Mindfulness for Innovation: Future Scenarios and High Reliability Organizing Preparing for the Unforeseeable

Abstract

This work synthesizes two approaches to strategic learning in the face of uncertainty: Future Research (FR) as a set of methodologies to imagine and elaborate on future developments within companies and their environment, and High Reliability Organizing (HRO) as an approach to cultivate collective mindfulness and to prevent unwanted critical events. While both address different primary objectives (future development versus accident prevention) they share essential principles such as reckoning with complexity and unpredictability, skepticism against established expectations as well as rational decision taking, deviances as a resource for learning, facing the impermanence of organizations. Both approaches suggest a set of interventions to better de-couple past expectations from future projections. While HRO is mainly applied for safety and quality challenges in order to maintain reliability rather than for future developments, future research is still a separated domain of innovation and strategy units that needs to be better integrated into daily practices. We discuss cases from the telecommunication, internet business and high hazard businesses. A synthesis of both approaches in terms of basic concepts, methodologies and organizational execution enables a sustainable corporate development. As examples we discuss advanced communication measures, weak signal radar sessions, future staff rides and scenario site visits. The major challenge for both approaches remains their practical utilization for corporate development. Conclusions reflect upon shared guidelines for activating interventions and implications for organizational execution as well as the role of management and leadership. We point out challenges for further research and potentials for the management of reliability, resilience and innovation.

Full text

Copyright © 2011 Breuer & Gebauer: Breuer, H. & Gebauer, A. (2011). Mindfulness for
Innovation. Future Scenarios and High Reliability Organizing Preparing for Unforseeable.
SKM Conference for Competence-based Strategic Management, pp. 1-27. Linz, Austria.
Mindfulness for Innovation: Future Scenarios and High Reliability
Organizing Preparing for the Unforeseeable
Henning Breuer
Bovacon –Designing Business Interaction
Schlesische Strasse 28, D-10997 Berlin, Germany
E-mail: henning.breuer(at)bovacon.com
Annette Gebauer (ICL)
ICL Interventions for Corporate Learning
Zentralbuero Karl-Liebknechstr. 7, 10178 Berlin, Germany
E-Mmail: annette.gebauer(at)corporate-learning.org
Abstract: This work synthesizes two approaches to strategic learning in the face
of uncertainty: Future Research (FR) as a set of methodologies to imagine and
elaborate on future developments within companies and their environment, and
High Reliability Organizing (HRO) as an approach to cultivate collective
mindfulness and to prevent unwanted critical events. While both address
different primary objectives (future development versus accident prevention)
they share essential principles such as reckoning with complexity and
unpredictability, skepticism against established expectations as well as rational
decision taking, deviances as a resource for learning, facing the impermanence of
organizations. Both approaches suggest a set of interventions to better de-couple
past expectations from future projections. While HRO is mainly applied for
safety and quality challenges in order to maintain reliability rather than for future
developments, future research is still a separated domain of innovation and
strategy units that needs to be better integrated into daily practices. We discuss
cases from the telecommunication, internet business and high hazard businesses.
A synthesis of both approaches in terms of basic concepts, methodologies and
organizational execution enables a sustainable corporate development. As
examples we discuss advanced communication measures, weak signal radar
sessions, future staff rides and scenario site visits. The major challenge for both
approaches remains their practical utilization for corporate development.
Conclusions reflect upon shared guidelines for activating interventions and
implications for organizational execution as well as the role of management and
leadership. We point out challenges for further research and potentials for the
management of reliability, resilience and innovation.
Keywords: Strategy, Organizational Learning, High Reliability Organizing,
Scenario Planning, Futures Research, Innovation Management

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1 Introduction
Google is the name of the maybe greatest corporate success story of the
new century. Critics remark that Google is still dealing with and
structuring information, while competitors like Facebook moved on to
even more powerful and sustainable customer relationships by structuring
and exploiting social relationships. Still, already Facebook may suffer
from a kind of tunnel view by strictly following Mark Zuckerbergs vision
of a society in which "you have one identity" (Kirkpatrick 2010) only. Its
social graph is being challenged by an even more valuable interest graph
representing personal preferences and real life interactions. While new
competitors arise exploiting new potentials for innovation windows of
opportunity close for once dominant market players.
BP used to be a role model for innovative oil extraction and a shooting star
at the stock markets. But due to the oil spill at Deepwater Horizon in 2010
BP holds one of the highest records in loss of reputation and credibility,
still digesting massive financial downturn. Its financial performance is
perilously hurt by compensation costs for 11 people who died, reparations
of up to 4300 US Dollar for each of the 4 million barrels of oil that poured
into the sea, unpredictable claims of the destroyed fishing businesses and
an incalculable loss of reputation.
Google, its competitors and BP: At the first glance these companies
struggle with different challenges concerned with innovation and
maintenance. While Google missed early chances to seize opportunities
and to re-invent its business model, BP failed to create necessary
reliability for its high-risk business. (How) Could Google have perceived
and responded earlier to the opportunities and threats that were evolving
with the raise of social networks like Facebook? (How) Could BP have
made sense of early signals to prevent the catastrophe before it was able to
materialize?
2 Sensemaking challenges
Observation, interpretation and decision capabilities are becoming crucial
for organizations in fast paced and risk-prone contexts. Organizations need
to develop a repertoire to better detect surprising (negative or positive)
deviances and make sense of these variations: How can new threats
evolving be avoided at an early stage? How may new opportunities be
identified and seized? According to Teece (2009) sensing (i.e. to perceive

