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Written by dr. Marc Gramberger
February 2001
Amsterdam
The Dutch Ministry of Justice had Justice directors take a concerted look into the future –they found many highly relevant surprises, a lot of hidden knowledge within the organization, and a strong base for common action
It was supposed to be a series of training courses in management, helping directors to go “from vision to action-planning” in their daily work. It became that and much more. About 160 directors from the Dutch Justice system, from the fields of general administration to heads of courts and prisons, took a step back and looked at how the context for justice might change in the years to come. On their reflection, they built scenarios, stories about the future. In these diverse contexts, they then placed themselves and other players back in, developing options for actions and, yes, whole action plans. These tackle areas from public debate on norms and values to the challenges of biotechnology, and provide concrete input for decision-making within the organization. “It is amazing”, says the coordinator for management development with the Dutch Ministry of Justice, “to see how much knowledge and insight resides in an organization if you find a concerting way to get it to the fore.”
The objective for the series of courses was clear. The Dutch Ministry of Justice had given itself the task to anticipate upon future developments and to work together with partners in order to tackle them. The series of courses was supposed to translate this into concrete instruments and train directors to use them, simultaneously proving a platform for exchange. Marjolein van Velzen, the Ministry’s contractor for training, asked two specialists in foresight processes and facilitating strategic conversations, Paul de Ruijter and Marc Gramberger, to design and implement a course module. De Ruijter and Gramberger designed a course that centred around scenario-planning, game and interaction theory, applied option theory and concrete action planning. They called in former journalist Jan Godschalk to take notes and prepare a report of every group’s work. The result was an innovative mix between management development on the one hand – in form of action learning in courses –and organizational development on the other; the latter through tackling real issues in the seminars, and injecting the results into the internal strategy process within the Ministry of Justice.
In action, each course group of about twelve directors began by selecting one topic to explore. They had the choice between six topics judged vital for Justice by a steering committee:
For the topic selected, each group tried to detect the most important and most uncertain external developments. Among these, key drivers were chosen. These formed the fundament for the stories about the future – the scenarios. Building on each step of this process, every group of directors worked out a set of two to four divergent, plausible, and relevant futures. As a next step after this scenario-planning, the groups explored which relevant actors around the Justice apparatus could play an important role in the scenarios. They then placed these actors into each of the scenarios.
On this basis, the participants had concluded the strategic review of the context and transactional environment of the Justice, thinking “from the outside to the inside”. They could now focus on own action in order to preempt on these developments. Using game and communication theory methods as well as applied option theory, participants distinguished and tested options for action. In a last step, they selected the most robust and relevant options and worked them out to concrete action plans.
With two to four scenarios per group, the work of all groups resulted in exactly 43 different scenarios, 43 relevant stories about the future. With names such as “How long will the sweet life go on”, “Data vampire” or “Court of genes”, they described divergent future contexts for the justice apparatus. The point is not that these stories predict how the environment for Justice will develop. Rather, for each of the topics, the respective set of scenarios is intended to describe the realm of the possible, hence providing general orientation in a highly uncertain and complex environment. Participants themselves expressed their surprise how realistic their ideas ended up being –many of which looked unusual or unimportant in the beginning but become highly relevant in combination with other factors in the scenarios.
Though instead of providing a labyrinth to get lost in, the scenarios catered a clear, graspable structure of the realm of the possible, for which options for actions could be developed and against which they could be tested. Among the robust options – actions that made sense in all of the scenarios of a set -, were, in general terms: the catalization of law development in the new technology fields such as ICT and biotechnology, the internationalization of the juridicial service on all fronts, a flexiblelization of the justice apparatus, the fostering of a public debate on values and norms, and a local engagement of justice representatives in society development. Among the options only applicable to certain developments, the question of a merger between the interior and justice ministries and public services – following partially the British “home office” model - appeared remarkably often. The groups of directors worked out these options into concrete planning, including tasks for themselves.
Surprising insights, motivation, “draagvlak” - and useful instruments
The insights developed within the courses diverged much from the expectations the steering committee had formulated beforehand and which mainly, much like prognostics, extrapolated existing trends into the future. This was not limited to the description of possible futures, but also to the options for action, and here specifically to the role the participants attributed themselves. Expectations were that the directors would not see much of a role for themselves in lots of topics, especially in ones that seemed more remote like “deborderization”. However, at the end of the course, the participants certainly saw a role for themselves – for this topic e.g. with cooperation with other departments, competence development, set up and participation in EU knowledge exchange and training programs, implications for recruitment, etc.
The course thus showed not only the amazing amount of knowledge already present in the organization, but also the power of creative involvement. While, at the beginning of each course, many directors expressed that they consider themselves to be “at the end of the chain without much influence”, this was unheard at the end of each course. Instead, the process created what Dutch call draagvlak, a shared basis for support for action and change – sometimes even in form of a shared feeling of urgency, such as in the case of biotechnology. The Ministry of Justice is keen to not let this impetus fade away. Its Secretary General is preparing a conference to meet with the directors, and to discuss and deliberate about conclusions for concrete actions. At the same time, by completing the course, the directors have received and tested a series of concrete instruments allowing them to anticipate and strategically prepare when facing complexity and uncertainty in their daily environment. And, judged by the reactions and the grades they attributed to the course sequence, they seem keen to use them.
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