About the authors
Chantell Ilbury is an independent strategist and facilitator whose work with corporate teams has taken her to the UK, the US, Europe, Australasia, the Middle East and Africa. She lectures on strategy at a number of top business schools and is an accomplished speaker on effective strategy in times of uncertainty. Chantell holds a BSc in Chemistry, a Higher Diploma in Education, an Executive MBA from the University of Cape Town, and has studied Strategic Negotiation at Harvard Business School in Boston.
Chantell is married to Daryl and they have two children.
Clem Sunter was born in Suffolk, England, and educated at Winchester College. He went to Oxford University where he read Politics, Philosophy and Economics. He has been with Anglo American Corporation since 1966, where he is now Chairman of the Anglo American Chairman’s Fund.
Clem married Margaret Rowland in 1969 and they have three children. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Cape Town in 2004 for the work he has done in the field of scenario planning. His hobbies include music and golf.
Further details on the authors and their work: www.mindofafox.com
Also by Chantell Ilbury and Clem Sunter
The Mind of a Fox: Scenario Planning in Action, 2001, Human & Rousseau and Tafelberg
Games Foxes Play: Planning for Extraordinary Times, 2005, Human & Rousseau and Tafelberg
Socrates & the FOX – A strategic dialogue
Take the analytical method of the father of Western philosophy (Socrates) and the wily habits of nature’s cleverest animal (the fox). Add a hint of Eastern mysticism from one of the finest minds ever to grace the field of scenario thinking (Pierre Wack). Blend all three of these elements – with a sprinkling of originality and plenty of experimentation – into a strategic conversation model and what have you got? Socrates & the Fox.
Chantell Ilbury and Clem Sunter have constructed an agenda of ten questions which, if answered fearlessly and honestly by the management of any organization, will provide them with a clear idea of their future in the ‘game’. Numerous examples from the sessions that the authors have facilitated around the world are given by way of illustration.
Read Socrates & the Fox – you will never see strategy and tactics in quite the same light again.
Contents
PROLOGUE
1 Socrates: A Brief History
2 The Legendary Dialogue: Socrates & the Fox
3 The Conversation Model: Our Version of the Socratic Method
DEFINING THE GAME
4 Context: How has the game in your industry changed, where is it heading and how have you fared as a player?
5 Scope: What is your playing field today, and how do you want to expand (or contract) it in light of the developing context and the resources at your disposal?
6 Players: Who are the players that can most advance or retard your strategy, and how should you handle them in future?
7 Rules: What are the rules of the game that are likely to govern your strategy under all scenarios?
8 Uncertainties: What are the key uncertainties that could have a significant impact on the game and divert your course either positively or negatively?
9 Scenarios: On your gameboard, what are the possible scenarios and where would you position yourself in relation to them now?
PLAYING THE GAME
10 SWOT: What are your strengths and weaknesses as a player; and what are the opportunities and threats offered by the game?
11 Options: Within your span of control, what options do you have to improve your current performance and longer-term prospects in the game?
12 Decisions: Which options do you want to turn into decisions right now, and what is the initial action associated with each decision?
13 Outcomes: What is your meaning of winning the game in five years’ time, expressed as a set of measurable outcomes?
EPILOGUE
14 From Socrates to Wack: Looking Forward and Looking Back
This book is dedicated to
Our families who are our foundation;
Our friends who stand by us in good and bad times;
Our colleagues who assisted in producing the book in such a professional manner;
Margaret Berry;
and
The fox within you – whoever you are, wherever you are and whatever you do.
PROLOGUE
1 Socrates: A Brief History
The highest form of human excellence is to
question oneself and others.
SOCRATES
“You are a traitor and deserve to die. And it shall be by your own hand.”
Suppose you received an e-mail to this effect from your boss because you had dared to question his judgment on a strategic issue, and had persuaded some of your junior colleagues of the validity of your case. At the very least, you would consider his reaction to be over the top and ask for his decision to be reviewed by the human resources department. Yet this was the opinion of a public court of Athens that found the wisest man in Greece and the father of Western philosophy guilty of heresy and corrupting the youth. He posed an unacceptable threat to his Athenian bosses with his weapon of mass deduction: Socratic dialogue.
Yes, we are talking about Socrates. At the time of his death (399BC), the once mighty Athenian Empire was recovering from defeat by Sparta following a destructive and protracted war between the two neighbouring Greek states. Socrates was highly critical of the Athenian strategy and debated the merits of alternatives with his students, many of them young aristocrats, and one of them Plato. He thus became the focus of the ire of a number of leading public figures. They declared that not only was he openly questioning the authority of the Athenian leadership, but he was involved in fomenting rebellion against it. It was commonly believed that a number of his former students might have betrayed Athens for Sparta, eventually leading to the overthrow of the Athenian government.
Furthermore, his teaching of philosophical enquiry encouraged his students to question the merits and even the existence of divine powers. This was not a good time to choose, as the citizens of Athens assumed that their defeat had come about because their protective goddess Athena had punished them for not believing in her. Decimated by decades of war and with its empire much reduced around it, Athens had no time for the ramblings of a grumpy old man. To the vast majority of the public, his continued questioning of that which had made the Athenian Empire great had seemingly contributed towards its downfall.
The Socratic Method
Of course, this was not true. Socrates was openly critical of the Athenian establishment – and the way it conducted itself – as a result of encouraging his students to go back to first principles and question all established norms. More importantly, he demanded that his students challenge contemporary definitions of key moral concepts such as ‘justice’ and what should be considered ‘good’. This was not to promote ‘injustice’ or ‘evil’ but to understand things better. His method of enquiry, later called the Socratic method, embraced a dialectic form in which answers to questions were a prelude to further questions, which ultimately induced diametrically opposed answers to the ones given in the first place. In a back-and-forth debate on the truth of widely held