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new business opportunities and emerging threats in a still latent mode) and
seizing (i.e. being able to take intelligent decisions in the face of
complexity) and reconfiguring are essential corporate capabilities to
compete in innovation driven markets. Still, lessons learned from
organizations operating in high-risk environments like nuclear power
plants or wildland firefighting show comparable practices of collective
mindfulness at work. They avoid crisis and catastrophes and ensure
reliability in complex, trying conditions (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2003).
Sensemaking capabilities are built into organizational processes, structures
and every day practices on the one hand, and they have to be trained as
individual skills on the other. They provide answers to methodological
questions such as: Which filters do we need to observe our operations and
environments? How do we interpret the data collectively? And in addition:
How flexible are we towards our established ways of sensemaking?
If it is left to evolutionary drift sensemaking can tend to collective patterns
of oversimplifying reality construction. Especially in complex situations
with a high degree of uncertainty various studies observe a tendency to
reduce equivocality by collective bias patterns in order to keep up the
illusion of control: People and teams hesitate to challenge assumptions as
well as once-made “rational” decisions. They rely on expectations created
in the past and seek for confirmation, labeling new situations as known or
an easy piece of cake in order to raise certainty (Oswald and Grosjean,
2004). They normalize deviances in order to stick to plans (Vaughan,
1996) and they avoid and sanction doubt and contradiction by group think
(Janis, 1982). Tunnel views, the hesitation to speak up as well as a favor
for command and order behavior reduce the volume of data to be
considered in stress situations (Dörner, 1987). Complex decisions tasks
are simplified by excessive optimism (Audretsch, 1995). Looking at
Google and BP we may illustrate some of these patterns.
”I screwed up”. In 2011, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt acknowledged
that Google didn't take Facebook seriously enough (Fried, 2011). At least
for Schmidt himself Google’s own network Google+ came in 2011 too
late. Four years before when the social networking site had around 20
million active users Google did not recognize Facebook’s people-centric
approach as a serious alternative to Google’s’ algorithm based search
machine. At this stage 20 million seemed ridiculous compared to Google’s
user community – a comparably weak signal. Still, already at this time a
valuable exercise for Google would have to scan for exponential growth in

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user numbers as an early warning system to become aware of the evolving
threat. The threatening insight could have been used to inform alternative
future scenarios.
Neither innovations nor catastrophes do happen all of a sudden.
Catastrophes unfold in an evolutionary way by a number of small
variations building on each other (Luhmann, 1987). Each of these signals
is weak and it is up to people to utilize these insights and make sense how
they could interrelate with each other. Severe accidents and catastrophes
can be avoided if latent failures such as small leaks, unknown smells but
also positive surprises are discovered, interpreted and addressed or
eliminated before they sum up and an unwanted event takes place
(Reason, 1980).
A similar figure of thought applies for innovation: To foster innovation,
many organizations started installing practices to encourage and detect
surprising deviances like failures, new ideas and spontaneous changes.
With its famous 20 percent rule of discretionary time for employees
Google for example successfully raised the variation of new business ideas
and models. And in fact: In 2002 a young Google employer used his
discretionary time and started a social networking service called
Orkut.com. But Google did not seize the opportunity and misinterpreted
early signals: Following the founders’ vision “Let’s get these systems to
prove themselves” (Levy 2011, 372) management refrained from investing
sufficient resources into the incubation of the project. Orkut failed not
only in spite of its instantly high usage statistics, but because of overuse.
Only in the particularities of the Brazilian ecosystem (e.g. with lower
response rates and user expectations) the site remained popular until
today.
We may only speculate why Google neglected this and other early chances
to move on from information to social relations. Our thesis is that here as
always shared concepts and assumptions constitute collective reality, and
people tend to work on the challenges they have solutions and instruments
for (as in the tale of the man looking for his lost key under the lantern
where there is light). Google believed in the engineering driven
algorithmic approach that powered its success. “The basic premise of
social networking – that a personal recommendation from a friend was
more valuable than all of human wisdom, as represented by Google Search
– was viewed with horror at Google” (Levy 2011, 374).

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Patterns to blend out misfits can also be observed at BP. There was a
strong collective believe that the blowout preventor system (BOP) was
failsafe – despite contradicting information. The BOP prevents oil from
pouring into the sea in case of emergency and its failure was critical in the
unfolding catastrophe at Deepwater Horizon in April 2010. In June 2009
already, management was warned by BP engineers about possible
damages of the BOP under high pressure. In addition the manufacturer of
the BOP described more than 250 exceptional circumstances that could
cause malfunctioning at the BOP. Financial reasons (given the costs of
500.000 Dollar for system maintenance in deep water) and a willingness to
take risks as part of BPs corporate identity (“doing the tough stuff that
others cannot or choose not to do”), Tony Hayward in a speech in April
2008 in front of BP top managers) may have helped BP believing in a
failsafe system despite contradicting views and warnings – with the known
dramatic and costly consequences. Collective patterns like the illusion of
invulnerability encouraging risk taking, the normalization of early
warnings, excluding and labeling alerters as disturbing are typical
symptoms for group think, a dynamic nurtured by stress, complex and
contradicting tasks as well as uncertainty (Janis 1982).
Expectation based
behavior between BP and regulators fostered the risk: Control institutions
constantly lowered their safety restrictions for BPs oil drilling projects in
the Mexican Gulf and they were willing to allow risky exceptions. In fact,
neither BP nor regulators had experienced severe accidents in this area yet.
Nothing ever happened, and soon the participating parties felt comfortable
to stretch the limits.
Such tendencies preclude people from evaluating weak signals and hinder
organizations getting a profound view on relevant changes in their
business ecosystem as well as taking adequate decisions. How can
organizations work against dangerous collective tendencies and which
approaches and methods are useful to consciously driven innovation and
mature sensemaking capabilities? High Reliability Organizing and Future
Research are concerned with these questions and they deliver solutions to
build different patterns of sensemaking that counteract the natural
tendencies of organizational drift. While futures research aims to empower
and prepare individuals and organizations to desirable or possible
developments, HRO focuses on increasing organizational reliability. In
the following we describe how both approaches counteract simplifying
tendencies and biases.

