User:Ewan Menzies/sandbox

DIMENSION FOUR (D4)

“Dimension Four®” (D4) is a structured approach to designing and delivering future states.  It is used by organisations that want to accelerate changes in their operations and culture to meet the expectations of their customers and investors.

D4 has been variously described by people who have experienced it as a:

·      Framework for managing change.

·      Boardroom tool for change.

·      New Generation approach to project management.

·      Means of designing and delivering futures.

·      Philosophy.

It is different from traditional methods for managing projects, programmes and change.  The differences are that it allows you to:

1.    Spell out the future in granular and specific terms - binary, and more actionable than “day in the life of…”.

2.    Plan backwards from a granular and specific future - more practical and disciplined than “begin with the end”.

3.    Avoid the toxic effects of the use of number targets to incentivise achievement, whilst still achieving number targets - the opposite of causing change by setting targets and allowing you to specify qualitative as well as quantitative goals.

4.    Calculate the granular cash value of achieving the future state - focus on actual cash value achieved as opposed to progress attained per cost.

5.    Set apolitical and achievable budgets through use of specific outcomes and their cash value, coupled with sophisticated estimating techniques - both more specific and transparent than traditional estimating and covering value more thoroughly.

6.    Deliver required results through changing the operations, structure and culture of the business - not only relying on supplier solutions to make change happen.

7.    Respond to unforeseeable events through a feedback mechanism and to make agile and timeous re-planning a discipline - continuously re-calculating route instead of revising scope, time and costs at staged points.

8.    Maintain business sponsor ownership of change throughout; “By the business for the business” - instead of passing responsibility of change to a separate project or programme authority.

The core D4 techniques are highly scalable and work as well for individuals as for SME companies, large corporates and public sector organisations.

Origins

D4 has its origins in the study of how concurrent streams of events interact together in largely accidental ways to cause business outcomes.^[8]  The fundamental understandings arising from this work have been complemented by the study of:

1.    Time and causality; hence “Dimension Four”.

2.    Catastrophe Theory^[32] and Chaos Theory.^[1][20]

3.    Network Theory.^[5]

4.    The behavioural psychology of communities and of people in community contexts^{[2][3][12][14][16][18][22][24][27][31]}

Development of D4 techniques has taken place almost entirely in commercial engagements within corporate business and public sector organisations.  Research and further development continues to this day but is spreading into small and medium enterprises.

History

Research

D4 started with research by Alan Fowler, David Franks and Ken Currie^[8][9] between 1987 and 1990.  Further research and development continued from 1991 to 2001.  This work was not published, aside from references to it in “Accelerated Change in Business and IT” in 2006 ^[10] and in Conspectus eMagazine in 2009^[7].   The techniques in D4 were developed in the context of meeting needs for drastically accelerated change in large corporate bodies in the private and in the public sector.

Method

In 2002 the emergent practical techniques were assembled into a re-usable approach and labelled Dimension Four® (D4).  In 2002 Isochron Ltd, a company based in Scotland, UK, was created to take the packaged approach to market. 

Propagation

Between 2006 and 2016 Isochron granted licences to other companies to build their own methods around D4, notably:

·      Outcome Delivery Network Ltd (ODNL).  ODNL constructed the Assured Outcome Delivery (AOD) method as an augmented clone (“D4Inside”) of D4. AOD is primarily used in large corporate organisations.

·      CTA Global (CTAG).  CTAG constructed the Concord method.  Concord is also an augmented clone (“D4Inside”) of D4, in this case adapted for use primarily in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

Ownership

In 2018 both Isochron Ltd and the D4 IP were acquired by CTAG.

CTAG is a training and accreditation company offering qualification in the Concord method and is also dedicated to promoting the D4 philosophy worldwide.

Concepts

Recognition Events®

Recognition Events are “appointments with the future” at which people, particularly investors and customers, recognise that the outcome they expected and wanted is happening^[8][9].  They are:

1.    Tangible and personal, i.e. experienced directly and not through the medium of reports and numbers.

2.    Fixed to occur on a specific date witnessed by an appointed person (hence “appointment with the future”).

3.    Binary, because in the view of the observer they either are or are not happening. 

Given the capability conferred by recognition events to define outcomes in binary terms in natural language rather than numbers, key insights of the early research into concurrency in business were that:

1.    Strings of causes and effects can be organised by prescribing or ascribing them to outcomes. D4 called these strings “Episodes”, following the work of Endel Tulving, who distinguished episodic memory from semantic memory.  Tulving defined “chronosthesia”^[30] as: “A form of consciousness that allows individuals to think about the subjective time in which they live and that makes it possible for them to ‘mentally travel’ in such time. There is no way in which the future, which does not yet exist, can influence anything that happens in the present - no way, except one: through an image of a future that exists in one’s conscious awareness of the world, the kind of awareness that chronosthesia makes possible … this is the only way in which the limitation of confinement to the present can be escaped”.

