Strategic Planning: April 22, 2021
Title: Contingency Planning: Utilizing Environmental Scanning and a Phase Construct in the Face of a Crisis
Presented By: Matthew S. A. Feely, Ph.D., Captain, U.S. Navy (Ret.); Faculty Instructor, United States Army War College; Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia Business School, Columbia University.
Description: When crisis strikes, the only certainty is uncertainty – accompanied by volatility, complexity and ambiguity. Conditions can overwhelm the psychology of responders whose ability to operate effectively in the face of a crisis suffers as a result. Leadership must find a way to inject a sense of calm into the organization(s) – even at the height of a crisis. And nothing is more calming than when an organization realizes that the crisis at hand has, in fact, been anticipated and planned for, that the plan can and will be executed, and that progress can be made and measured.
Phasing – or dividing an operation into a series of operations – helps to calm the organization battling a crisis or multiple crises. According to the U.S. military’s Joint Doctrine Publication 3-0, Phasing, can be useful for any operation, “regardless of size.”
Phasing facilitates organization’s efforts to visualize, plan, and execute the entire operation and define requirements in terms of personnel, resources, time, space, and purpose. Phasing helps organizations systematically achieve objectives that cannot be achieved all at once – by arranging smaller, focused, related operations in a logical sequence.
This webinar will look at three explicit phasing constructs: (1) The U.S. Department of Defense Military Operations Phase Construct; (2) The “Sequential Task Construct” often applied to natural and anthropogenic-caused environmental disasters; and (3) a hybrid phased construct that the U.S. Navy utilized during Operation Tomodachi, the Japan-U.S. bilateral humanitarian assistance and disaster relief response in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake in March, 2011.
The phase construct that a private or public sector organization designs must be tailor-fitted to the organization’s capabilities, its environment, its purpose and the spectrum of risks it faces. Thus, it is reasonable to think that the phase construct for a private sector, profit seeking organization would differ from that of a non-governmental organization or a government agency. All phase constructs, however, must account for three groupings of activities across the time domain.
- The first phase of any construct involves planning – which, in turn, requires the explicit understanding of: market intelligence, industrial organization, predictive scenario planning or, when complexity is too great for predictive scenario planning, environmental scanning or another alternative to contingency planning.
- A second grouping of phases includes the execution of the plans – which accounts for the beginning of operations, expansion of operations, steady-state operations and reduction of operations.
- The third and last grouping of phases includes returning to pre-crisis norms (or near pre-crisis norms) and lessons learned.
Learning Outcomes:
- Participants will be able to learn the technique of environmental scanning (which involves market intelligence) as an alternative technique to traditional scenario planning;
- Participants will be able to recognize the benefits of “phasing operations;”
- Participants will be able to build a phase structure for their organizations.
Biography: Matthew S. A. Feely joined the faculty at the Columbia Business School in May 2013, teaching strategic leadership and leadership decision-making to emerging leaders in the MBA and Executive MBA programs as well as to senior executives in the Crisis Leadership Executive Program and Advanced Management Program. Matt is also a faculty instructor at the United States Army War College where he leads two, year-long seminars of senior military officers in graduate studies to help them emerge as the next generation of strategic thinkers and leaders, applying their craft in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. His work in the classroom and lecture halls exemplifies a fusion of theoretical knowledge with practical experience gained from a robust scholarship coupled with a three decade-long navy career and recent problem solving work he has done on behalf of the private sector, the United States defense establishment and political campaigns. Matt’s case study about his experiences leading relief operations after the Great East Japan Earthquake earned the distinction of being the first Columbia University case study ever to be published as a paper case and as a multi-media case study.
Matt earned a B.S. at the U.S. Naval Academy, an MBA at the Wharton School and a Ph.D. in Decision Sciences at the Wharton School’s Center for Risk Management and Decision Processes and the Center for Energy and the Environment, University of Pennsylvania. He is also a distinguished graduate of the National Defense University.