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3 High Reliability Organizing and Future Research to develop
mindfulness
This confrontation of futures studies with the paradigm of high reliability
organizing was born out of a discussion between a future researcher and
an expert for reliability. Comparing the efforts fostering organizational
innovation and reliability we discovered many overlaps like a social
constructivist respectively systemic approach, skepticism towards rational
models of organizing, appreciation of uncertainty, as well as the need to
sensitize for surprises in order to learn. Both future research methods and
the principles of HRO challenge biases like the tendency of expectation
based assumptions by reframing and by de-coupling of past, present and
future. Both approaches encourage unlearning established routines and a
variety in observation, and thinking in alternatives.
Some biases preserve an illusion of control in situations that are out of
control. As a well-established informal pattern to absorb uncertainty
nobody ever decided for officially they are not easy to change. In a way,
irrational biases protect a rationalistic mindset of organizing. The stronger
the formal believe in the rational model with its premises of predictability,
right decisions and optimal solutions, the stronger becomes the need for
informal workarounds to preserve the idea of rationality and control. With
High Reliability Organizing and Futures Research we discuss two
approaches to counteract this vicious cycle.
Driven by the intuition that each line of research and consulting work
would offer valuable extensions we first had to define the level of
comparison. How could we ensure not to compare apples with oranges, or
paradigms with toolsets? Should we consider futures studies or scenario
analysis as the overarching strategic approach and HRO as a potential
specification focused on internal operations in safety critical firms? Or is
HRO the new paradigm of organizing and scenario management a set of
tools to be used within? Finally, for the context of this paper, we decided
to focus on scenario management methods as a well-established strategic
approach in the corporate world (dismissing methods like futures
workshops or Delphi-analysis) on behalf of futures studies. Scenarios
extend and enrich sensitivity to operations as an organizing principle of
the HRO paradigm.

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3.1 Sensemaking by altering the relations of time
Sensemaking resembles the activity of constant map-making depending on
perspectives, motives as well as opinions about what can be left out
(Weick, 2001). There is neither one best map nor something like a pre-
existing map to be discovered. Instead, an infinite number of maps can be
created to represent the terrain. Resulting questions are: How do
organizations construct their maps? And what representations are useful
for which task and situation? When and how to change existing
representations, when to create new maps?
Over time each organization creates its specific way of sensemaking. By
taking decisions, which are themselves based on previous decisions,
organizations develop their unique way to recognize, to select and to
interpret things going on in its environments (Luhmann, 2000).
These selection structures determine the way they construct their own
reality and shape expectations and expectations of expectations.
Organizations have to focus attention and therefore they create their own
blind spots. Every affirmation of options excludes other options:
opportunities cost effort. Uncertainty persists but it is absorbed unless
decisions are questioned. Decisions always create risks on the other side of
the coin: Had it been better to decide differently? Therefore in fast-paced
times, organizations need routines to oppose once-made decisions. They
need to be ready to say “no” to themselves, to their past decisions, their
expectations and their description of their identity. By altering
perspectives and allowing new observations organizations concern
themselves with their own, inevitable blind spots preparing the grounds
for organizational learning.
Our construction of our present reality depends on our construction of our
present past and our present future to come. A greater awareness about the
construction circular relations of present future and present past and its
impact on our perception of the actual present is essential for
sensemaking. The way present past, present future and present are related
enables and influences the possibilities we see in the here and now
(Luhmann, 2000): Which options do we see now that we realized or
missed in the past? Which options may we realize or miss in the future?
Altering the interrelation of present past and present future can broaden
attention in the here and now. For example, a strong focus on the present
past (“the algorithm based search machine is the most successful model”)

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influences the opportunities we see in the present future (“social search
mechanisms will never make it”). This again creates the context in which
weak signals are evaluated in the present (“20 million users is ridiculous”).
To foster capabilities to make sense of the present, organizations raise
their awareness in these processes of social construction and they have to
find ways to de-couple past and future more consciously.
Many biases and especially expectation-based behavior are based on the
rather unreflected assumption that there is a continuous timeflow
suggesting that the future is more or less determined by the past – i.e.
present trends could be used to approximate future developments. Modern
Futures Research and also HRO developed a repertoire of practices and
tools to construct and deconstruct past and future in the present. In the
next paragraphs we will show how both approaches facilitate coupling and
de-coupling of past expectations and future projections to enhance
mindfulness.
3.2 High Reliability Organizing: Reflect on the past to better
anticipate the future
Weick & Sutcliffe (2001 and 2003) examined organizations operating in a
high-hazard environment and looked at the way devastating catastrophes
materialized. They describe a set of “mindful practices” which help
organizations to perform more reliable by better sensemaking. Mindful
practices account for impressive reliability performances related to
production, safety or other critical outputs. These records are sometimes
surprising given the considerable risks and challenges these organizations
face. Although practices may look very differently from organization to
organization, most features are built around five hallmarks: a sensitivity to
operations in the here and now; a preoccupation with failure and even
small deviations; a reluctance to simplify interpretations; a deference to
expertise to migrate decision taking and a commitment to resilience.
Whereas the first three principles are concerned with sensing and
sensemaking abilities of things evolving, the latter foster resilience
capabilities in case of “fire”. High Reliability Organizing introduces a new
mindset of managing and organizing: How to create daily routines and
practices to raise collective attentiveness and responsiveness:
• Sensitivity to operations: Practices that shift the attention to the
ambiguous and complex world of the here and now, to the concrete
actions to be able to detect discriminatory details and make sense of
them. This principle is based on the fact that collective perception of

