Tool 7: Monitoring

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Posted by Justin Long ⋅ August 2, 2008 ⋅

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Tool No. 7: Monitoring
Being attentive, vigilant, and alert

If an environment were fixed and unchanging, a swarm would not need to worry about learning or adapting. Once it had mapped the environment, it could simply proceed to work without ever worrying about how the area changed. But, as we all know, things change: they don’t remain the same. Many of the most interesting and resource-rich environments are dynamic and ever-shifting.

Once an area has been mapped, a swarm needs to monitor the map. It needs to watch how the map is changing. Monitoring social trends and passing information can reveal new opportunities and threats, and give the swarm time to prepare for these. Often a single event will carry with it the seed of both opportunity and danger.

To monitor the situation requires that we be attentive. We must be focused on what is happening around us, straining to pick up on the “little things” that become the “big things” of tomorrow.
It also requires us to be vigilant. We must have an intense, wary, unceasing watchfulness. In the New Testament Jesus’ disciples were frequently called to watch and pray and be vigilant. Vigilance can become a devotional exercise.

Finally, monitoring requires us to be alert: to be ready to promptly react to dangers and to seize opportunities. We must not be only attentive, but also responsive.

Events can take several forms, all of which need to be watched for:
• Chances: random, unforeseen events, “wildcards” and black swans
• Occasions: regular, timely, seasonal windows
• Openings: when something that has been closed suddenly opens up (fall of Berlin Wall, opening of China to free-market economics)
• Breaks: crises, moments of discontinuity when the past is suddenly cut off from the future (2004 tsunami)
• Prospects: today’s trends bring about tomorrow (aging of Europe and America)

An old map is useless when the terrain is new.
Ralph D. Stacey, “Managing the Unknowable”

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice.
Stephen Covey, “The 8th Habit”

Case Studies
• Famine Early Warning System - www.fews.net… - funded by USAID, monitoring famine problems in Africa
• Drought Monitor - www.drought.unl.edu… - an index to the consensus views of scientists and climatologists.
• Fishermen off the course of India use cell phone SMS connections with friends to uncover the best market for their fish.

Additional Readings
Day, G. S., & Schoemaker, P. J. H. (2006). Peripheral vision: detecting the weak signals that will make or break your company. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School.
Taleb, N. (2007). The black swan: the impact of the highly improbable. New York: Random House.
Apgar, D. (2006). Risk intelligence: learning to manage what we don’t know. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press.
To do with the price of fish, The Economist, May 10, 2007, economist.com…

Build it
• Scan a variety of information sources; do not limit your view
• Distinguish what is important and will have an impact
• Identify the most-probable, might-be-possible, and probably-not
• Think about how the event will impact you and your goals
• Identify opportunities and threats to be addressed
• Publish the information in an easy-to-access form.