Strategic Planning: April 22, 2021
Title: Contingency Planning: Utilizing Environmental Scanning and a Phase Construct in the Face of a Crisis
Presented By: Matthew S. A. Feely, Ph.D., Captain, U.S. Navy (Ret.); Faculty Instructor, United States Army War College; Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia Business School, Columbia University.
Description: When crisis strikes, the only certainty is uncertainty – accompanied by volatility, complexity and ambiguity. Conditions can overwhelm the psychology of responders whose ability to operate effectively in the face of a crisis suffers as a result. Leadership must find a way to inject a sense of calm into the organization(s) – even at the height of a crisis. And nothing is more calming than when an organization realizes that the crisis at hand has, in fact, been anticipated and planned for, that the plan can and will be executed, and that progress can be made and measured.
Phasing – or dividing an operation into a series of operations – helps to calm the organization battling a crisis or multiple crises. According to the U.S. military’s Joint Doctrine Publication 3-0, Phasing, can be useful for any operation, “regardless of size.”
Phasing facilitates organization’s efforts to visualize, plan, and execute the entire operation and define requirements in terms of personnel, resources, time, space, and purpose. Phasing helps organizations systematically achieve objectives that cannot be achieved all at once – by arranging smaller, focused, related operations in a logical sequence.
This webinar will look at three explicit phasing constructs: (1) The U.S. Department of Defense Military Operations Phase Construct; (2) The “Sequential Task Construct” often applied to natural and anthropogenic-caused environmental disasters; and (3) a hybrid phased construct that the U.S. Navy utilized during Operation Tomodachi, the Japan-U.S. bilateral humanitarian assistance and disaster relief response in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake in March, 2011.
The phase construct that a private or public sector organization designs must be tailor-fitted to the organization’s capabilities, its environment, its purpose and the spectrum of risks it faces. Thus, it is reasonable to think that the phase construct for a private sector, profit seeking organization would differ from that of a non-governmental organization or a government agency. All phase constructs, however, must account for three groupings of activities across the time domain.
- The first phase of any construct involves planning – which, in turn, requires the explicit understanding of: market intelligence, industrial organization, predictive scenario planning or, when complexity is too great for predictive scenario planning, environmental scanning or another alternative to contingency planning.
- A second grouping of phases includes the execution of the plans – which accounts for the beginning of operations, expansion of operations, steady-state operations and reduction of operations.
- The third and last grouping of phases includes returning to pre-crisis norms (or near pre-crisis norms) and lessons learned.
Learning Outcomes:
- Participants will be able to learn the technique of environmental scanning (which involves market intelligence) as an alternative technique to traditional scenario planning;
- Participants will be able to recognize the benefits of “phasing operations;”
- Participants will be able to build a phase structure for their organizations.
Biography: Matthew S. A. Feely joined the faculty at the Columbia Business School in May 2013, teaching strategic leadership and leadership decision-making to emerging leaders in the MBA and Executive MBA programs as well as to senior executives in the Crisis Leadership Executive Program and Advanced Management Program. Matt is also a faculty instructor at the United States Army War College where he leads two, year-long seminars of senior military officers in graduate studies to help them emerge as the next generation of strategic thinkers and leaders, applying their craft in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. His work in the classroom and lecture halls exemplifies a fusion of theoretical knowledge with practical experience gained from a robust scholarship coupled with a three decade-long navy career and recent problem solving work he has done on behalf of the private sector, the United States defense establishment and political campaigns. Matt’s case study about his experiences leading relief operations after the Great East Japan Earthquake earned the distinction of being the first Columbia University case study ever to be published as a paper case and as a multi-media case study.
Matt earned a B.S. at the U.S. Naval Academy, an MBA at the Wharton School and a Ph.D. in Decision Sciences at the Wharton School’s Center for Risk Management and Decision Processes and the Center for Energy and the Environment, University of Pennsylvania. He is also a distinguished graduate of the National Defense University.