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the present is distracted by future plans that were made in the past.
This is why practices around this principle foster the observation of the
here and now, try to get a broad picture of the present in order to
construct a rich picture of the present future. This way of open
planning needs practices that counter the common and certainty
creating reluctance to give up past future plans, i.e. evaluation criteria
of incentive systems have to be aligned.
Every observation counts in order to get a better picture. Therefore,
many practices dedicated to this hallmark counteract communication
blockades created by hierarchical structure, attitudes as well as mutual
expectations of leaders and employees. Gaps between abstract
strategic management and “dirty” operations, a lack of communication
channels between levels and disciplines, a reluctance to question
opinions of leaders as well as pressure to justify ones decisions – all
this avoids reading the signs and the revision of plans. This explains
the emphasis placed on short, quick feedback between managers and
employees. Very often managers can be found physically near
production sites to gain from the deviating observations of employees
(not by controlling their way of operating). Observations in the here
and now are interpreted by using multiple framing options: In which
context does this data make sense? What could this be an early sign
for? Cockpit teams for instance are trained to keep in constant contact
with others in precarious situations. They gain a good overview of the
critical situation because they draw on the observations and
perceptions of all involved parties. Based on this, they can carefully
decide how to proceed.
• Preoccupation with failure: Mistakes and also smaller deviances are
not hastily viewed as an unwanted disturbance caused by human error
but are welcomed as a valuable source of information about the
system. A greater attention of what is going on raises the number of
deviances and failures people are seeing. This principle suggest
creating practices constantly seeking and evaluating deviances,
surprises, near misses or failures to learn about the status quo of the
system and its in-build sensemaking capabilities: How could the
problem evolve, what latent incidents were missed to make sense of
and which interaction patterns supported us not sensing it earlier?
What do small deviations “teach” about the system? How could they –
in coactions with other incidents – harm the reliability of the system?
On aircraft carriers for example, recruits complete so-called walk
downs several times a day, walking the full length of the deck in
search for anything out of the ordinary, for anything that might suggest

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something is amiss. This activity improves their ability to notice early
warning signs such as tiny pieces of debris or dripping liquids.
Frequent routine briefings encourage managers and employees to
candidly discuss surprising observations and discrepancies. They ask:
What surprised you in your last shift, about the functioning of the
technical system, working with your gear, talking with clients, dealing
with suppliers and service providers, about the technical or controlling
data? How can these deviations be explained? How could they impact
our business, or our ability to perform? With staff rides failures or
near-misses are simulated going to the locations were the event took
place asking people about their observations, assumptions and
communication behavior: What did you observe? How did you
interpret this signal and why? How did you communicate it further?
Or, if not: Why didn’t you do it?
• Resistance to simplify: Seeking
to complicate the picture to interpret
what has been observed, e.g. by introducing doubt and contradiction or
by creating equivocality by leveraging multiple perspectives. Team
members must work with multiple perspectives, consider for-and-
against arguments, and deal with doubts and contradictions. When
manufacturing the 737, Boeing set up practices that enable every
mechanic facing a problem or disturbance to quickly put together a
team of people with different expertise to find an effective solution to
the problem. Different perspectives and experiences are considered
during the search for a solution. Still these practices are very much
focused to interpret events to ensure reliability. For a more innovation
driven approach a more active reframing of past, present and future
enriches existing practices.
• Deference to expertise: Flexible decision taking structures to being
able to shift decisions to the location or person with the greatest
expertise. No-one can predict when and where something unexpected
will happen. Management does not always have the best overview
when sudden disruptive events occur to make intelligent decisions. In
normal situations, HROs benefit from the advantages of hierarchical
decision making processes. In these moments, top-down decisions are
made efficiently without dissent. Yet in unknown, uncertain situations,
their decision-making processes change. A good example of this
mechanism is the “andon cord” principle followed at Toyota’s
production plants. When a problem on any vehicle is spotted, any
employee – as the expert of the situation – is authorized to pull a rope
strung along the assembly line to halt production. Only when the
problem is resolved, the line is restarted.

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• Commitment to resilience: Because unexpected events cannot be
anticipated organizations invest in general problem solving capabilities
being able to
make sense and improvise on the spot. Intensive training
and simulations keep staff alert to various sorts of threatening
scenarios as well as to the fact that the future can be different as
expected.
Capabilities to act resiliently are tested regularly: Are we able to find
ways of dealing with an unexpected catastrophe? Redundancies are
included into work processes to avoid dangerous chain reactions
caused by strict coupling. Through alternative communication
channels – think here of informal networks, knowledge banks and
interest groups – they create conditions that make it easier for
managers and employees to use the entire knowledge of the system
and to be able to improvise in worst case scenarios. While this surplus
of information and solutions might appear to create confusion and be
more distracting than helpful in normal situations, it is critical for
rapidly finding alternative solutions and to push on with these in
unexpected extreme situations.
High Reliability Organizing goes beyond creating reliability by control
mechanisms, checklists and procedures in order to assure stability. In
contrary – as uncertainty is considered as the only certainty, preparedness
for change is taken as the prerequisite for reliable performance. It is
considered as extremely risky to rely on a continuous flow of past, present
and future. Therefore, and next to controlling and meticulously monitoring
all predictable disturbances that can be expected, mindful practices are
countering the tendency to rely on expectations of the future that are built
on the past.
In HRO a dominant lever to overcome the assumption of a continuous
time flow is to counter communication blockades due to hierarchical
structures and interaction patterns. Hierarchical structures focus attention
on the perspective of managers, direct communication flows and foster
hesitation to speak up as well as the tendency to justify once made
decisions, plans and strategic directions.
Whether many of the suggested HRO practices and tools address the
hierarchical issue needed the de-coupling of time is not yet addressed
explicitly as a tool or practice. Observations of the present are dependent
of the time context they are put in. Reframing of the present by altering
future and past projections has to be considered as a basic prerequisite
profound sensemaking. Future studies deliver an interesting set of methods