The human brain is especially able to construct and recall time-dimensioned thought.^[11]

2.    The causes of most episodes are ascribed.  That is to say, the causes are established as a matter of opinion only after the future state, the outcome, has occurred.

Exceptionally, the causes of some Episodes are prescribed.  In prescribed episodes a set of mechanical causes is set up which will always produce the same outcome given the same input states. Mechanised processes and computer programs are examples.

3.    Strings of causes and effects organised by outcome – episodes – are connected through sharing objects, transformations and outcomes.  A change of state that is owned as a transformation in one episode is itself an episode owning further transformations.  The transformations are, in turn, episodes.  These episodes own further episodes in a chain of cause and effect.^{[1][15][22][26]}

4.    The chain of cause and effect through shared objects, transformations and outcomes produces Vast (see specific definition of Vast in Dennet’s “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea^[4]) networks. These networks are small-world networks (for definition see Estrada, The Structure of Complex Networks^[5]) in nature and arise when the average number of connections per node is more than two.  Counter-intuitively, small-world networks have low levels of separation between remote episodes; hence the popularised but real phenomenon of “six degrees of separation”.

5.    Where businesses or communities are dynamically unstable systems, the small-world nature of the networks readily enables catastrophic change – benign or hostile - to be triggered with low inputs of energy/cost.^[20][18]

Use of recognition events enables specification of outcomes that are not necessarily measurable in numbers. Behaviours, language, procedures, environment, geography and physical infrastructure; in fact any aspect of the future, can be defined in terms of “is it / is it not to be witnessed happening?”

The exclusion of numbers from recognition events removes the toxic incentive effect which is so widely seen when change is motivated and measured by numeric targets (for a catalogue of toxic impacts of numeric targets used to drive change, see The Social Market Foundation, A Blueprint for Good Targets).^[28]  In D4 Change is driven instead by the specified changes in behaviours, language, procedures, environment, geography and physical infrastructure described in recognition events.  D4 does not, however, ignore number targets.  Rather, it is exceptionally strongly geared to producing them – see the entry beneath on Value Flashpoints.

During applications of D4, Isochron found that the exercise of eliciting recognition events tends to bring about consensus amongst the stakeholders.  This seems to be because recognition events describe the outcome, about which there normally seems to be agreement.  Disagreement mostly seems to arise over the choice of means by which outcomes might be brought about.

Backcasting

Using the human mental capacity for chronosthesia^[29][30] it is possible to backcast (as opposed to forecast, or plan forwards) the chain of transformations that are likely to cause an outcome by a recognition event.  This is a similar concept to that described as “prospective hindsight” by Russo and Schoemaker.^[25] The result backs up and is supported by Gladwell’s observations about the historical causes of rapid mass change in communities and the concept of a Tipping Point.^[12]

From backcasting, D4 constructs a Backcast Plan, consisting of a small number of tipping points underpinned by two more tiers of tipping points, supplemented only if necessary by projects or, more often, microprojects of few steps and limited duration.  By overlaying the backcast plan with forecast plans, the process gives a plan that is back-loaded with outcome-focused tasks and front-loaded with immediate actions.

Given that the connection between episodes is a small-world network, the effect of using recognition events, backcast plans and tipping-points can be unexpectedly powerful.^[18]  The reason for this can be understood by visualising tipping over one small domino to trigger the overturn of a chain of increasingly-large dominoes;  and propagating the overturn of large fields of dominoes by tipping over just one.   Where a business or social system is in a state of dynamic instability^[32], a D4-built plan is able to cause large results with low input effort and cost.

Given the power of such an approach, it is important to note that building the tipping points and plans from recognition events ensures that the outcomes are those wanted by the authors of the recognition events.  D4 specifies that these should be the people who are paying – taxpayers (including those enfranchised to vote but who are not in a position to pay taxes), customers and investors – on the principle that “those who pay the piper call the tune”.

Value Flashpoints®

The taxpayers, customers and investors who author the recognition events often want the value of achieving them reckoned in cash terms, not least in order to pay for the expenditure to obtain them.

D4 carefully distinguishes cash value from cash cost.  The cash value is the increased value of assets, the new revenue and new reductions in costs caused by the achievement of the recognition event.  These cash values are expressed in changes in the cash flows of the company.

D4 only recognises these cash value consequences at the time they arrive as credit transactions the organisation’s bank accounts and not, as in some financial systems, at the point the value is built into a forward budget.  In D4 the point of change in the cash flow is called a Value Flashpoint®.

