Controversy

Controversy seeks to resolve conflicts between parties and find the best solution for all the parties.

Uses of the method

To determine if a conflict can be resolved
To look for ways to find an optimal or new solution

Benefits

Peaceful solutions
New ways of resolving problems
Improve understanding of the others desires for resolution
Useful for analysts to take oppositional positions to resolve disputes
Used as a third party analysis to find a better solution for their own purposes without the arguing parties involvement

Disadvantages

The parties may not want to participate
May need an independent facilitator

Steps to complete

Ask as many protagonists as possible to contribute their position through completing the template or ask analysts to adopt different post ions
Share the initial completed positions among the protagonists and analysts
Ask them to reconsider their positions positively to gain a win for themselves and all others
Repeat until winning solutions are are found
Determine the fixed elements (almost certain hard trends) that will inform your strategic response: slow-changing phenomena e.g. demographic shifts, constrained situations e.g. resource limits, in the pipeline e.g. aging of baby boomers, inevitable collisions e.g. climate change arguments.
Capture critical variables i.e. uncertainties, soft trends and potential surprises. Both these and the fixed elements will be key to creating scenarios and examining potential future paradigm shifts.
Capture unique insight into new ways of seeing that can be utilized by the organization.
State alternative hypotheses drawn with different assumptions and judgments.
Consider what factors would likely change your mind through receipt of new information.
Determine which factors could surprise and alter your judgment and the direction of the outcome.
Consider what factors would likely change your mind through receipt of new information.
Determine which factors could surprise and alter your judgment and the direction of the outcome.
What conclusions can we draw from the exercise(s)?
- How might the future be different?
- How does A affect B?
- What is likely to remain the same or change significantly?
- What are the likely outcomes?
- What and who will likely shape our future?
- Where could we be most affected by change?
- What might we do about it?
- What don't we know that we need to know?
- What should we do now, today?
- Why do we care?
- When should we aim to meet on this?
Develop next steps and determine if any further research required

Collaboration
This method and your response can be shared with other members or kept private using the 'Privacy' field and through the 'Tag', 'Report' and 'Forum' functionalities. Use 'Tag' and/or 'Report' to aggregate your analyzes, or add a 'Forum' to ask others where they agree/disagree and encourage them to make their own analysis from their unique vantage point.

Click the 'Invite tab to send invitations to other members or non-members (colleagues, external experts etc.) to ask for their input. You can whether or not you want anonymous responses. These can be viewed and exported within the Responses tab.

Further reference

Adversarial collaboration, Daniel Kahneman
Structured Analytic Techniques, Heuer & Pherson, CQ Press, 2010

History
Method developed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky as part of their work on cognitive bias.

Contact us
Even with all the advice and tools we have provided here starting a foresight project from scratch can be a daunting prospect to a beginner. Let us know if you need help with this method or want a group facilitation exercise or full project or program carrying out by us. We promise to leave behind more internal knowledgeable people who can expand your initiative for better organizational performance.

Are there other enhancements or new methods you would like to see here? Let us know and we will do our best to respond with a solution quickly.

Copyright
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Controversy

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