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consciously reframing the present by altering future and past. Thereby
they enrich anticipation principles of HRO.
3.3 Futures Research and scenario management
Futures studies address possible, probable, and preferable futures and
support individuals and organizations in trying to create a better world.
Futures research as scientific study of possible, desirable and likely future
developments assumes that different, but not arbitrary or countless futures
are possible and viable. Its interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research
approach matches potential futures that also develop across disciplines. As
the Greek politician Pericles mentioned in the 4th century B.C. the task is
not to predict the future, but to be well prepared for it. Accordingly
scenario planning emphasizes decision-making utility as main outcome of
inquiry over the production of testable knowledge (Walton 2008). Within
the broad field of futures studies scenario analysis and management
represent privileged methodology (Ramirez, Selsky, & van der Heijden
2010). They also play a pivotal role in organizational practice.
Scenarios enable us to anticipate and structure discussion about the shape
of things to come. Since the Royal Shell Dutch Group conducted the first
systematic scenario studies in the 1970s based on the work of Kahn &
Wiener (1967) numerous scenario-processes have been conducted and
several scenarios have been published. While the Shell approach gained
impetus with the Oil Shock in 1973, dynamic developments in the IT and
telecommunications industries and its environments promoted scenarios as
a valuable approach to address and prepare for upcoming uncertainties.
By modeling scenarios researchers and consultants point out alternative
and logical consistent development possibilities in the face of abounding
uncertainties. As well-informed projections of uncertainty factors into a
dated future they form an internally consistent image that can be plausibly
derived from the present state of affairs. Often they are presented as
stories around constructed plots. Different scenario approaches are
discussed in Mietzner & Reger 2005, and Steinmüller 1997.
Working with scenarios and thinking in alternative futures prepares and
informs decisions how to strengthen desirable developments. Unlike
traditional forecasting and even recent Delphi Studies scenarios do not
intend to predict the future. Instead they fuel strategic conversation (Van
der Heijden 2005) and challenge conventional assumptions. They prevent

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from linear extrapolation, and foster thinking in alternatives. According to
Peter Schwartz, one of the founders of the approach, scenarios are vehicles
helping people to learn. Other than simulations they identify patterns and
clusters among possible futures and include subjective interpretations
(Schoemaker 1995, 27). Scenario planning then aims at changing mindsets
about external factors antecedent to the formulation of specific strategies.
“A constant stream of rich, diverse and thought provoking information”
(Schwartz 1991) is needed to foster organizational learning. Principles and
best practices of scenario planning have been described (van der Merwe
2008). While numerous methodologies to develop and model scenarios
exist, at least two major weaknesses persist: their utilization for daily
practices (as we learned from observation in various scenario projects e.g.
in Breuer et al. 2011), and their scientific elaboration and evaluation
(Schoemaker 1993). The one essential question in our view: How can they
become more influential in daily practices?
Introducing scenario management into corporations consultants often
needs to proceed from prognostic to exploratory and normative scenarios,
having to repeat “ontogenetically” the “phylogenic” history of futures
research as it moved from attempts to predict the future with advanced
trend extrapolation to the notion of (social systems with inherent
uncertainties resulting in) multiple, alternative futures, and to scenarios as
means of learning on individual and organizational levels. Assuming that
trend extrapolation may yield probabilities for future developments some
managers initially expect to receive one reliable vision of the future as the
result of inquiry. The first lesson to be learned is the persistence of
uncertainty: Not lack of brilliance but epistemological limits render such
expectations of holistic prognostics unrealistic. Instead of the single true
vision only alternative scenarios combining expectable trends (like
demographic changes) with fundamental uncertainties (e.g. scientific
breakthroughs) may be delivered. () Even these alternative scenarios may
hardly be associated with probabilities, but rather unfold the range of
uncertainty with the dimensions considered most relevant today. An
exploratory approach trying to identify influencing factors, key
uncertainties and future possibilities is described e.g. in Fink, Schalke &
Siebe 2000 or Fink & Siebe 2006.While traditionally exploratory
scenarios focus on external developments a combination with
organizational requirements named “Future Scorecard” was also proposed
(Fink, Marr, Siebe & Kuhle 2005). It combines the external, market-based,
and the internal, resource-based view of organizations to create a strategic
early warning system.

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Once the idea of multiple futures is accepted the difference between
exploratory and normative scenarios (Kosow & Gaßner 2008) describing
preferable futures and their interference need to be understood. Since
“explorations” of future uncertainties and consistent scenarios heavily
depend on present projections and constructions of meaning the own
position and desire within these complex developments is put into
question. The further into the future scenarios range, the easier it becomes
to concentrate on desirable futures as limits of feasibility dissolve – and
the need for normative (components within) scenarios becomes evident. A
preferred vision of the future allows backcasting to derive necessary
measures to be taken today and alternative implementation strategies. A
normative vision enables strategists to reconsider and focus sensing and
seizing helpful developments and to direct in depth exploration of critical
topics. Blind spots and search fields for innovation may be identified;
strengths and weakness of the present organization may be analyzed in the
context of each scenario.
On a second, process-oriented level, the journey of scenarios within
organizations starts with the notion of scenarios as alternative
representations to the notion of organizational learning taking place
through their development. Even more than providing distinct future
alternatives to prepare for they provide tools for learning today and for
practicing future-open thinking. Once scenarios are understood as learning
experiences few organizations move on from a single exercise to a
continuous challenge think with, reevaluate and reconfigure scenarios to
an organization wide endeavor that is not limited to top management
strategists.
3.4 From similarities and differences towards new synergies
Companies trying to avoid risks and trying to identify and exploit
opportunities for innovation and new business share several challenges.
Both deal with uncertainty and irregularities within their operations, either
understood as a threat of failure and disaster, and / or as a chance for
innovation.
Fink at al. (2005) view scenario management as a combination of systems
thinking, strategic thinking, and future-open thinking. While system
thinking primarily refers to dealing with complexity, it is compatible with
system theoretical approaches that have been utilized in HRO (Gebauer