A value flashpoint is always expressed gross of the costs of obtaining it.  The costs are estimated separately on the basis of the work shown the Backcast Plan.  They are estimated gross of value.  The gross values and gross cost, all attached to timed receipts in the bank accounts, are then brought together with the value flashpoints into a robust cash flow.

The reason that values are estimated gross of costs and costs are estimated gross of value is to ensure (a) avoidance of double counting and (b) recognition that costs born by individual functions or departments do not necessarily bring cash returns to the same department that funded them, but are nevertheless of essential value to changing the organisation to produce the outcomes and value.

D4 has a systematic and thorough process to drive out value flashpoints from recognition events via a generic table of more than 70 Value Drivers.  This process also enables a cross-check for completeness of the recognition event and value flashpoint lists.  The value flashpoints are recorded in a Value Flashpoint Table and the cross-reference is recorded in a Linkage Table.  The linkage table shows the many-to-many relationship of recognition events to value flashpoints and thus the approximate value of achieving each recognition event.  The linkage table is most important during delivery because it enables correct focus and incentive during agile re-planning and informed writing-off of sunk costs.

D4 uses a process of four-point estimating (highest, lowest, best and factored for risk) it calls “Monte Carlo Box Estimating” to obtain a similar, though simplified, form of the Monte Carlo Method of simulation. It couples this with Fermi estimating^[21] based on collateral data and proxies to obtain cash values for all the outcomes, including those that would normally be dismissed as “qualitative”.

Benefit Control Process

The direct connection of recognition events to value flashpoints via the linkage table and to costs via the backcast plan enables the Finance function in an organisation to exert strong control over achievement of the cash benefits of achieving the expected outcomes.  Any block or threat to the achievement of a recognition event can immediately be picked up and managed as a risk to the cash value of the outcome. 

In D4, therefore, there is no reason to delay the identification and management of a risk to any future checkpoint.  It is acted on as soon as it is noticed and taken to a re-planning process driven by the cash value that will be lost if the block is not removed. 

The re-planning process takes the form of a re-run of backcast planning.  The function of a GPS “re-calculating route” is a close analogy.

Commander’s Intent

Commander’s Intent is an idea imitated from the military organisations of many countries.^[23]  Since recognition events form a single authoritative source of the organisation’s expectations, free from the politics of factional owners, they enable communication of the outcome to the whole community. ^[14][6] The recognition events act as a single-source organisation-owned script for briefings, road shows, rich pictures and videos of the future.

Outcome-based management

Outcome-based (as opposed to directed-task) management is not a new idea.  Recognition events, however, make outcome-based management much easier because they specify the required outcomes in binary is-it-happening or isn’t-it for the manager to inspect.  They enable delegation of work in the form of required outcomes rather than in the form of prescribed tasks.

This enables line managers to step back from over-directive task-by-task management and focus on deploying their authority and resources to remove obstructions from the path of their staff and to walking the floor to inspect and reward achievements of tipping-point and recognition events.  They work for managers whether they have naturally consensual or authoritarian styles.

People and change

Change is almost always an additional effort for people.  It is a diversion from business-as-usual and a new overhead of effort. It is often downright bad news for an individual’s personal life and circumstances.

Recognition events enable rehearsal before commitment.  They act as a script for tangible and personal representations of the future to be shown to individuals before they actually have to experience them.

This gives people time to consider and adapt to the change in their imaginations (see Chronosthesia, above) before they start on the classical “grief” curve defined by Kubler-Ross.^[19]  They can examine the pros and cons for themselves, revise personal plans and perceptions and opt-in or opt-out of the future more gracefully as they want, all before becoming engaged in the change itself.^[17]

Acceleration

By backcasting and re-backcasting (benefit control process) from the outcomes stakeholders want, D4 constantly finds and re-finds the minimum necessary path to the goal of the change. It is able to take advantage of any new unforeseen opportunity that presents itself to get to the outcome faster and at less cost.

By making the description of the future granular (recognition events) it is able to couple it to the value (and the cost) of getting there.  In making that connection, it is able to put financial muscle behind being agile with the plan and actions.  The net result is that D4 tends to accelerate progress to the objective.

Structure, interdependency and cross-checking in D4

Whilst the name “D4” refers to time, which runs as a thread throughout the philosophy and method, its parts also conveniently fall under four headings.

1.     Outcome

2.     Story

3.     Money

4.     People (Delivery)

In D4, each of these is driven by one or more of the key concepts and processes described above, together with supplementary structure and processes.

Whilst the Outcome stage can be undertaken by itself and some of the techniques also work in a stand-alone context, subsequent stages in D4 depend on the previous ones having been started (though not necessarily completed).  For example, Story, which involves backcast planning, is nonsensical unless recognition events are established first as descriptions of the future from which to backcast. 