Strategic Planning: April 22, 2021
Title: Contingency Planning: Utilizing Environmental Scanning and a Phase Construct in the Face of a Crisis
Presented By: Matthew S. A. Feely, Ph.D., Captain, U.S. Navy (Ret.); Faculty Instructor, United States Army War College; Adjunct Assistant Professor, Columbia Business School, Columbia University.
Description: When crisis strikes, the only certainty is uncertainty – accompanied by volatility, complexity and ambiguity. Conditions can overwhelm the psychology of responders whose ability to operate effectively in the face of a crisis suffers as a result. Leadership must find a way to inject a sense of calm into the organization(s) – even at the height of a crisis. And nothing is more calming than when an organization realizes that the crisis at hand has, in fact, been anticipated and planned for, that the plan can and will be executed, and that progress can be made and measured.
Phasing – or dividing an operation into a series of operations – helps to calm the organization battling a crisis or multiple crises. According to the U.S. military’s Joint Doctrine Publication 3-0, Phasing, can be useful for any operation, “regardless of size.”
Phasing facilitates organization’s efforts to visualize, plan, and execute the entire operation and define requirements in terms of personnel, resources, time, space, and purpose. Phasing helps organizations systematically achieve objectives that cannot be achieved all at once – by arranging smaller, focused, related operations in a logical sequence.
This webinar will look at three explicit phasing constructs: (1) The U.S. Department of Defense Military Operations Phase Construct; (2) The “Sequential Task Construct” often applied to natural and anthropogenic-caused environmental disasters; and (3) a hybrid phased construct that the U.S. Navy utilized during Operation Tomodachi, the Japan-U.S. bilateral humanitarian assistance and disaster relief response in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake in March, 2011.
The phase construct that a private or public sector organization designs must be tailor-fitted to the organization’s capabilities, its environment, its purpose and the spectrum of risks it faces. Thus, it is reasonable to think that the phase construct for a private sector, profit seeking organization would differ from that of a non-governmental organization or a government agency. All phase constructs, however, must account for three groupings of activities across the time domain.
- The first phase of any construct involves planning – which, in turn, requires the explicit understanding of: market intelligence, industrial organization, predictive scenario planning or, when complexity is too great for predictive scenario planning, environmental scanning or another alternative to contingency planning.
- A second grouping of phases includes the execution of the plans – which accounts for the beginning of operations, expansion of operations, steady-state operations and reduction of operations.
- The third and last grouping of phases includes returning to pre-crisis norms (or near pre-crisis norms) and lessons learned.
Learning Outcomes:
- Participants will be able to learn the technique of environmental scanning (which involves market intelligence) as an alternative technique to traditional scenario planning;
- Participants will be able to recognize the benefits of “phasing operations;”
- Participants will be able to build a phase structure for their organizations.
Biography: Matthew S. A. Feely joined the faculty at the Columbia Business School in May 2013, teaching strategic leadership and leadership decision-making to emerging leaders in the MBA and Executive MBA programs as well as to senior executives in the Crisis Leadership Executive Program and Advanced Management Program. Matt is also a faculty instructor at the United States Army War College where he leads two, year-long seminars of senior military officers in graduate studies to help them emerge as the next generation of strategic thinkers and leaders, applying their craft in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. His work in the classroom and lecture halls exemplifies a fusion of theoretical knowledge with practical experience gained from a robust scholarship coupled with a three decade-long navy career and recent problem solving work he has done on behalf of the private sector, the United States defense establishment and political campaigns. Matt’s case study about his experiences leading relief operations after the Great East Japan Earthquake earned the distinction of being the first Columbia University case study ever to be published as a paper case and as a multi-media case study.
Matt earned a B.S. at the U.S. Naval Academy, an MBA at the Wharton School and a Ph.D. in Decision Sciences at the Wharton School’s Center for Risk Management and Decision Processes and the Center for Energy and the Environment, University of Pennsylvania. He is also a distinguished graduate of the National Defense University.