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2009). Strategic thinking utilizes future potentials for corporate success as
a basis for visionary strategies. Future open thinking accepts uncertainty in
the business ecosystem and exploration of alternative possible
developments.
One approach supporting HRO as well as scenario management consists in
reframing: Cirka and Corrigall (2003) for example argue that managers
have to overcome the very common probabilistic view and rather develop
a possibilistic view. They have to learn that the future is not determined by
the past but loose-coupled. After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade
Center in 1993 by a bomb in the garage well established probabilistic
thinking led to more security in the basements to avoid a similar threat.
But nobody tried to think further and was able to anticipate the possibility
of a plane attack or something similar. Cirka and Corrigal propose
reframing as a method to overcome probabilistic views. Mitroff and Murat
(2003, 2011) suggest using scenarios as well as role-plays to imagine yet
unthinkable events.
Going even further into the requirements of successful innovation within a
business ecosystem new management approaches are proposed, i.e. the
idea of dynamic capabilities (Teece 2009), chronically unfrozen, fluid
structures (Eisenhardt & Martin 2000) or innovation routines (Zollo &
Winter 2002). The evaluation of successful management innovations
(Hamel & Bren, 2009) and other studies about how to shape learning
capabilities of the organization (e.g. Wimmer 2004, Gebauer 2007)
suggest approached balancing needs for stabilization and renewal.
According to Baecker (2007) innovative enterprises have to managed and
organized from a social science rather than from a business administration
point of view and therewith refers to the practices of High Reliability
Organizing.

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4 HRO and scenario management: synergies, limitations, and
interventions
The following table provides an overview of some similarities and
differences between HRO and scenario management and lists the concepts
that may be transferred from one to the other.
Similarities Appreciation and cultivation of persisting uncertainty
Adaptability and organizational learning as a prerequisite
Importance to sense and make sense of surprising events
Awareness of challenging biases (expectations, illusion of control)
Promoting broad sensing for weak signals & harvesting collective
intelligence
Reframing, decontextualizing and de-coupling of past, present, future
HRO
Scenario Management
Differences
in focus
Maintenance – Adapt and
improve to keep existing
performance
Renewal – Adapt and improve
performance and competitiveness
Present past focus – Practices
raising attention to past critical
incidents to improve present
patterns
Present future focus – Anticipation of
alternative complex future
developments.
Internal capabilities Environmental developments
Design of daily practices to
develop sensing and seizing
abilities
Strategic management tools to
develop sensing and seizing abilities
Reliable operations and
operational risk
Innovation, strategic opportunities
and business related risks.
Abilities for mindfulness as
sensing and interpretation
skills.
Tools to create relevance criteria for
sensing and interpretation activities
HRO as a task for operative
managers and maintenance
experts
Scenario management as a task for
top management and innovation
experts
Synthesis Use scenarios and deviances as
trigger for innovation (5.1)
Events, practices and structures to
create mindfulness for innovation
(5.2)
Complementary capabilities synthesize operational reliability with
proactive innovation development; integrate functional expert groups,
strategic management and operating staff cultivating operational
reliability and mindfulness for innovation (5.3)
Table 1: Similarities, differences and synthesis of both approaches

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5 Lessons learned from one another
Combining aspects of HRO and scenario management basic concepts and
methodologies of both approaches can be extended, guidelines for
organizational practices and structures can be derived. In terms of new
intervention methods we address advanced communication measures,
weak signal radar sessions, future staff rides and scenario site visits. The
following interventions are derived from our confrontation of HRO and
scenario management practices:
• Deviances as trigger for innovation: Inquiry on positive and negative
deviance from expectation strengthens mindfulness for innovation and
inspires change (5.1).
• Events, practices and structures to establish mindfulness for
innovation: Innovation theater adapts the situated learning approach
of incident analysis through staff rides for the exploration of future
scenarios with a broader audience across hierarchical levels. New
collective practices and structures combine both approaches to foster
innovation (5.2).
• Strengthening complementary practices cultivating operational
reliability and excellence in innovation within one move may lead to a
new sensitivity to innovation (5.3).
The major question in this context is how and where to institutionalize
integrated methods and interventions within the organization: Who has to
drive the initiative, who else has to be involved and what are conditions to
institutionalize methods into daily practices?
5.1 Working with Future Scenarios & Deviances as Trigger for
Innovation
How can methodological wisdom of future research be build into daily
collective practices within the organization? High Reliability Organizing
may profit from the potential of future scenarios to consciously alter the
present future to facilitate the sensitivity to operations.
While sensitivity to operations implies a present future orientation as
discussed scenario management has developed a dedicated and profound
methodology to actually model and utilize alternative future scenarios for
enhancing operations and preparing organizations for contingent future
developments. Scenarios serve as alternative maps of the future in order to
get a better understanding of the present: they broaden the variety of
things to see and the ability of making sense about the present state in

Breuer, H. & Gebauer, A.
[18]
order to prevent unwanted events to evolve. In routine management
meetings for example, diagnosed surprises, failures, deviances and other
perceptions like “gut feelings” can be discussed in the context of different
future scenarios. Another example is the use of future scenarios in regular
controlling meetings to get a broader range of interpretations: What could
be relevant in the light of this scenario? What could the data possibly be a
latent signal for?
As explained before, High Reliability Organizing counteracts biases like
the tendency to rely on past expectations or the normalization to deviance
in order to reduce complexity and uncertainty. By integrating future
scenarios into daily practices people are constantly forced to think in
alternative futures raising the awareness that the future is contingent.
Therefore it is recommended to work with various future scenarios, to
alter the scenarios from time to time and to reflect on the process of using
scenarios.
By exploiting methodologies of future research for mindful organizing the
greater sensitivity to deviances might be used for both: to avoid unwanted
threats and as well as for innovation.
Both HRO and scenario management share a basic sensitivity to
deviances. This basic sensitivity should be cultivated even further through
advanced means of observation and interpretation since deviances from
the expected developments may indicate windows of opportunity for
innovation or early birds of future breakdown. HRO has a tendency to
focus on deviances as a trace for negative breakdowns of systems.
Practices and methods can raise attention on positive and negative
deviances strengthen mindfulness for innovation as well as for reliability
and inspire change. Especially organizations in risk-prone and highly
dynamic business ecosystems profit from an extension and integration of
HRO practices with scenario management. Even though large companies
do have experiences with both approaches they are usually dealt with in
different units, missing out synergies and sustainable change in corporate
culture.
Weak signals radar sessions review microtrends regarding customers
(Penn 2007), technology, or the business ecosystem and may apply a
grounded innovation approach to aggregate and interpret findings (Breuer
& Steinhoff 2010). Weak signals radar and deviance interpretation
sessions (e.g. following Pascale, Sternin & Sternin 2010) may be
established as new activities enhancing reliability and innovativeness.