Whilst the D4 estimating techniques in Money can be used to advantage for any estimating independently of the other stages of D4, calculating the value of achieving the future represented by the recognition events cannot be done without having the recognition events and value drivers in the first place.

When applied together, the techniques in D4 cross-check each other, giving additional robustness to the method.

Whilst the component techniques of D4 bring about valuable results in their own right, to get the outcomes and cash value in accelerated timescales that the stakeholders – the people who are paying - want, all four parts of D4 are equally important.  In particular, the Outcome, Story and Money stages are not enough by themselves without the People (Delivery) stage.

Continuing development of D4

Case applications of D4 together with further exploration of and updates in the sciences on which D4 draws continue to stimulate further research and improvement and further development of the practical techniques.  The ten core principles of D4 (see Conspectus eMagazine in 2009^[7]) are, however, stable and remain virtually unchanged since they were first devised.

References

1.    Ball, P. (2004), Critical Mass; How One Thing Leads to Another, London: Arrow.

2.    Beer, S. (1974) The Brain of the Firm, London: Penguin.

3.    Brandler, R. and Grinder, J. (1979) Frogs Into Princes; Introduction to Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Moab: Real People Press.

4.    Dennet, D C. (1996), Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, London: Penguin.

5.    Estrada, E. (2012), The Structure of Complex Networks, New York: Oxford University Press.

6.    Forsyth, M. (2013) The Elements of Eloquence; How To turn the Perfect English Phrase, London, Icon Books.

7.    Fowler A K (2009), ‘Cut To The Chase’, in Conspectus May 2009, pp 14-15

8.    Fowler A K, Franks D J and Currie K (1990), ‘The Application of Parallelism in Commercial Dynamic Information Systems’, in Proc. of the First International Working Conference on Dynamic Modelling of Information Systems, TU Delft.

9.     Fowler A K, Franks D J and Currie K (1992), ‘The Dynamics of Commercial Processes: Concurrency of Events and Episodes’, in Proc. of the 3^rd International Working Conference on Dynamic Modelling of Information Systems, TU Delft.

10.  Fowler, A K, Lock D (2006), ‘Accelerating Business and IT Change’, Gower

11.  Penfield W. and Perot, P. (1963) ‘The Brain’s Record of Visual and Auditory

Experience: A Final Summary and Discussion’, in Brain 86.

12. Gladwell, M. (2000) The Tipping Point, London: Little, Brown & Co.

13. Gleick, J. (1998), Chaos, pp 11 – 31, London: Heinemann.

14. Heath, C. and Heath, D. (2007) Made to Stick; why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck, London: Random House.

15.  Hitchcock, C. (2010) ‘Probabilistic Causation’, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

16.  Kahneman, D (2012) Thinking Fast and Slow, London: Penguin.

17.  Kegan, R. and Lahey, L. (2009) Immunity To Change, Boston: HBS Publishing Corp.

18.  Keizer, K. et al (2008) “The Spreading of Disorder”, Science Vol 322

19.  Kübler-Ross, E and Kessler, D (2005) On Grief and Grieving, New York: Scribner.

20.  Lorenz, E (1972) ‘Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?’ Predictability, AAAS Meeting 1972.

21.  Los Alamos National Laboratory (2005) ‘Eyewitnesses to Trinity’ Nuclear Weapons Journal, Issue 2 2005.

22.  Menzies, P. (2008), ‘Counterfactual theories of Causation’, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

23.  Pigeau, R. and McCann, C. (2000) "Redefining Command and Control" in R. Pigeau and C. McCann, (eds.) The Human in Command: Exploring the Modern Military Experience, 2000, New York: Academic/Plenum

24.  Praet, van P. (2012) Unconscious Branding, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

25.  Russo, J. E. and Schoemaker, P.J.H. (1989), Ten Barriers to Brilliant Decision Making, New York: Doubleday.

26. Steyvers, M and Tenenbaum, J ( 2005) The Large-scale Structure of Semantic Networks, Cognitive Science 29.

27.  Thaler, R. and Sunstein, C. (2009)  Nudge, London: Penguin.

28.  The Social Market Foundation (2005) To the Point; A Blueprint For Good Targets, London: The Social Market Foundation.

29.  Tulving E. (1972), ‘Episodic and Semantic Memory’, in Organisation of Memory, Ed Tulving, E. and Donaldson, W.

30. Tulving E. (2002), ‘Chronesthesia: Conscious Awareness of Subjective Time’, in Stuss, D T and Knight, R (eds), Principles of Frontal Lobe Function. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

31. Walton, G. (2014) ‘The New Science of Wise Psychological Interventions’ in Current Directions in Psychological Science Vol 23(1).

32.  Zeeman, E.C. ‘Catastrophe Theory’, Scientific American, April 1976.