The Fox Trilogy. Chantell Ilbury
“Do you play badminton?” on the grounds that changes in consumer behaviour can cause product obsolescence and thereby empty the profit out of any game.
The title of the third book, Socrates & the Fox, we selected to showcase the great Athenian philosopher and the Socratic Method that he passed on as his legacy. If Socrates were alive today and pursued a career as a management consultant, he would not have asked a company about its targets, key performance indicators and budgets. He would have asked: “Why do you exist and is anything happening out there to undermine the reason for your existence?” This has recently become a sharp question in light of the recession driving consumers toward the cheaper alternative. Those companies that have provided such an option have been winners, while those that haven’t have been fighting to maintain their relevance.
In the second and third books we evolved the Conversation Model that we currently use when facilitating strategy sessions with top executive teams. It has no frills or gadgets; and the agenda is easily understandable and logical. Nevertheless, it does promote a conversation that most businesses have never had before. For this reason we know of many institutions that have used our model without using us. Moreover our website, www.mindofafox.com, from which the model can be downloaded, has become one of the most popular of its kind on the internet. Just google the two words ‘mind fox’ to see how many hits we must be getting around the world to be No1 for that phrase.
Another welcome development for us is the enthusiastic endorsement of our model by the investment community. After all, they have lived for years in the fickle universe of stock market booms and crashes. Hence a measured response to events that can be game-changers in the markets is critical to any successful investment strategy. Our argument is that it is more sensible to make decisions based on the balance of evidence around different economic scenarios than to bet the whole shop on a single forecast. In this connection, one of the important questions to ask is whether the market indices reflect the probabilities that you as an investor are giving to the good and the bad scenarios. Where the answer is no, there is probably an opportunity to make money or protect what you have, as long as you are fleet-footed.
When we initially collaborated on the first book, we had no idea where the road would lead us. Like good foxes, we have adapted along the way. This trilogy is a record of that adaptation. Indeed, we are still adapting our model by trying to improve our techniques of assessing how far up a flag has gone; and what probability should be assigned to a scenario in light of the position of the flag. We hope you, the readers, will be tempted to explore the future along similar lines. However if, in the process, you discover that you really are a hedgehog, get yourself a foxy adviser!
Chantell Ilbury
Clem Sunter
The mind of a
FOX
Scenario Planning in Action
Eye of the tiger or fox of the fairway?
Have you ever watched the world’s finest golfer blast the ball effortlessly from a tee, then follow his crisp iron shot at the pin with a perfect putt and think “he really needs to jack up his game”? Of course you don’t, but he does, even when he is about to win the 2001 Masters and have all four Major trophies sitting on his mantelpiece at the same time. This is Tiger Woods – the fox of the fairway. Why a fox? He is cunning, bright, curious and he reacts with his environment. The New York Times once described foxes as “the most beautiful and interesting animals to observe”.
The common fox in Europe has reddish fur with black patches behind the ears and a light tip to its brush-like tail Underneath, it sports a white waistcoat and dark leggings. Including the tail, the animal is just over a metre long. It is a small but beautiful wild dog, the eyes having a watchful gleam quite different to a domesticated dog. The whole demeanour of the animal is one of alertness, as if it would be up and off at the first sign of danger.
Beautiful – yes; but interesting? Foxes have many dens, sometimes called earths, within their territory. They use them to their best advantage because dens give them options. Foxes normally choose the most secure den in which to give birth to and nurture their young, but they maintain the other dens in case the secure one is put at risk. They are continually foraging for new sources of food and eat almost anything – rodents, rabbits, birds and insects as well as fruit and berries in season. They are highly adaptable to different terrains, ranging from dense forests to cultivated farmland. In fact, they can adapt easily to urban environments and change their eating habits accordingly. Scavenging from refuse bins is an urban pastime. They are so resourceful that the landed gentry in England find them fun to hunt; but maybe not for much longer if the politicians have their way. Foxes have extraordinarily sensitive noses that can pick up an interesting scent a mile off. Even the spiky exterior of the humble hedgehog can’t protect it from a hungry fox.
Which brings us to hedgehogs. They, on the other hand, live in one burrow all their lives. For them a single home is their security – nice and warm and cosy, and generally quite big. Hedgehogs hibernate during winter, effectively cutting themselves off from the outside world. They have plump little bodies with very short legs that hardly raise them from the ground. They are all of thirty centimetres long, covered with sharp, greyish brown spikes and blessed with a pig-like snout. Unlike foxes, hedgehogs like to live where there is certainty in the availability of food. Their favourite fare includes insects, but they are also partial to snails and slugs, which are slow enough for them to catch. Hedgehogs are generally non-confrontational. Whereas foxes will readily enter a fight, hedgehogs prefer to roll up in a ball and use their protective spikes to deter any challenge, especially from foxes. Nevertheless, foxes are carnivorous and are not unknown to make a tasty meal of sleepy hedgehogs. And gypsies have been known to bake them in a covering of clay.
Foxes? Hedgehogs? What have these got to do with golf? And more importantly, what can we learn from distinguishing between them? This book attempts to uncover the mind of a fox. What makes someone a fox? How does a fox manoeuvre not only through the game of business, but also through the game of life? In order to gain an insight into the versatile mind of the fox, we need to compare it to the stiffer persona of the staid hedgehog.
In brief, a hedgehog is a person who believes that life revolves around one big idea, one ultimate truth and that if only we can get at that idea or truth, everything else will come right. Once programmed or hooked on an idea, or even worse an ideology, a hedgehog cannot shake it off. Alternatives are irrelevant. As opposed to searching for a hypothesis which most closely fits the facts, a hedgehog will shoehorn the facts into something which will support his ideology, however much the arguments have to be distorted.
A fox, in contrast to a hedgehog, is someone who believes that life is all about knowing many things. Foxes are people who embrace uncertainty and believe that experience – doing things – is an essential source of knowledge. Action sorts out the sheep from the goats! Moreover, like good golfers know that an excellent sub-par round is only built up one shot at a time, foxes depend upon an incremental approach to change the status quo. Life very rarely confronts you with life-changing experiences. Rather, the transformation of your prospects is the result of many small steps taken one at a time, with little knowledge in advance of what the next step will be until it presents itself. Hence, foxes understand that it is a waste of time trying to delineate an exact path into the long-term future. Crossroads upon crossroads upon crossroads await you. You take the turning you like at the time, and you never look over your shoulder. Consequently, while hedgehogs like to bury themselves in certainty and cloister themselves from disruptive influences, foxes enthusiastically forage for new ideas and explore new routes in the quest of developing a wider range of options for nourishment. In pursuing this course, foxes rely as much on intuition and imagination as they do on their reason and senses. James Dyson, a well-known and very foxy British inventor, puts his success down to his obsession for detail and never-say-die approach to problem-solving: “Once you begin to break down a problem into little bits and tackle each one you find a solution.” Voilà – he has completely redesigned the vacuum cleaner, the wheelbarrow and the washing machine and is worth £500 million.
Returning to the world of golf, how would a hedgehog like golfer differ from Tiger Woods? Firstly, he would have a pre-tournament press conference