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These sessions should be in-build into daily practices, e.g. in team
meetings, shift changes etc. As HRO proposes asking for surprises and
deviant observation in team meetings as a sign for unforeseen negative
future events a weak signals radar encourage people to bring in their
perceptions and ideas and their possible impact on new developments.
5.2 Events, practices and structures to establish mindfulness for
innovation
Different quantitative and qualitative approaches how to generate
scenarios are rather well described. Less obvious are proven approaches
how to communicate and disseminate scenarios within the organization.
Within previous work we started to discuss tradeoffs between different
visual and narrative formats (Breuer, Grabowski & Arnold 2011). Still, the
real challenge remains to establish work with scenarios as a valuable
practice within innovation development departments and the whole
organization. The operationalization of insights and the introduction of
new practices within organizations are complex tasks. Methods include
advanced communication measures and events to trigger learning on
behalf of individuals and collaborating units. Trying to drive insights from
scenario analysis into an organization and focusing on potentials for
innovation scenario management may adapt approaches from HRO.
Advanced communication measures apply a variety of media in order to
represent and convey insights from research on risks, failures and potential
future scenarios (Breuer, Grabowski & Arnold 2011). This multimodal
processing of insights intends to foster empathy. Within a scenario
management process for a large telecommunication provider we explored
suitable media for communication and further refinement of research
results. Detailing a realistic narrative for instance usually directs attention
to aspects that would have else wise been overlooked. Strengths and
weaknesses of several communication formats such as a newspaper with
animated images, illustrated deep dives into topics, and an animation
movie have been discussed (Breuer, Grabowski & Arnold 2011). Still, in
most cases results of scenario analysis have been utilized and advanced in
a representational rather than operational manner.
Even more engaging than prefabricated media communicating insights are
activating events and interventions aiming to increase collective
observation and sensemaking. Here, scenario management may adopt
HRO formats like the staff rides and gun drills.

Breuer, H. & Gebauer, A.
[20]
In staff rides a single specific past event serves in an exemplary way to
learn something about the complex functioning of the system.
Representative teams across hierarchical levels examine interaction
patterns that allow latent deviances to develop, build on each other and
result in a larger, unwanted event or accident. Whereas staff rides make
sense of past events, gun drills simulate a possible future event: How
could we have seen the event coming earlier? What could have been early
signs, and who had been able to observe what? Would he or she have been
able to make sense of it? What communication measures were
available…?
Experiences in different industries like manufacturing or process
industries show that staff rides and gun drills sensitize operative teams,
staff function and management for the systems complexity, potential early
warning signals and how unexpected things evolve step by step. People
become aware of interaction patterns based on biases, assumption and
expectation based behavior, collective beliefs, communication blockades
as well as gaps between the “talk” of plans and the daily “walk” of
muddling through (Gebauer, 2010).
Whereas in HRO staff rides are mainly used in a more defensive mode to
learn about reliability capabilities, past and future event analysis can be
also used to investigate and promote capabilities for future innovation by
asking: How do we make sense of deviances to be used for innovations?
In HRO a concrete past event or anticipated future event localized in the
organization serves as original reference – which is one crucial difference
to future scenarios missing such real world reference. Accordingly the
original site of the event (including its spatial setup, available tools and
channels of communication) and the authentic experiences and potential
abilities of participants contribute first hand insight to the collective
reconstruction or construction of the event. Confronting the different
perspectives and interpretations not only weak links and breakdowns of
interaction but the whole structure and dynamic of the exemplary event
may be worked out and redesigned in order to increase reliability.
Even though future scenarios miss such authentic reference their
differentiation and implementation may profit from such situated learning
activities (Lave & Wenger 1991). Performing future scenarios spatial,
object-related and social relations and dynamics may be communicated
and explored in depth. Instead of past critical incidents potential future
scenario, dynamic constellations of business (models) and new
distributions of power set the stage. Personas and role-playing techniques

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may be applied in order to act out key uncertainties populated by the
different stakeholder roles involved and their potentially divergent
perspectives. The scenarios set the stage, the script interprets the
consequences of decisions regarding the key uncertainties and the play
explores the interaction between stakeholders and key factors joining into
a hypothetical event of a future world.
An example: With a scenario project on convergent IP service in the year
2020 customer expectations of ownership versus usage was identified as a
key uncertainty: Would people increasingly rely on the ability to use
functionalities and access content when they need to – as they already do
in car sharing and cloud services. Or would they prefer to own what they
appreciate keeping it under their sole control? While narrative approaches
have been established to communicate, deepen and evaluate the alternative
stories (Kosow & Gaßner 2008), we experimented with a theatrical
performance to work explore the consequences of either attitude in
relation to other key factors. Participants staged stand-up performances in
ideation sessions, where participants convey innovative product or service
ideas or aspects of future scenarios through little sketches or television
spots.
Again like in HRO, critical incident even though hypothetical ones or even
wildcards may be used to challenge the robustness of the assumption
(wildcards represent disruptive events with low probability but high
impact). If for instance we assume that a majority of customers moves
from ownership to a usage models, how would a persona including that
trait react if criminal kidnap his or her childhood pictures? Or how would
another persona sticking to the ownership model cope with new image
data formats rendering his pictures inaccessible? Once the stage is set and
populated with personas and interactions new needs, fears and hopes
emerge and prepare the ground to identify missing information and
products indicating potentials for innovation. Such an innovation theater
as a live learning environment is inspired by works on informances as
information-oriented performances to communicate and explore design
ideas and concepts (Burns et al. 1995, Laurel 2003) and staff rides and gun
drills in HRO. Situated action and live experiences across hierarchical
levels are mobilized to engage and anchor insights and delimit search
fields for innovation.
Scenario site visits go even further utilizing built scenario spaces,
preferably in the real, alternatively in virtual worlds. Fictional sites may be
staged in several media and manners. Systemic consulting has transferred
work with family constellations (Hellinger 2002) to cooperative

