Scenarios

“…combinations and permutations of fact and related social changes are called "scenarios." The scenarios usually include plausible, but unexpectedly important situations and problems that exist in some small form in the present day. Any particular scenario is unlikely. However, future studies analysts select scenario features so they are both possible and uncomfortable. Scenario planning helps policy-makers to anticipate hidden weaknesses and inflexibilities in organizations and methods.

In the past, strategic plans have often considered only the "official future," which was usually a straight-line graph of current trends carried into the future. Often the trend lines were generated by the accounting department, and lacked discussions of demographics, or qualitative differences in social conditions.

These simplistic guesses are surprisingly good most of the time, but fail to consider qualitative social changes that can affect a business or government. Scenarios focus on the joint effect of many factors. Scenario planning helps us understand how the various strands of a complex tapestry move if one or more threads are pulled. When you just list possible causes, as for instance in fault tree analysis, you may tend to discount any one factor in isolation. But when you explore the factors together, you realize that certain combinations could magnify each other’s impact or likelihood. For instance, an increased trade deficit may trigger an economic recession, which in turn creates unemployment and reduces domestic production.”

From Wikipedia.

Two Years of Working

A week ago, it was the completion of exactly two years of my working in the Civil Service.

Co-incidentally, last Monday I was invited by the Public Service Division to give a short talk to some interns at the opening day tea of the annual Civil Service Internship Programme. What I shared with the interns is an indication of my working experience in the Service.

I shared that the main reason why I joined the service was because I was interested to spend my time trying to achieve the warm and fuzzy people-oriented goals of the Government, as opposed to the cold and calculative profit-oriented goals of a private company. [I had done an internship at a PR firm in my Uni days and found it rather disappointing that so many talented people worked so hard under an ideology whose primary objective was to meet profit margins of the firm]. Indeed, the Civil Service aims to primarily deliver the best policies and programmes to the public using available and limited resources.

The two years have been a nothing short of a whirlwind for me - it took me very long to get adjusted to the scheme of things. Life was initially very tough, with the steep learning curve, the immense expectations and workload. Looking back, alhamdulillah I'm very proud of the fact that I managed to go through it all and come out alive, a stronger person.

Having been exposed to the massive system, the processes are easier to manage and anticipate, but there is still a great deal to learn. But the main things I've learnt are that...

a) There will always be work to do, and you can never finish it
b) Work needs to be prioritised, if not, you will go mad in trying to do everything at once
c) No matter how nasty people can be, just be yourself and "do da rite thang"
d) Work is not everything - it's just a temporary part of L.I.F.E.
e) I don't carry the world on my shoulders

These are just the main things. There are more. But I shan't bore you with those. If you want I can share the gory details over some teh tarik and mee goreng at ABC market hawker centre.