficient numbers.

If you are already familiar with the dynamics of the Beer Game, you will be very welcome to attend, but bear in mind that much of the value will entail coming into the exercise “cold” i.e. without preconceived ideas about how to play the game. On that basis, we would ask any prospective participants to please hold off on reading about the game in The Fifth Discipline or elsewhere until after the workshop, if you have not done so already.

Thanks very much for considering our proposal, and we look forward to your joining us on 25 June. Given the limited places available, it will be first in, best dressed, so register early by emailing Josh at joshfloyd@iinet.net.au. We expect that it will be a very rewarding day for all of us.

Josh and Chris

RSVP to this event

Please address all enquiries and RSVPs to joshfloyd@iinet.net.au (not the AFIA Committee)