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--- future_fabulators:field_anomaly_relaxation [2014-02-18 05:46] – created maja
+++ future_fabulators:field_anomaly_relaxation [2014-02-19 06:43] – maja
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 ==== Field Anomaly Relaxation ====
-[[[[http://www.systemdynamics.org/conferences/2000/PDFs/ducz124p.pdf||A Practitioner's Experience of Using Field Anomaly Relaxation (FAR) to Craft Futures]]
+See also [[morphological analysis]]
--Guy A. Duczynski
+<blockquote>[Scenarios] provide a relatively unbounded forum for creative thoughts and ideas regarding organisational renewal such that novel concepts and imperatives for change could be expressed within a broadened perspective of the future. * page 2
-[Scenarios] provide a relatively unbounded forum for creative thoughts and ideas regarding organisational renewal such that novel concepts and imperatives for change could be expressed within a broadened perspective of the future. * page 2
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 To make the future believable it is necessary to string the transitions into a plausible history that marks out how a future world could evolve from the present. * page 8
-Having constructed the Faustian tree and, thereby, creating a series of pathways through which the single future trajectory may travel, a set of rich narratives are called for. These narratives link the present to the future in a manner that adds substance, depth and most importantly breadth, effectively putting 'flesh on the bones' of the earlier, more structured thinking stages. * page 9
+Having constructed the Faustian tree and, thereby, creating a series of pathways through which the single future trajectory may travel, a set of rich narratives are called for. These narratives link the present to the future in a manner that adds substance, depth and most importantly breadth, effectively putting 'flesh on the bones' of the earlier, more structured thinking stages. * page 9</blockquote>
+From [[http://www.systemdynamics.org/conferences/2000/PDFs/ducz124p.pdf|A Practitioner's Experience of Using Field Anomaly Relaxation (FAR) to Craft Futures]]
+-Guy A. Duczynski
+<blockquote>The starting point of Field Anomaly Relaxation (FAR) is Lewin’s social field theory to the effect that we all live within ‘fields’ of interactions with other people and events. (…) This notion is used in morphological forecasting (see [[morphological analysis]], morphology meaning ‘the form and structure of anything’. The method was invented and named by Zwicky before World War II (Zwicky, 1969). It uses a formal description, called a Zwicky Box (renamed a Sector/Factor array in FAR) to explore, for example, all conceivable forms of aircraft propulsion. (…) FAR exploits that idea to explore the imaginable patterns within social fields, eliminating any which do not satisfy a gestalt, whole-pattern, assessment of internal coherence. The remaining, internally consistent, patterns are then used as stepping stones to create paths into the future. The steps across the stones enable FAR to generate story scenarios, not just end- state pictures. (…) Each of the components of the field must have several conceivable conditions; economic growth may be high, low, stagnant and so on, differing in kind as well as in degree. The idea is to create ‘filing space’ for all plausible possibilities.
+FAR is a four-stage process:
+  * Step 1 requires one to develop some kind of imaginative view of the future into which the decision must unfold (this can be done by several people in the team, guided by one or more questions)
+  * Step 2 requires one to identify the critical uncertainties and their ranges of possibility, expressed in a sector/factor matrix.  That is superficially attractive but the construction of a good Sector/Factor array, in the sense of one that will fully illuminate the strategic question, requires contemplative thought and may need more than one attempt. The analyst may have to question and criticise, very much as the Devil’s advocate, to ensure that the study gets the right degree of simplification into its model of the future.
+  * Step 3 eliminates the anomalies (‘could I imagine a world like that?’ eliminate if the answer is no, then cluster combinations to get to a smaller amount of 'worlds'). The anomalies must not be eliminated by the team members sitting round a computer. That tends, for some reason, not to lead to thorough discussion of gestalt appreciations. The ideal way is discussion round a table, with the debate taking as long as necessary. The debate is vital as it sometimes happens that an anomaly which has been eliminated should not have been and it may need to be reinstated. However, someone has to keep a record of what is decided and software is needed to perform the eliminations, to calculate the remaining configurations and to print them out for review, and that is the analyst’s job.
+  * Step 4 strings the surviving configurations (cluster) together to form time lines (‘Can I see this world leading to that one?’). This process may take a week or so, not of full-time effort but of sessions looking at the board and intervals of other work while the ideas filter through the minds of the study team.
+{{  :future_fabulators:screen_shot_2014-02-19_at_16.41.42.png?direct|}}
+As a rough guide, one might say that a one-cycle FAR ought to be able to be done with about 20 person-weeks of effort, with a second cycle, if it is necessary, requiring somewhat less. (…) We have to live in the real world and accept that, manifestly unsatisfactory as it might be in theory, it is often necessary to do the best one can in much less time. We therefore turn to a simplified version of FAR which has been found to work better than one might have expected and is certainly better than doing nothing at all to think about the future.
+One of the attributes of a good analyst is the ability to produce at least some kind of results by the time at which they are needed and not to pursue rigorous perfection which will be too late to be of practical use. A complementary skill is, of course, to explain the caveats attached to a ‘quick and dirty’ study in such a way as to give the user a sensible understanding of the trustworthiness of those results. In terms of FAR, this may mean that a rough study has to be carried out within a few days as opposed to the ideal of some months. No one suggests that such an approach is fully satisfactory; the point is that it is somewhat more satisfactory than doing nothing to think about the future.
+Simplified FAR (~2 days)
+Simplified FAR depends on building outline time lines from a few consistent futures, as opposed to eliminating all the inconsistencies and forming scenarios from the remaining consistent configurations. Simplified FAR uses the following steps:
+  * [0. maja’ addition: make a mind map of a normative future and select several 'sectors' - critical uncertainties]
+  * 1. Form a Sector/Factor array in the usual fashion with as much documentation as time permits but, at the very least, explanations of what the Sectors (columns) mean.
+  * 2. Find a consistent configuration representing the current situation. (In any FAR, simplified or full-scale, if none of the configurations represents the present, there is a fundamental flaw in the Sector/Factor array.) Write a short description, in five or ten words, of what that condition represents, record it on a yellow sticker and place it the foot of a white board or flipchart. Do not describe it as status quo.
+  * 3. Find at least two consistent configurations that are believable, in the gestalt sense, as conditions for the end of the time horizon being used. In practice three are often easily found. Again, write short descriptions on a yellow sticker and put them on the board. Space them apart across the board from ‘worst’ to ‘best’; the yellow sticker should state clearly why they are bad, good or in between. In between does not necessarily mean half way between good and bad. It might, for instance, mean ‘pretty good’ or ‘rather worrying’.
+  * 4. If time allows, find a few more consistent, believable, configurations as end points on the time scale, and perhaps for some intermediate states, and record them as before.
+  * 5. It should now be easy to connect these six to eight stickers into credible time lines. If it is not, revisit steps 3 or 4.</blockquote>
+From [[http://www.cgee.org.br%2Fatividades%2FredirKori%2F3316&ei=8FEEU9SNO4bxkAX6goH4Bw&usg=AFQjCNEd6Zh1mPZWl5qsbkZENAmMtAB0Fg&sig2=a0k81cQRBb1gRMGZH4siqw&bvm=bv.61535280,d.dGI|MORPHOLOGICAL FORECASTING– FIELD ANOMALY RELAXATION (FAR)]] By Geoffrey Coyle