Breuer, H. & Gebauer, A.
[22]
constellations within teams and companies. Alternative approaches
include role playing exercises or virtual online worlds. One example for
such a real living and working environment was “Palomar5”, an
environment to develop future forms of work with digital natives. Staff
rides, gun drills, innovation theater and scenario site visits can serve as a
starting point for organizational development activities to increase
collective mindfulness and they can be institutionalized as a routine
practice constantly reviewing and questioning bias provoking patterns.
Single exercises do not suffice to break and establish new patterns, but
new practices need to be introduced on a daily basis and backed up by
suitable structures. Despite of difficulties to change deeply rooted
mindsets HRO theory is grounded in tight closing of ranks with everyday
practices of operations. Driven by sometimes-disastrous experiences there
was always a fundamental need to reflect upon, to challenge, and to
improve seemingly natural casual practices. Trained skepticism against
formal checklists and formalized processes goes hand in hand with an
appreciation of bottom-up escalation and situated experiences. Extracting
checklists from best practises and similar expert driven solutions regularly
fail in situations requiring behavioural change embedded in a complex
social system, sometimes the search and discovery of solutions need to
owner by a community of participants to succeed.
HRO has a track record in convincing top management of the necessity to
empower operational workforce, cultivate local attentiveness and utilize
local knowledge to prevent and reacted threatening events. Scenario
management is traditionally associated to strategy, and most scenarios
have been generated together with top management to be used by top
management. Basic insights and proven techniques from HRO and other
management intervention techniques may enrich the management of
scenarios and attempts to establish new practices within organizations.
Finally, structural borders prevent organizations to fully unfold
mindfulness for innovation: Work packages are thrown across the
organizational fences between functions and departments, Chinese
whispers, not-invented here and declining commitment contribute to the
degeneration of once powerful ideas.

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5.3 Complementary capabilities: From HRO to Scenario
Management and back
Principles of HRO have been so far introduced mainly to operation-near
practices such as safety, risk or quality management, fewer for strategic
management issues or corporate development. HRO principles start to
replace control-oriented approaches in expert groups concerned with
reliability issues. Future scenarios in contrary have been mainly used for
strategic foresight, i.e. by expert groups such as innovation management
or strategy development. So far, reliability and innovation challenges have
been dealt with in different departments. Decoupling is one way coping
with co-existing and conflicting demands of exploitation and exploration
of routines (March, 1991). The research on HRO brings to light that in
risk-prone, fast paced times stability is not reached by control of the
existing but can only be achieved by adaptability. Reliability and
innovativeness both profit from a greater collective mindfulness and
therefore both efforts should be better integrated or at least orchestrated in
the organization.
The example of German energy provider ENBW illustrates how strict
decoupling of reliability and innovation tasks can create liabilities. The
company ensured so far safe operations of its four atomic plants that
contributed more than half of the earnings. Two of them had to stop
operations after the atom moratorium of the German government, and
EnBWs earnings broke down resulting in a loss of 590 million Euros in
the first half of 2011 after early warnings have been ignored
(Movegreen.com, 2011).
Integrating innovation and reliability challenges implies a new managerial
mindset and division of tasks and responsibility. Managers have to gain
insights into the importance to empower and create settings for people to
collectively accomplish more sophisticated forms of sensemaking.
Innovation is not anymore a one-time, expert driven event detached from
operations. It becomes a process build into daily practices and routines
using the broad range of the perception abilities of all employees,
cultivated by mindful practices. Therefore managers need to consciously
create conditions for mindfulness depicted by HRO.
Innovation and reliability experts have to collaborate more closely and
gain from each other’s perspectives: How to make use of the deviances we
observe throughout the organization? An organization-wide center of

Breuer, H. & Gebauer, A.
[24]
excellence or a company-wide network for mindfulness could serve as a
starting point to integrate knowledge and approaches. To prepare for the
future organizations do not need a distinctive safety, quality or innovation
culture but a culture for mindfulness as a basic condition to cope with risk-
prone, fast-paced times. Integrating the separate functions a new capability
emerges: mindfulness for reliability and innovation.
6 Conclusions
Companies trying to avoid risks and trying to identify and exploit
opportunities for innovation and new business share several challenges.
Both deal with uncertainty and irregularities within their operations, either
understood as a threat of failure and disaster, and / or as a chance for
innovation. Responding to these challenges this paper discussed
similarities and differences between scenario management and HROs
sensitivity to operations. High Reliability Organizations may profit from
deep dives into futures scenarios and positive deviances from expected
developments in order to exploit potentials for process innovation.
Scenario management on the other hand may introduce HRO practices in
order to implement scenarios and attentiveness in daily operations. A
synthesis of both approaches provides a powerful basis to design
activating interventions. Future experience has to prove that the
theoretically derived approaches not only increase future reliability of
corporations but also support the development of sustainable new worlds
through mindfulness for reliability and innovation.
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